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TWENTY-ONE

WHEN THE BOUGH brEAKS

MAGNOLIA

I mindlessly run my fingers over the mark on my shoulder, Des’s mark, and feel a smile slowly spread across my face.

They bit me again during my heat. At different times and without planning, all four of my men bit their mate marks on my body during my first heat with them, and I’ve been a stupid dreamy mess ever since.

Well, it was technically our heat.

From previous conversations, I knew Isaak and I weren’t on the same schedule.

We were opposite months, and our expected start times were different despite how they varied.

It came up not too long ago actually, when we kind of joked about how busy our men were going to be if we couldn’t ever sync up.

I had no idea that my heat would trigger his. None.

It’s probably ignorant on my part. I’m sure I learned it during sex ed, and it’s crazy to think I never read about it while I was going to medical school.

Not that omega’s cycles have a whole lot to do with forensic psychology, but still.

My entire life has been spent around some form of medical learning facility, and I didn’t know my heat would trigger my omega’s until it fucking happened.

I thought for sure once Isaak went down we were both going to die right there in his nest.

I shouldn’t have underestimated him, though.

When he left to get help, I didn’t know what the hell he was doing and I was in way too much pain to ask, but unless he planned on pulling a miracle out of his slick covered ass, I figured we were toast.

Never again will I doubt Dr. Isaak Lowe, not after he managed to make a miracle happen three times over while he was trying to take care of me and fighting off his own surprise heat.

He had our alphas and beta brought to us before it was too late, and I might have fallen a little harder for my nerdy, sexy omega because of it.

“There’s that look again,” Evie says as she drags a ladder through the patio doors of her new apartment. “If I ever disassociate to the point of drooling once I’m mated, please book me a room up on Ward C.”

“Why there?” I giggle as I help her set it up. “Wouldn’t you rather get locked up in one of the cushy suites down on A?”

Eve shakes her head and starts climbing. “Nope. If I look like you when I’m mated, I’ve probably murdered at least two people already and with the confidence packing up brings, I’ll convince myself I’m untouchable. C is the only way to make sure my reign of terror comes to an end.”

I crack up at her dramatics but I can’t help the way my heart pinches over her words.

She’s been actively trying to find her mate for such a long time, I think after seeing me literally fall into my pack within the first few months of working at the asylum, she’s getting more discouraged.

Eve is happy for me, don’t get me wrong. I know she is, she loves me too much not to be, but there’s a little sadness there when it comes up, and I wish I knew how to help make that go away.

“How’s that?”

Taking a few steps back, I tilt my head and look at the painting of Lady Godiva she did years ago, making sure it’s level and even over the brand new sectional.

“A little to the left. Hey, where did you find this? I thought it got ruined when we were in high school?”

Evie shimmies down the ladder and comes to stand next to me, admiring her work as he answers, “I thought so, too. Turns out my father had it boxed up and thrown into the attic under twenty years of academic records.”

I frown as I turn to face her. “Why?”

“No clue.” She shrugs then giggles a bit. “It probably scared him. That bitch is powerful and you know how well my dad handles a woman with balls bigger than his.”

My best friend is not wrong about that. Carter isn’t loyal to Dolly, and he won’t grant her a divorce, but he stays out of her way and does what she says for the most part.

He likes to talk a big game on campus but I’ve seen them at Evie’s house and he does not like a woman with a backbone and ambition.

It’s a huge part of why my best friend wound up with her own contract of doom. Carter was preplanning in case his daughter was a mini version of his wife.

Too bad for him, she is.

”Okay,” Eve says, startling me as she rushes into her kitchen and rummages around before reappearing in the living room next to me. “Let’s celebrate.”

I frown but can’t help but laugh as she hands me two glasses and tries for five minutes to pop the cork on the champagne bottle in her hand.

“Celebrate what?” We both jump when it shoots off the bottle top, breaking the neck as a fountain of bubbly spills all over the floor.

”This,” Evie squeals as she fills our glasses and motions to her new place.

“ And… ” She grabs the collar of my sweater and points to the pink teeth marks that are almost healed.

“This! You already mated so I’m going to guess that you went into heat for the first time in your entire life, and those four dangerous, broody men of yours rocked your world during it! ”

My cheeks heat but I can’t do anything other than giggle like an idiot because my best friend is right, and she’s doing her adorable little happy dance and that always makes me laugh.

But before I can answer, someone knocks on Evie’s door.

“I ordered us pizza, it’s fine.” She grabs her wallet from the coffee table then searches for some cash as she answers. “Don’t tell me you aren’t hungry, I know what the post heat afterglow?—“

Eve freezes as she pulls the door open, her eyes wide as she backs into the room slowly. My heart starts to race as panic surges through me, my mind instantly going back to the night Camden attacked me.

Except, it isn’t him.

No, it’s not the devil I was expecting, but one who decided to catch me by surprise.

”Sorry to show up unannounced,” my father says as he comes in and stands a few feet in front of me. “It’s been rather difficult tracking you down the last few weeks, and this was my last resort.”

Eve looks at me as he busies himself with removing his gloves and scarf, her eyes wide as she mouths, Do you want me to stay?

I love her for that.

My father has never laid a hand on me, we both know I'm not in any danger of that happening, but the Dean is clearly pissed and my best friend doesn’t want me to have to face him alone.

But I don’t want her to have to face him at all.

So, I give her a subtle shake of my head then nod toward the hall so she knows she doesn’t need to stay but I want her close.

Not that she’s thrilled by that plan, but she gets it, and that’s why Eve says, “I’ll let you two catch up.” She starts backing away as my father ignores her and takes off his coat. “I’ll just be in my bedroom. Building my new furniture. With hammers. And a nail gun.”

I bite my lip to hide my smile at my best friend’s not so veiled threat, watching to make sure she does go into her bedroom where she leaves the door cracked a bit.

Thank god I’m not completely alone.

After everything that’s taken place over the last few weeks, the good, bad and in between, I’m not sure I could handle whatever it is Byron Reynolds has in store for me without some form of moral support.

Knowing Evie will race out here with a claw hammer raised over her head like a battle axe at the first sign of trouble is oddly reassuring.

“Now then,” he says as he drapes his coat over the back of a kitchen chair, his eyes shrewdly taking in every inch of the apartment that sits almost an hour outside his and Carter’s kingdom. “I heard you’ve been having some trouble as of late.”

I watch him skeptically, my guard firmly in place since I doubt he’s asking that because he’s concerned about me. “Such as?”

“Don’t play stupid, Magnolia. You know how much I despise it when you do.”

“Then enlighten me,” I say a lot more defiantly than I intended.

I can’t help that, though. My entire life has been uprooted and I’ve been beaten down in the process.

The fact that I can see how few shits he gives about that is hurtful even after twenty seven years of the same behavior.

“Please. If you’re convinced I’m playing dumb, why don’t you just?—“

“Enough,” he sneers, his voice low and full of anger.

“I was hoping we could do this in a more civilized way, but since you’re the farthest thing from that, I should have known better.

” My father walks around the couch and toward the wingback on the other side of the coffee table, pulls his handkerchief from his breast pocket, dusts off the cushion, then sits down.

Fucking snob. “I am going to talk, you are going to listen. Do you understand?”

“What’s the point of this if I can’t?—“

”I said, do you understand, Magnolia?”

I nod and drop my eyes to the floor.

I don’t think there’s anything that will change the way I react to my father when he’s like this. Lifelong conditioning, Pavlov’s dog kind of shit, the habit is engrained in me and that’s how it’s always going to be.

“Now then, I’ve spoken to Camden and he’s still willing to take you back regardless of what has happened in the past. He?—“

“He attacked me!” I blurt, unable to hold my tongue. “That pompous leech raped me, he tried to kill me, and you still expect me to marry him? Do you really not care about me at all?”

My father clenches his jaw, his eyes narrowed and with more ice in his tone than I’ve ever heard, he says, “No.”

All the air whooshes from my lungs as he finally confirms what I’ve always thought but refused to really believe. Then he takes it a step further in order to drive his point home.

”From the day your mother told me she was pregnant, my mind was made up; unless you were male, or an alpha, you were undeserving of my time and energy.

You meant nothing to me until Carter posed the idea of merging the families, and that is the only reason you’ve held any merit all these years.

You can give me what I want, and I don’t care how I get it as long as I do. ”