Page 44 of How to Lose a Pack in 10 Dates

Jace

I f anyone had told me two weeks ago that our pack’s first real bonding moment would involve mosquito bites on my ass, three grown men sharing one godforsaken sleeping mat, and an omega using a tent pole as a sword to fight off imaginary bears, I’d have laughed them off the property and probably told them to seek immediate psychological help.

And yet, here we are; fresh off a weekend so emotionally feral and logistically cursed that it’s either going to bond us for life or end up as a cautionary tale in a group therapy session.

I wake up to the sound of Wes growling at the tent zipper. Again .

“Why the fuck does this thing bunch like that?” he mutters, yanking at it roughly. “Is it alive? Is it mocking me? Did I wrong its family?”

“It’s a zipper ,” Cam mumbles. “Not a boss-level villain.”

“It’s a personal attack,” Wes hisses back, half in, half out of the tent like an angry crab.

I don’t move, mainly because I can’t. I’m too warm, too happy, and pinned under what I can only describe as a deeply smug omega-slash-human heater. Aimee’s curled up on my chest, her nose smushed into the crook of my neck, legs tangled with mine. Cam’s draped over both of us, and there’s no space.

No complaints, either. (Except maybe the lack of remaining s’mores.)

(And also the fact that Wes is currently conducting a full-blown verbal argument with an inanimate object.)

Aimee sighs against my throat. “Too hot,” she mumbles.

Cam yawns. “Couldn’t be on account of the alphas you deliberately sandwiched yourself between, could it?”

She reaches back blindly and swats him in the general direction of his ego.

“ Ow ,” Cam says flatly. “That was a deeply targeted elbow.”

“Your face is deeply targetable,” she croaks.

Wes finally manages to unzip the tent and immediately sticks his head out. “Oh, thank fuck . Air. Oxygen. The sky .” He inhales then exhales audibly. “I’m never going inside again.”

“You’re very dramatic in the mornings,” I call out.

“You’re very obnoxious in the mornings,” he fires back.

“Thank you,” I grin.

Aimee groans and stretches with all the grace of a possessed cat, bonking her forehead into my chin.

“How is it morning? I’m still emotionally hungover from your pack song.”

“It slapped,” I defend, because it did .

“You rhymed ‘bonded’ with ‘haunted,’” Wes scoffs from outside.

“Poetic license.”

“It was a lot, ” Aimee adds.

Cam sits up and rubs his eyes. “I’ll make breakfast,” he announces.

Wes pokes his head back in. “Please don’t.”

“Hey! I brought protein pancakes.”

“You also brought a dangerous sense of optimism,” Aimee comments dryly.

“ Exactly ,” Cam beams. “Let me live.”

They eventually all spill out of the tent one by one, disheveled and bickering like the most dysfunctional sitcom family you’ve ever seen. I hang back for a second, watching Aimee with a fond smile.

It hits me, then. The fact that this is it. This is the real thing. No apps, no articles, no bullshit; just her and us, together as a pack.

And god help me: I love it.

Mosquito bites and all.

*

Breakfast is…?a disaster. A loud, sticky, fruit-throwing, pancake-flipping disaster—and, weirdly, one of the best mornings of my life.

Cam is hunched over the tiny portable griddle, tongue between his teeth.

“I just think you should’ve maybe read the instructions before mixing the batter with a twig ,” Wes says, standing behind him with his arms crossed.

“It was a whisk-shaped twig,” Cam says, not looking up. “Nature provides.”

“Nature is not FDA approved,” Wes sighs.

“ You’re not FDA approved,” Cam mutters.

“I’m a lawyer. I come with paperwork.”

“You come with ulcers.”

“I am the ulcer,” Wes deadpans.

Meanwhile, I’ve taken it upon myself to help by poking Aimee in the thigh repeatedly with a plastic spatula.

“Stop it,” she says, batting me away.

I grin as I poke her again. She narrows her eyes, reaches behind her, and whips a grape at my chest with sniper precision.

It bounces off me and hits Cam in the side of the face.

“Hey! Who threw produce at my pancake aura?”

“That’s it,” Aimee laughs, reaching toward the rest of the fruit and launching two strawberries in quick succession—one at me, one at Wes.

“Hey!” Wes barks, dodging. “These are some of Walmart’s finest produce, you absolute menace!”

“Oh no,” I grin, ducking behind a folding chair and arming myself with a banana. “You’ve activated the breakfast wars.”

It all escalates rapidly from there.

Wes starts hurling orange slices. Cam retaliates by flicking pancake batter onto Aimee’s arm and yelling “ FOOD ARMOR !”.

I’m not sure how it happens exactly, but I end up pinned beneath Aimee in the dirt, her knees on either side of my hips, both of us breathless and wild-eyed, her cheeks flushed and her hair a complete disaster.

She’s panting above me, her dark eyes sparkling, and, tragically, my knot chooses this exact moment to get deeply involved.

Not. Ideal.

Aimee stills. Her hips shift slightly, and her nostrils flare.

Yeah. She notices.

She doesn’t move, though. In fact, she raises a brow like she might rock her hips forward just to watch me die.

Cam coughs delicately. “Children.”

Wes throws a fleece blanket over our heads. “ Absolutely not .”

Aimee collapses in giggles on top of me. Her whole body shakes with it, and I’m helpless. I’ve got dirt in my back and a knot problem I can’t exactly walk off.

“I win,” she whispers, still laughing.

“You always do,” I whisper back.

She leans in like she’s about to kiss me, then licks my cheek and hops off instead. I lie there for a second, staring up at the sky, wondering if this is what happiness feels like: dirty, chaotic, and slightly sticky from syrup.

Cam appears over me with a plate. “Pancake?”

It’s slightly burnt and vaguely oval-shaped. I take it anyway.

“You’re just gonna eat mystery batter from the guy who whisked it with a stick?” Wes snorts.

I shrug. “It’s pack bonding.”

“It’s salmonella,” Wes says, but his mouth twitches.

Cam grins. “Tastes like trauma and togetherness.”

“I hate all of you,” Wes mutters.

Aimee steals his pancake and kisses his cheek at the same time. “No, you don’t.”

*

Packing up takes forever . Mainly because nobody is helpful.

Cam’s trying to fold the tent like it’s an origami puzzle from hell, Aimee’s sat on a tree stump eating trail mix out of the bag with zero intention of lifting a finger, and Wes is muttering to himself about the injustice of mosquito bites in non-consensual crevices.

“I just think,” Cam grunts, wrestling with the tent poles, “this is a deliberate design flaw. You shouldn’t need a PhD to compress nylon.”

“You don’t have a PhD,” Wes points out, kicking at a half-buried tent peg. “You barely passed high school chemistry.”

“I passed it with style, ” Cam says smugly. “And in my defence, chemistry is my only weakness.”

Aimee hums. “I failed chemistry. I refused to memorize the periodic table on principle.”

“Is that a principle?” I ask, tossing the cooler into the back of the SUV.

“It is now.”

Somehow, we manage to get everything crammed into the trunk. It’s an unholy game of camping Tetris, but we win.

By the time we all pile into the car, we’re sun-tired, sugar-crashed, and covered in approximately eighty percent woodland debris. Cam’s in the passenger seat playing DJ, and Aimee is nestled in the middle of the backseat with her legs tossed across Wes’s lap.

I pull onto the road with a contented sigh; and then, the chaos begins.

Cam puts on an eighties power ballad playlist and starts dramatically lip-syncing along, using a half-empty water bottle as a mic.

“I will crash this car,” Wes warns flatly.

“You’re not even driving,” I laugh, eyeing him in the rear view mirror.

“I will grab the wheel.”

Aimee giggles. “Let him have his moment, he’s clearly in his feelings.”

“I’m performing,” Cam says, gesturing wildly. “Let me live. ”

“Can you perform with the window open?” Wes says, cracking his. “Your voice is giving me hives.”

Aimee snorts and tosses a granola bar at Cam’s head. “Next one’s going out the window.”

Cam pouts. “I can’t believe this is the thanks I get for making us pancakes.”

“Pancakes that gave me digestive anxiety,” Wes grumbles.

“You’re all ungrateful.”

“True,” Aimee says cheerfully. “But we’re cute.”

Cam turns up the volume in defiance.

We drive like that for miles—bickering and laughing and snacking on leftover snacks. I glance in the mirror as Aimee falls asleep. Wes is watching her with that quiet, guarded softness he never admits to having, and the car smells like us; like vanilla and alpha musk and her.

I feel it in my chest, then; that low, humming pull:

I want her in this pack.

I want us to claim her. I want her scent layered under mine so thick I smell her even when she’s not there. I want to know, without doubt, that she’s ours—by instinct, by bond, by choice.

It’s been chaos from day one, but fuck , it feels right.

And I’m ready.