Page 12

Roan

The three of us sat at the table, plates of scrambled eggs in front of us that were a combination of burnt and raw—thanks to our inability to focus enough to scramble a fucking egg.

The toast wasn’t any better, a delightful shade of black.

There wasn’t enough butter in this county to make it edible.

But that didn’t matter. We weren’t hungry. None of us were.

Never had I truly thought we’d find our mate. Hoped? Yeah. But believed? Not really. And now that we had, she didn’t want any part of us.

That broke something inside me.

Inside all of us.

“I’ll do the dishes.” Harlan stood up.

“No. Sit.” I was being pushy, but I didn’t care.

Lily was our omega. Done. And not doing anything about it was going to turn the three of us feral.

Our human side might understand her rejection, but our wolves never would.

Understanding didn’t equate with it not hurting though.

Gods, it hurt so bad, a deep wound unlike anything I’d ever experienced before.

I dropped my fork, the metal clacking on the plate, startling Benji enough that he shot a piece of the egg-tastrophe across the table.

“Tell me if I’m wrong…Lily’s ours.” If they weren’t going to bring it up, I was.

A growl built in Harlan’s chest and he closed his eyes. He was fighting with his beast—I could scent it—and I gave him the time to get it under control before beginning again. Once we sprouted fur, we were going to bleed each other, our wolves too worked up for it to go any other way.

“We’ve been waiting for her all this time.” When they didn’t add anything, I continued, “We can’t give up. But we can’t push either. She’s right. She deserves better than that.”

Whatever led to her reaction to us had to have been horrible. She’d been carefree and all smiles when I first saw her and then suddenly, there was a shift and that woman was gone.

“I-I don’t think it’s us she’s scared of.” I’d been thinking a lot about it, and the more I did, the more I realized her reaction wasn’t about us at all.

“Yeah, I got that too.” Harlan pinched the bridge of his nose. “When she talked about omegas, her fear was palpable. Someone hurt her.”

“Then we need to rescue her.” Benji started to stand up, and this time, it was me who growled, and he parked it back in his seat.

“As if it is as easy as that, asshole.” Harlan wasn’t having it.

“The people she was with, the DarkShadow Pack aren’t the problem.

Do I like her being around other males? Obviously not.

But they’re mated, and I don’t know how she’s connected to them.

” I didn’t want us accidentally turning the three mated alphas into our enemies because of jealousy.

If anything, we owed them for keeping her safe.

As terrified as she had been with us, she felt at east with her pack. They treated her well.

We’d treat her better. She’d been carefree and our everything.

“She said she wasn’t really the aunt, but she acts like sisters with the other woman—Rumor.” Benji had a point I hadn’t considered.

The DarkShadow Pack had bought their mate. Did they buy Rumor too? That would make sense if both women came from the same shitty pack. Or maybe I was reading far too much into this all as I tried to figure out a way for us to win our omega’s heart.

“Roan, you’re focusing on the wrong things.” Harlan gave my shoulder a squeeze. “What we need to do is figure out a way to get her to open up to us, so she can see we’re not awful.”

“I know.” Benji leaned in closer. “We can bring her gifts. The DarkShadow Pack isn’t that far away. We can just spoil her until she loves us. I can’t wait to treat her like a princess—no, scratch that, a queen—but not in the real sense.”

Benji’s life before our pack was the definition of complicated and it included a crown or two.

“That’ll work.” I was down with buying her all the fancy tools she needed for her canning or jewelry or maybe making her a bookshelf for her cookbooks. If she used cookbooks. There was so much we still didn’t know about her.

Harlan barked out a laugh—one very much not filled with amusement. “Do you two know anything about females? Do you know anything about omegas?” He glared. “Do you know anything?” He was not impressed and rightfully so.

“We cannot go to her place. We cannot go to her territory. We cannot approach her pack about her. If we do, she’ll never trust us.” Harlan picked up a piece of toast and then put it straight down. “And we will not cook for her.”

His attempt to lighten the mood, didn’t. How could it, with our mate so close and yet so far away?

“The gift idea might not be bad.” Roan was much better at being diplomatic than I was. “What if we bring her gifts without pressure, and maybe, over time, she’ll forgive us and give us a chance?”

We spent the next hour talking about possible gifts and how to do it, and ways to approach her that wouldn’t make things worse.

We also set a list of boundaries, which added up to not going full speed ahead without permission on anything. She needed to be the one in control. Because if she wasn’t, we were no better than those she feared.

And if I ever found those fuckers, I was going to bleed them until they met the goddess. Or I hoped she’d reincarnate them as fricking bugs.

They get stepped on.

Or a really awful animal everyone hates.

I wasn’t picky as long as they suffered.