Page 39 of Pack Plus One (Sweetwater City Reverse Harem Omegaverse #1)

“Is there anyone else she might go to?” Liam asks. “A friend? Family member?”

Mrs. Finley considers this. “No family that I know of. Not close ones, anyway. Maybe her best friend, Zoe.”

Zoe.

The best friend we briefly met when we came over to Leah’s for that disastrous dinner.

The one who gave Caleb that assessing look, like she was mentally calculating how quickly she could take down all four of us if necessary.

“Do you have Zoe’s contact information?” Liam asks hopefully.

Mrs. Finley shakes her head. “I’m afraid not. Leah is quite private about her personal connections.”

“Thank you for your time,” Mason says politely, already pulling Caleb back from where he’s been silently looming like the world’s most attractive gargoyle. “If you hear from her, would you please let her know we’re concerned? And that we need to explain the misunderstanding?”

“I’ll pass along the message,” Mrs. Finley says, in a tone that suggests she will actually do it. “And gentlemen? For what it’s worth, I believe you. But whether Leah will is another matter entirely.”

With that parting shot, she closes the door firmly in our faces.

“Well,” I say after a moment of stunned silence. “That went better than expected.”

Caleb growls, the sound vibrating through the hallway. “We need to find this Zoe person.”

“How?” Mason asks practically. “We don’t even know her last name.”

We regroup outside the building, huddling on the sidewalk like the world’s most pathetic pack of alpha hounds who’ve lost their quarry. I immediately pull out my phone.

“Zoe,” I mutter, typing into the search bar. “That’s got to be enough to find someone in this city.”

Caleb glares. “That narrows it down to about 500 people.”

“476, according to this search,” I correct, holding up my phone to show the results. “But point taken.”

Mason exhales slowly, running a hand through his usually immaculate hair. “We’re screwed.”

“We barely even met her,” Liam points out. “Just that one time when we were arriving for dinner and she was leaving.”

“All I remember is that she seemed intrigued by our pack dynamic,” I say, scrolling through endless social media profiles of women named Zoe. “Kept looking between us like she was trying to figure out our hierarchy.”

“She wasn’t much taller than Leah,” Mason offers. “Brown hair in a short cut.”

“That describes approximately half the women in this city,” Liam says with a sigh. “We need more to go on.”

Caleb paces the sidewalk, his agitation evident in every step. Passersby give us a wide berth, no doubt sensing the frustrated alpha pheromones rolling off him in waves.

“Maybe the building manager knows Zoe’s last name,” I suggest, looking back at the building entrance. “Worth a shot, right?”

Liam nods, already turning back toward the doors. “It can’t hurt to ask. We’ve already woken him up and invaded his morning.”

“I’ll stay here,” Caleb growls, clearly not trusting himself to maintain civility at this point.

Mason and I follow Liam back into the building, the cool air of the lobby a stark contrast to the warming morning outside. The building manager is behind his desk now, sorting through mail in his small office with the resigned air of a man who’s given up on the possibility of a peaceful day.

He looks up when we enter, his expression instantly souring. “You again? I thought we were done here.”

Liam approaches with his most diplomatic smile. “Just one more quick question, and then we’ll be out of your hair. Do you happen to know Zoe’s last name? Leah’s friend?”

The manager stares at us like we’ve just asked him to solve advanced calculus. “You don’t even know her best friend’s last name?” he asks incredulously. “What kind of relationship is this exactly?”

“We’re working on it,” I say cheerfully. “Our relationship is still in the... early stages.”

“Early stages,” he repeats flatly. “You followed her through the city during her heat, spent three days holed up with her, and now you’re stalking her apartment building because she’s avoiding you. Those aren’t ‘early stages.’ That’s a restraining order waiting to happen.”

He slams the door in our faces before I can come up with a suitably witty retort.

“He has a point,” Mason says quietly as we retreat to the SUV. “This is bordering on stalking.”

“She thinks we rejected her,” Caleb says, his voice rough. “Because of a conversation she overheard without context. We need to find her and explain that we were saying the exact opposite of what she thought she heard.”

“Fine,” Liam says decisively. “But we need to be smart about this. Split up, cover more ground. She can’t have gone far.”

We divide and conquer, each taking a different part of the city where Leah might reasonably be found.

My Mission : Bribe every barista in a three-mile radius.

“Free beer for life if you’ve seen a gorgeous, grumpy omega with a sweet tooth,” I announce to the first café, sliding a business card for the brewery across the counter.

The barista, a beta with a nose ring and a sleeve of tattoos, blinks at me, then at the card. “You mean Leah?”

I nearly leap over the counter in excitement. “Yes! Leah! About this tall, has a bakery, looks like she might stab you but you’d thank her for it?”

“She was here an hour ago,” the barista confirms, looking slightly concerned at my intensity. “Bought a blueberry muffin and looked like she wanted to murder someone. More than usual, I mean.”

“Did she say where she was going? Was anyone with her? Did she seem okay?” The questions tumble out of me in a rush.

The barista takes a step back. “Dude, chill. She bought a muffin, not my life story. She didn’t say anything, but she took the bus that stops outside.”

I text the group immediately:

LEAD. BLUEBERRY MUFFIN SIGHTING AT COFFEE CORNER. TOOK BUS OUTSIDE.

Liam responds within seconds:

Bus #14 goes downtown from there. On it.

Mason sends a photo of her closed bakery, the “Sorry, We’re Closed” sign clearly visible in the window. No luck here .

Caleb doesn’t reply. Probably too busy terrorizing innocent civilians with his alpha scowl and waves of possessive pheromones.

I spend the next three hours visiting every café, bakery, and pastry shop in my designated sector of the city.

I learn way more than I ever wanted to know about the difference between croissants and Danish pastries, collect seven phone numbers from interested baristas (which I immediately throw away, because contrary to popular belief, I do have some standards), and consume so much caffeine that I can practically feel colors.

But no more Leah sightings.

By late afternoon, my phone buzzes with a message from Mason:

Regrouping at that cafe she’d snuck off to the first time. 5 PM.

Ah. The site of our dramatic confrontation with Leah’s ex, the place where we found her during pre-heat, looking beautiful and stubborn and absolutely infuriating in her determination to handle everything alone.

The memory makes my chest hurt in a way I’m not entirely comfortable examining.

I arrive to find the others already there, expressions ranging from grim (Liam) to defeated (Mason) to murderous (Caleb). We claim a table in the corner, four males radiating enough frustrated alpha energy to make nearby patrons shift uncomfortably in their seats.

“Nothing?” I ask, though the answer is written clearly on their faces.

Liam shakes his head. “The bus took me downtown, but I didn’t spot her anywhere. Searched some shops, the mall, even just waited at the bus stop for a while.”

“The bakery doesn’t look like she’s been there,” Mason reports. “According to the beta who owns the shop beside it, she hasn’t stopped by. He hasn’t seen her.”

We all turn to Caleb, who’s been silent since we arrived. He’s staring out the window, his jaw clenched so tight I’m surprised his teeth haven’t shattered.

“Caleb?” Mason prompts gently.

“I went back to our place,” he says finally, his voice flat. “Thought maybe she’d return.”

“And?” I ask.

“She took the mug,” he says, so quietly I almost don’t hear him. “The one with the chip in the handle. Mason’s favorite.”

The significance of this isn’t lost on any of us. She’d left behind our clothes, our nest, but taken a small, imperfect piece of our home with her.

Liam has his phone out again, his brow furrowed as he types. “I’m telling her we’re at her apartment,” he says quietly. “That we’re worried. That she needs to let us know she’s safe.” The message shows as delivered, but like all our others, there’s no read receipt.

“She’s going to come back,” I insist, needing to believe it. “She has to. Her life is here—her bakery, her apartment.”

“What if she doesn’t?” Liam asks. The look in his eyes is downright heartbreaking. “What if she decides we’re not worth the trouble and skips town?”

“She’s stubborn, not stupid,” I argue. “And what we have—had—was more than just heat convenience. She felt it too. I know she did.”

“Then why did she leave?” Caleb asks, finally turning from the window to fix me with a gaze so intense it almost hurts to meet it.

“Because she thinks we want her to be something she’s not,” Mason answers quietly. “She thinks we want a ‘normal’ omega—someone who follows traditional dynamics, who lets us take care of her without question.”

“But we don’t,” I protest. “We want her . Exactly as she is—stubborn, independent, infuriating… perfect .”

“Did we tell her that?” Liam asks, thoughtful as always. “Or did we just assume she knew?”

The truth of this hits me like a freight train. For all our scenting and claiming and possessive behavior, we never actually told Leah what she’s come to mean to us. How we feel about her. That we want her. Just as she is.

Caleb pulls out his phone, typing with more force than necessary. His jaw works as he hits send. I catch a glimpse of the screen—a simple “Please.” The raw vulnerability of that single word makes my throat tight.

“We’re idiots,” I announce to the table at large.

“Speak for yourself,” Liam mutters, but there’s no real derision in it.

“No, he’s right,” Mason says with a sigh. “We’ve been so caught up in pack dynamics and omega care and heat protocols that we forgot the most basic element of any relationship.”

“Communication,” Caleb says, the word sounding like it’s been dragged out of him.

“Exactly!” I snap my fingers. “We need to tell her—explicitly, in actual words—that we want her exactly as she is. No changing, no traditional omega role, no giving up her independence. That when we were talking about accepting who she is, we meant we need to adapt to her, not the other way around.”

“We need to find her first,” Liam points out.

And that’s the crux of the problem, isn’t it? We’ve spent all day searching, and Leah’s trail has gone cold. She doesn’t want to be found.

Our phones buzz simultaneously—the pack group chat. For a heart-stopping moment, I think it might be Leah, but it’s just the brewery’s assistant manager asking about tomorrow’s schedule.

The realization that life goes on—that we have businesses to run, responsibilities to meet, a world that continues turning even while ours feels like it’s imploding—is sobering.

“We should head back,” Mason says reluctantly. “Regroup, make a plan. We can’t just wander the city aimlessly hoping to bump into her.”

“I’m not giving up,” Caleb insists, his tone brooking no argument.

“No one’s suggesting that,” Liam soothes. “But we need to be strategic. Maybe check social media, contact her vendors at the bakery.”

“I could hack her email,” I suggest. All three turn to look at me with varying degrees of horror. “What? I have skills beyond my devastatingly good looks, you know.”

“We are not hacking her email,” Mason says firmly. “That’s crossing a line.”

“But—”

“No,” all three say in unison.

“Fine,” I grumble. “But for the record, I could totally do it.”

We make our way back to the SUV, the weight of the day’s failures settling heavily on our shoulders. The sky has darkened to deep twilight, streetlights flicking on one by one as we walk in silence.

“It’s like she fucking vanished,” I mutter, kicking at a pebble on the sidewalk.

Liam checks his phone again—a gesture he’s repeated at least a hundred times today, always with the same result. No messages, no missed calls. “She doesn’t want to be found.”

Mason grips the strap of his messenger bag, the first-aid kit still nestled inside like a talisman against disaster. “We pushed too hard.”

Caleb says nothing. Just stares ahead, jaw clenched, the set of his shoulders radiating a tension that would be alarming if I didn’t know him so well. He’s not angry—not really. He’s afraid. We all are.

For the first time in our years together as a pack, we have no next move.

No trail to follow. No omega to chase.

Just the sinking, gut-punch truth:

She’s gone.

And we have no idea when—or if—she’s coming back.