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CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

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SPOTTED!

After a week with no sign of racing’s new favorite pack, they were spotted in Monaque City, having a day together. Watching the stores they visited, they furnished Vanessa’s nest, bought some clothes, and had what looks like some incredible food. Pack De Clare was all smiles today, and the men can’t seem to keep their hands off their Omega. Not that we’re complaining! Hopefully we’ll get another glimpse of them before the summer break is over!

I was entirely shopped out.

It wasn’t normally my favorite thing anyway, but buying things for the nest was amazing. Everything I wanted, I picked. And more. Things for my room at what was now my home . The guys had made that abundantly clear.

We might not be bonded, but they were mine and I was theirs, and they told me if I didn’t want to live with them, they were going to put up a fight trying to convince me.

I wanted to live with them more than I wanted my next breath.

They didn’t even balk when I asked about painting my bedroom black. Even more when I showed them some videos I’d seen of how gorgeous all-black decor could be.

“I’m tempted to do something similar now,” Beck said. “But I’ll watch and learn first.”

“No. You’ll never see it. You’re not allowed in my room.” I stuck out my tongue.

In a flash he had me against him, kissing me before my tongue had even retreated. “Want to stick out your tongue, love? What if I pay the toll into your bedroom with my tongue in your pussy?”

Arousal flushed my skin, and I was suddenly aware of perfuming in the store. “That might work.”

“Thought so.”

“I might have picked too many blankets.”

“No such thing,” Beck said. He nodded over my head, and when he turned me, the others were waiting.

“What’s going on?”

Gray held out his hand for mine. “If you’re finished, we have a little good, old-fashioned Omega smuggling to do.”

“I thought that ended with my team announcement.”

Elias chuckled. “This is worth it. And you don’t have to get in any trunks.”

Turns out we were just going out the back of the store and through some back hallways in the large building the nest store was housed in. A man waited at a door, ushering us through the back of a different store.

A store that glittered .

This was a jewelry store, and from what I could tell, we were the only people in it. “What are we doing here?”

“As previously mentioned,” Gray said. “We’re not bonded yet. Though I would be happy biting your neck right here and right now.”

“I’m not opposed to that,” I breathed.

“You deserve more than that, little one.”

The four of them surrounded me, briefly hiding me from the staff scattered around the large store. Elias slid his hands around my hips and just held me. I didn’t know that I’d ever get used to the casual affection, though I hoped so.

“Remember being both?” Grayson asked.

“Kind of hard not to when I’m switching back and forth all the time,” I said with a laugh.

“Well, in that spirit, we have a question,” Beck said. “If you want that, just to bond with no fuss and no fanfare, none of us will argue that.”

I tilted my head. “And the other option?”

River tilted my face toward him. “To give in to all your girly, gorgeous Omega dreams and let us pamper you. Buy you a ring.”

“To be asked with at a later time,” Elias said. “Because everyone knows the timing should be the surprise, not the question or the ring.”

I felt my smile all the way down to my toes. “You’re asking if I want you to propose?”

“Basically.” River shrugged. “Because if not and it’s option one, I’m voting we go straight back to the nest where we can fuck the bonding frenzy out for the next week before we have to go back to real life. Otherwise, yeah, baby. We’re proposing a proposal.”

My heart and stomach went gooey with pleasure. It tingled under my skin. I wanted that. “Proposal, please.”

All River did was shake his head and smile, like he’d known exactly what I’d say.

“One more question before we let you loose,” Gray said. “Would you care at all if said proposal involved racing? If you want it to be separate, I would understand.”

“No, I don’t mind. I’m not going to limit you.” If it was only River and I in racing, that would be one thing. But it was all five of us. Our pack . It made sense that a next step toward our future life would involve our current one.

Beck nodded and stepped back from the circle. “Then have fun. Don’t limit yourself either.”

There was so much here. Jewels of all kinds sparkling under the lights that were made for them to shine. It was absolutely overwhelming. I’d never even thought about the possibility of a ring, so I had no idea what I wanted.

“I could be wrong,” Gray said quietly, stepping up by my side. “But there is a reason we brought you to this particular store.”

“What’s that?”

He guided me with a gentle hand on my back to a section near the front and gestured to the display case. I gasped. The rings had black jewels. Some of the metal was also black. “You guys would be okay with a black ring?”

“We’ll be okay with whatever you want and love.” Beck spoke from my other side. “I want to see our ring on your finger. I don’t care what the ring looks like, as long as we gave it to you.”

“They’re so pretty.”

“Try on whatever you want.”

We were finally approached by a thin man in a sharp suit who measured my finger before more staff pulled up a chair and brought us water. Our choice of flat or sparkling, of course.

I figured out quickly that I liked the dark metal, and that I didn’t want something giant or gaudy. Thankfully for my own overwhelm, I wasn’t someone who needed long to make decisions. Especially when I tuned in to my instincts. But nothing I’d found was quite perfect.

Beck pulled my hair away from my neck and leaned in to kiss my skin, groaning softly. “Have I mentioned how much I love your fucking hair?”

“Not today.”

“I love your fucking hair,” he murmured, stroking a hand through it. “So why don’t you tell me why you haven’t tried on the ring you keep looking at while I imagine slowly wrapping your hair around my cock and making myself come.”

Instant arousal surged through me, bringing a soft gasp. I swallowed, trying to remember that we weren’t alone. “What ring are you talking about?”

“That one.” He nodded his head to a ring in the very corner of the display case. “You keep looking at it and then choosing something else to try.”

“Because I’m not sure if I actually like it.”

Beck smiled into my skin. “Something about it clearly keeps drawing your attention.”

“Fair point. I’ll try that one,” I say to the clerk.

The ring was gorgeous up close and it wasn’t even on my finger. A round, clear stone with black striations running through it. Like someone took a needle and injected ink in straight lines from one side to the other, creating a dark, beautiful pattern. The bands on either side of the jewel crossed over each other and flowed around the stone, framing it. There were smaller white diamonds along the twisting bands, adding the right amount of shimmer.

I did my very best not to look at Beck and what would probably be a smug, knowing expression. It was so much prettier up close.

How did you describe a feeling like this? Like you understood something before you’d even taken the action? I imagined it was similar to someone shopping for a wedding dress and seeing what they wanted without even having to try it on.

I did try it on.

The display ring was too big for my finger, but that didn’t stop my heart from stuttering in my chest. That was the ring. It felt like it had been made to be on my finger.

“What’s it made out of?”

“The central stone is rutilated quartz,” the clerk said. “Not the most valuable of stones, but it does have a unique appeal in certain designs. The bands are black gold, with the side stones being diamonds.”

Elias leaned on a display case across from me, winking. “You okay with that? Not having the most valuable stone?”

I kept myself from rolling my eyes. Money was great. And I wasn’t about to lie and said I didn’t care about it. Anyone who said they didn’t was probably lying to themselves. At least a little. Money made life better. But I didn’t need something to be the most expensive purely for the sake of it.

“As long as the stone is hard enough not to get damaged in our line of work.” I glanced at the clerk. “Which I know quartz is.”

During races I didn’t wear any jewelry. But everything else? Our careers were physical, and I wasn’t going to take it off if I didn’t have to.

“This is the one,” I said. “It’s perfect.”

The clerk took the ring from me and immediately went to work using our information to order the ring. River waved from across the space. “Then you only have one more thing to pick.”

“What’s that?” I crossed to him.

“ Our rings.”

I stared at him. “You want to wear a ring?”

“Baby, I would tattoo your face over my heart if you told me it wouldn’t freak you the hell out. Yes. I want to wear a ring. Because I am off limits as fuck .”

“You can pick your own ring,” I said.

“Or I can wear something you pick for me.” He pressed my hips gently into the display case so he could stand behind me, his chin propped on my shoulder as we looked at the men's rings.

“You all want them?”

“Yeah, we talked about it when we planned this.”

A new clerk stepped forward. “If I may?”

I nodded and watched as he set out a velvet pad and pulled a ring out from the case. “I don’t know if you wanted to match. But this one goes quite well with the ring you chose, Miss Lennon.”

The ring he showed us was simple and stunning. Two dark bands lined one central, slightly paler band, made of the quartz in my ring. I could see the strange, inky markings.

With one arm still around my hips, River held out his hand for the clerk to put it on him, and the second it was there, everything flared . Deep possessiveness and jealousy even though there was barely anyone here. The ring marked him as mine .

They were all mine.

“Fuck, you’re adorable,” River whispered.

I blinked, realizing I’d been letting out a low growl in response to seeing the ring. My Omega didn’t take well to being called adorable while she growled, but I managed to pull myself back. Especially when River’s purr rumbled against my spine, his fingers gripping my hip in slow pulses.

He kissed my hair. “Now you know why we want to see you in your ring so badly.”

“Will you mind if you all match?”

“Not at all.” That was Grayson’s voice. “We’re all one pack.”

I looked at the clerk who’d shown us the ring. “Thank you.”

He inclined his head. “We’ll arrange everything with Mr. De Clare.”

“Now we get to go out the back way again.” Elias pulled me away from River and twirled me under his arm. “Because we want you to be surprised, and we want the rest of the world to be surprised too. But first, we should probably get you home before your stomach becomes overly vocal.”

I smacked his arm, but I was smiling as he pulled me through the shining displays. And out of the corner of my eye I spied the staff smiling too.