Page 143 of Knot So Lucky

Including, apparently, cooking.

Aurora pauses mid-motion.

She'd been standing there with her hands on her hips, feet planted in that particular stance that suggests she was about to launch into some kind of speech. Probably a lecture about boundaries or expectations or how this whole situation is going to work.

But the coffee offering breaks through whatever she was planning to say.

"Yes,please." The words come out like a groan, reverent and desperate in ways that make heat coil low in my belly despite my irritation.

She accepts the mug Adrian hands her like it's a gift from the gods themselves, both hands wrapping around the ceramic with the kind of care usually reserved for precious artifacts.

I roll my eyes so hard I practically see my own brain.

Of course Adrian can get into her good graces immediately.

The man's not only a billionaire who can bribe anyone with a check written from his personal account, but he's also a good as fuck cook who somehow made actual edible food during a five-day heat when the rest of us were running on protein bars and desperation.

I look across the kitchen, taking inventory of the other pack members.

Cale sits at the table with me, but on the opposite end—as far as he can get while still technically being in the same space. He looks relaxed as fuck, sprawled in his chair like he doesn't have a care in the world. There's a healing claiming mark on his neck that's impossible to miss, teeth impressions that won't fade for weeks.

The physical evidence of Aurora's choice.

Cale first. She chose Cale first.

The thought makes my Alpha instincts want to rage, but I force them down with practiced control.

Elias sits on one of the bar stools by the kitchen island, dangling some kind of toy on a string. The kitten—that damn kitten that started this entire clusterfuck—chases it with single-minded determination, pouncing and missing and pouncing again with the kind of energy that suggests it's completely recovered from its near-death experience.

Elias looks peaceful. Content. Like playing with a kitten while an Omega wears his shirt is exactly how he pictured his life going.

Everyone seems calm and content, like we didn't just spend five days practically fucking a stranger.

An Omega we barely know beyond surface-level interactions and heat-driven desperation.

An Omega who we're now potentially going to have to bond with permanently because somehow Cale's brief connection with them was enough to trigger pack bonds for all of us.

I wonder if being a pack of only three before this made us incomplete somehow. If our biology was searching for something to fill a gap we didn't know existed, and Aurora's heat provided the perfect opportunity to force that connection.

But I'm not sure.

Don't understand the mechanics of how this happened or why. Just know that I can feel the others' emotions now—distant but present, like background music I can't quite tune out.

The sound of Aurora moaning pulls me back to the present.

She's taken her first sip of coffee, and the noise she makes is obscene. Pure relief and satisfaction, eyes closing in bliss as she savors what's probably the bitter taste of black coffee with no cream or sugar.

I press my lips together, fighting the conflicting responses warring in my body.

Because for an Omega who's so fuckingsweet—whose slick tasted like honey and vanilla and something addictive that I can still taste on my tongue when I think about it—drinking black coffee feels like a complete mind fuck.

The contradiction bothers me more than it should.

Sweet biology, bitter preferences. Omega designation, Alpha presentation. Everything about Aurora is contradictory, refusing to fit into any neat category my brain tries to assign.

She must have gotten used to it.

The black coffee, the masculine performance, the constant adaptation required to exist in a world that doesn't want her to be who she is.