Page 41 of Pack Plus One (Sweetwater City Reverse Harem Omegaverse #1)

“Oh, very mature,” she says, but I can hear the smile in her voice.

“You wanna tell me what happened? I mean, I know I’ve been busy with work, but last I checked, you were determined to avoid all alphas until menopause.

Now you’ve had a surprise heat with not one, but three of them, plus a bonus beta? That’s quite the escalation.”

I groan. “I hate how well you know me.”

“That’s what happens when you bail someone out of relationship jail this many times.” She gets up, heading to the kitchen. “I’m making coffee. And you’re telling me everything. Starting with how many of them you actually slept with.”

My face burns hot against the cushion. “All of them.”

“I’ll need more coffee for this,” she mutters.

The next hour devolves into what Zoe clinically refers to as “Leah’s Emotional Support Spiral.”

Phase One : Raid Zoe’s freezer for emergency ice cream. Eat directly from the tub with the kind of single-minded focus usually reserved for bomb defusal.

“So let me get this straight,” Zoe says, watching me excavate a pint of rocky road. “You decided you actually like them and might give them a chance. But then you went into unexpected heat, and they all helped you through it.”

“Mmhmm,” I confirm around a mouthful of chocolate and marshmallow.

“Then you stayed with them afterward?—”

“Just to recover,” I interject.

“Sure,” she says, rolling her eyes. “And during this ‘recovery period,’ you slept in their alpha’s bed—but not in their actual nest—and basically played house with them for three days.”

I stab my spoon into the ice cream with unnecessary force. “It wasn’t like that.”

“What was it like, then?”

What was it like? How do I explain what it felt like to wake up to Liam’s quiet smile, to have Mason remember exactly how I like my tea, to feel Jude’s infectious laughter loosen something tight in my chest? How do I explain Caleb’s protective hovering that somehow didn’t make me feel smothered?

“It was... nice,” I finally say, inadequately. “They were nice.”

“Nice,” Zoe repeats flatly. “You’re having an existential crisis over ‘nice.’”

“They’re not just nice,” I admit, setting down the ice cream. “They’re... they work together, Zo. Four males with their own business, their own pack dynamic. They fit. They don’t need some prickly, independent omega disrupting that.”

“Did they say that?”

I hesitate. “Not exactly. But I overheard them talking last night. About how I’m not like ‘normal’ omegas, how I don’t nest, how I’m too independent.

” The words still sting, even in the retelling.

“One of them literally said, ‘We need to accept that’s not who she is.’” My voice drops. “And I do nest…just…not obsessively.”

Zoe’s expression softens. “And what else did they say?”

“What?”

“What else? You heard part of a conversation, Leah. What was the context? What came before or after?”

I open my mouth, then close it again. The truth is, I don’t know. I heard enough—heard them comparing me to “normal” omegas, heard them discussing whether I was “theirs”—and then I’d backed away, unable to bear any more confirmation that I didn’t fit what they needed.

“That’s what I thought,” Zoe says, reading my expression. “You bolted before getting the full story. Classic Leah.”

“I don’t need the full story,” I insist. “I’ve heard it all before, remember? ‘You’re not pack material, Leah.’ ‘No alpha wants an omega who doesn’t know her place.’ Eric made it pretty clear.”

“Eric was an insecure knot who couldn’t handle dating someone more successful than him,” Zoe snaps. “His opinion is worth less than the gum on my shoe.”

She’s not wrong, but it doesn’t change the fact that the Le Roux pack deserves someone who fits naturally into their world. Someone who doesn’t require them to change everything about how they operate just to accommodate one stubborn omega.

I groan.

Phase Two : Queue up Pride & Prejudice, my go-to emotional support movie. “For research,” I tell Zoe when she raises an eyebrow.

“Research on what? How to misunderstand a man’s intentions due to your own prejudice?” she asks dryly. “Because that seems relevant to your current situation.”

I throw a pillow at her. “Shut up and press play.”

We make it to the hand-flexing scene—you know the one—before my phone buzzes again. I’ve been ignoring the steady stream of notifications, but this one comes with a distinctive tone. The special chime I set for bakery emergencies.

“Shit,” I mutter, diving for my phone. “I’m supposed to be at the bakery.”

The message is from my supplier, confirming a delivery of specialty flours for tomorrow morning.

Which means I need to be at the bakery early tomorrow. Which means I can’t hide at Zoe’s indefinitely.

Which means I’ll need to face reality eventually.

“Work crisis?” Zoe asks, pausing the movie.

“No, just a reminder that I have responsibilities.” I sigh, setting the phone down. “I can’t hide forever. I have a bakery to launch.”

“Debatable. I once hid from a date for three months by taking different routes to work.”

“That’s because he was a creep who called you ‘breedable,’” I point out. “These guys are...” I trail off, not sure how to finish that sentence.

“Hot? Successful? Clearly into you?” Zoe supplies helpfully. “Attentive enough that you stole their belongings to comfort yourself?”

I don’t respond, but my eyes drift to Mason’s mug sitting on the coffee table. I’ve been stealing glances at it all morning, drawn to its familiar shape and the lingering traces of their scent.

I sigh.

Phase Three : Secretly sniff the stolen mug when Zoe goes to the bathroom. Inhale the lingering scent of pack and comfort. Feel my stupid omega self preen at the memory of being surrounded by their scents, their care, their attention.

They chased me last time .

The thought slips in unwelcome. After I’d stayed at their house, had mind-blowing sex, and left quickly after realizing how fast I was falling.

This time they will again .

The certainty of it spreads through me like wildfire. What happened between us during my heat, the days after—it wasn’t just biological convenience or a casual fling. There were moments of connection, of understanding, of seeing and being seen.

They will look for me.

The knowledge should terrify me, but instead, it sends a traitorous thrill down my spine, my inner omega self preens.

Knock it off , I tell myself firmly. This isn’t some romance novel where being chased is sexy. This is your life, your independence at stake .

My phone buzzes on the coffee table. Then buzzes again. And again.

Zoe returns with two glasses of wine—because it’s never too early for poor decisions when you’re hiding from a pack of gorgeous men—and nods at my phone. “Aren’t you going to check that?”

“No.”

“Liar.” She grabs it before I can stop her, swiping to unlock it (because of course I told her my passcode during some drunken girls’ night). “Ooooh, we’ve got a full-court press here.”

I lunge for the phone. Zoe dodges with surprising agility for someone who describes her exercise routine as “aggressively avoiding exercise.”

“From Jude,” she reads aloud, adopting a dramatic announcer voice. “ Doll, I will hand-feed you grapes like a Roman emperor. Please come back . Attached is a... is he wearing the grape stem like a mustache?”

I groan, picturing Jude’s ridiculousness perfectly. He would absolutely send a selfie with a grape stem mustache during an emotional crisis.

“Liam says: I carved you a mixing bowl .” She squints at the screen. “With a photo of it on his lap. That’s... weirdly hot? Is this some kind of alpha code I don’t understand?”

“Give me that!” I snatch the phone back just as another text comes in.

Mason

The house smells wrong without you.

My breath catches. That one hits different.

Mason doesn’t do flowery words or grand gestures.

He doesn’t waste time with dramatic declarations.

If he says something smells wrong, he means it—and for a beta without a sensitive nose, that’s practically a declaration of.

.. something. Something I’m not ready to name.

Then Caleb’s message pops up:

Talk to me.

Just three words. My fingers hover over the screen, the cursor blinking in the empty reply field.

What could I possibly say? “Sorry I ran out on you after eavesdropping on your private conversation”? “I can’t be what you want, but I took your mug as a consolation prize”? “I still feel the phantom pressure of your teeth on my neck when I close my eyes”?

Zoe watches me with knowing eyes, sipping her wine. “You’re going back, aren’t you?”

“No.”

“Liar,” she says again, softer this time. “I know that look. That’s your ‘I’m going to make a terrible decision, but I’m trying to convince myself otherwise’ face.”

“I’m not going back,” I insist, though my voice lacks conviction even to my own ears. “I heard them, Zo. They want a normal omega. Someone who fits into their pack, who nests naturally, who lets them take care of her without fighting it every step of the way.”

“Did they actually say they want someone other than you?”

I hesitate. “Not explicitly, but?—”

“But nothing,” she interrupts. “You heard part of a conversation, assumed the worst because that’s your pattern, and ran before getting clarity.

Now four grown men are texting you increasingly desperate messages, and you’re sitting here sniffing a stolen coffee mug instead of having an adult conversation. ”

Put like that, it does sound rather childish.

“They’re going to realize I’m not what they want eventually,” I say, voicing my deepest fear. “They’ll try to change to accommodate me, and they’ll end up resenting me for it. Or I’ll try to change to fit what they need, and I’ll lose myself in the process. Either way, it doesn’t work.”

“Or,” Zoe counters, “you could talk to them like an adult and see if there’s a middle ground. Novel concept, I know.”