Page 75 of Knot Going Down

“I wasn’t being serious, asshole!” I snap. “I don’t need you to mansplain my body to me. I’m living it! Not the heat—not yet anyway—but the fear? The scrambling? The constant need to outmaneuver biology just to keep my freedom. IknowI’m gonna want knots. Hell, I want them now!”

“Not like you will when?—”

“Shut the fuck up, Declan!”

He clamps his mouth shut, lips tight. A low purr starts in his chest, a sound meant for soothing omegas.

“No. None of that!” I snap. He stops. “I don’t need you.” I take a step toward him, letting the storm inside me rage. “I don’t need any of you. Here’s the new plan. If I go into heat on the ship, I lock myself on the balcony and deal with it alone.”

“I thought you agreed I could help you,” Knox says in a voice too quiet for the gruff man. There’s something fractured in his eyes that almost cracks me, too.

“That was before you decided to be the hero and ended up costing me everything. Anyone with a brain could’ve told you Emily had a better chance of getting those pills.”

“I just wanted to help.” Knox’s shoulders sag, the guilt written all over him.

A look passes between Declan and Emily, but there isn’t enough fight in me to care if they implode, too. Not right now anyway. I’ll cry about it later.

My anger falters, and exhaustion replaces it. “I know. But it doesn’t change my decision.”

Declan opens his mouth. Closes it. Looks away.

I shoot him a glare. “My decision,” I remind him.

With that, I turn on my heel and walk away.

I’ve faced enough alone. I can survive this, too.

38

LUCAS

Cooking with Ava is kind of like watching a surgeon operate, if the surgeon also swore at you under her breath and judged everyone else's knife skills with her eyebrows.

She's in her element. Calm. Focused. A little smug.

After last night’s drama, I knew she needed some time away from the alphas, so I talked her and Emily into taking the cooking class I’d originally booked for my old pack. I’m glad I did. It’s nice to see this new side of her.

The gleaming kitchen space on the lower deck of the ship smells like sugar, vanilla, and barely suppressed chaos. Crème brûlée day. Emily’s already singed one of our hand towels with the blow torch.

Ava’s got her hair twisted up in a bun, apron snug around the curve of her waist, and the kind of concentration on her face people usually reserve for defusing bombs or parallel parking in front of a crowd. Her whisk is moving with mechanical precision.

“You are enjoying yourself?” I ask, even though the answer is obvious.

She glances up, flicking a spot of vanilla bean from her thumb with casual grace. “Obviously.”

“Yes. It is super obvious by the way you are threatening our dessert with the wire whisk.”

Her mouth twitches. Almost a smile. “It knows what it did.”

Next to us, adorable Emily is holding a blowtorch like it’s a lightsaber. Our instructor, a beta with a nervous laugh, has stopped trying to supervise and seems to only hope no one dies. Blow torches should not be distributed on two-for-one coconut rum shot day.

Ava adds cream to the saucepan without measuring. She does this little swirl thing with the handle like she’s showing off. Honestly, I could watch her cook all day. She’s relaxed here, probably more than she has been in days.

Which makes this theperfecttime to say something I probably shouldn’t.

“So,” I start, keeping my tone light and my eyes on Emily’s torch, “hypothetically, if someone were to be in danger of going into heat—someone in this kitchen, hypothetically—they might need… support. Perhaps boundaries should be discussed. Participants. Turn offs. Just a thought.”

Ava shoots me a side eye showing her complete lack of amusement in my topic of conversation.