Chapter Five

The bed was empty when Mia woke, and the disappointment surprised her.

It wasn’t as if she wanted Hart to still be there. Even now, after a shower to clear her head, she had no idea how she might have dealt with that. What was she supposed to say if she’d woken with him there, with his intense stare on her?

Sure, she’d have to talk to him, to them all, but somehow in her bed after he’d gotten a taste of her breakdown was not the place to do it. Really, after her reaction, any bed was a bad place.

The hot shower had woken her, and she made sure to scrub herself well, to erase any of the scent of her desire. She rubbed in so much of her lotion that her skin felt greasy, but that was better than not using enough.

The scents she covered herself in were like armor. Some wore bulletproof vests to go into battle, but her? She used these tricks.

She’d resisted masturbating in the shower, mostly out of stubbornness. It felt like a step too close to admitting how little control she had over herself. No matter how much she might dream about the alphas, about their smell, their hard bodies, their thick knots, she would not be reduced to a pathetic girl getting off in a shower to those thoughts.

At least the clawing need from the night before had gone away. Fully awake and able to think now, she chalked the experience up to panic rather than the start of a heat.

She’d woken from a hot dream, her body screaming for relief, and she’d found Hart staring at her and more than willing to fill in where her dream-man had failed, and she’d taken that very normal reaction too far.

Still, she doubled up on her medication just in case.

They couldn’t always stop a heat, but they were better than nothing. She only needed to postpone one until she got home. Then she could suffer in privacy and go back to her life afterward with nothing changing.

Silence met her downstairs, and she couldn’t see any of the alphas. They didn’t watch TV, weren’t reading, weren’t fighting in the kitchen over what to eat.

“Morning.” Dax’s cheerful voice let Mia draw in a deep breath.

He didn’t have the tone of a ‘we need to have a talk’ person, which suited her fine as she really didn’t want to have a talk.

“Is everyone asleep?”

He shook his head, his green eyes bright in the early morning sun. “Outside. It’s a nice day and we figured fresh air would do well.”

“I think I got enough fresh air on the boat.”

His laugh was soft and he tucked his hands into his pockets. “No boats. Promise. Got coffee and donuts, though.”

Sugar sounded amazing right then, and hell, if she ate enough of them, maybe she could send herself into a diabetic coma and never have to talk to the alphas at all.

It seemed like a win-win situation to her, so she followed Dax.

At the outdoor seating area—a few chairs set around a low table—a plate of pastries sat out, a carafe beside it.

A cup had already been poured, and the steam from the top told her it was still hot. She knew it was hers, the color so light as to almost imply it was more cream than coffee.

Mia slid into the open seat, avoiding eye contact with Hart.

The alphas had all dressed, which she admitted was a good thing. Even if they looked amazing half-undressed, the last thing she needed was any more temptations or distractions.

Jeans, slacks, T-shirts, button-ups—hell, parkas would have been a wonderful solution right about then.

Mia picked up her coffee and took a sip, the delicious hot, sweet liquid warming her.

“About last night,” Hart started.

Mia sighed, her gaze down on the cup instead of at him. “Do we need to?”

“I think so.”

“But why?” Mia rubbed her thumb against the edge of the mug, trying her hardest to ignore Hart. “There’s nothing to discuss, nothing to talk about. I’m fine. Everything is fine.”

“Look at me,” Hart said.

Fat chance.

A finger pressed at her chin, and she either had to give in and look up, or she had to try to fight it.

Mia gave in because at some point, fighting became more of a liability.

Except, when she met Hart’s gaze, the eyes she’d seen the night before in the dark, she was taken back to that sinking, out-of-control feeling she’d had then.

As soon as she looked at him, he pulled his hand away and sat back in his chair. “Better.”

“Just get this over with, please. I’m not a touchy-feely, let’s-all-talk-about-our-emotions sort of person.”

A soft chuckle from Dax said he’d enjoyed her joke, but Hart’s expression didn’t change.

“Anxiety isn’t anything to be ashamed of,” Hart said.

A gnawing discomfort swamped Mia, and when she looked at the food, the donuts she’d been so excited about moments before, she only felt mildly sick.

Great, looks like the conversation ruined my appetite.

Still, it didn’t appear she’d get out of the talk, so she put on her big-girl panties and settled in. “I know that.”

“So why didn’t you tell us?” Shepard asked this time, his normal sarcasm lost.

Mentally, Mia replaced anxiety with her designation as an omega. Sure, they thought they were talking about one thing, but she found herself answering a different question all together—why she hadn’t told them she was an omega.

“Because it’s not something I like to talk about.”

“Is it because of us?” Hart had that tone again, the one that implied he was choosing his words very carefully. When Mia didn’t answer, he must have read the confusion on her face, because he continued, “You use scents to mask any reaction you might have, which implies you’ve dealt with alphas in the past. You didn’t come to us after Harvey struck you. It all says perhaps you’ve had issues with others in the past, and perhaps the anxiety is a reaction to that, and to us.”

Mia opened her mouth to tell them they were wrong, but they weren’t, not entirely.

Sure, they were wrong about the cause of her reaction, but not about the results.

Which meant this was perhaps the only chance she’d have to try to make them understand.

Not everything—she couldn’t tell them everything—but they could maybe realize why she did some of what she did.

“Alphas make me nervous,” she admitted.

Dax surprised her the most, his smile slipping, a rare show of anything other than the jovial attitude he normally had. “Why?”

She set her cup down, not wanting to risk spilling the coffee. Wouldn’t that make her look foolish? “Alphas are ruled by instinct. They can’t always control what they do.”

She meant that so much more than she could say. Alphas had a drive to take and possess omegas. Hell, that was likely one reason they’d ended up sticking to her as they had, even without knowing it.

Hart answered, and for once, she loved that expressionless way he spoke. It was so much easier to have the conversation when it didn’t feel as though he were judging her. “I am going to guess you have experienced this personally?”

Mia thought back to the first—and only—time she’d ever told an alpha what she was. It was a crazy, young and stupid thing to do. She’d been on vacation at eighteen, her first time out on her own, and she’d met an alpha. She’d somehow convinced herself it was true love after only a few days.

They’d never slept together, because when she’d told him the truth, when she’d told him what she was, everything had changed. His face had gone hard, an intensity in his eyes that had frightened her to the core. It had been as if he’d realized something he had was worth far more than he’d known before. He’d kissed her, nipping at her hard enough to leave little marks, his hands aggressive, and she’d made an excuse to leave for a moment.

She’d taken that chance to run and never look back. It had been a lesson—and not nearly so painful a lesson as many other omegas got—that taught her that being an omega was not the fun and games people sometimes thought it was. It was then she’d believed her mother, that she’d understood the fears that had made her mom do the things she had, hide her as she had. Omegas were something to be owned, and Mia didn’t want anyone to look at her and see only her designation.

So Mia nodded. Maybe it wasn’t the history they thought, but it was still more than enough to teach her that she was safest with her secret.

A soft growl rumbled from one of them. Shepard, she expected. Dax was too lighthearted and Hart too unwilling to show emotion.

It shocked her when she realized the sound came from Dax, his lip curled up and his green eyes nearly flashing. Whatever he saw on her face made him shake his head and look down, as if he could wipe away what she’d spotted.

In six years, she had never seen him ruffled. Never angry, never frustrated, always a joke and a smile at the ready.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “So that’s why you always knew how to trick our noses, huh? That’s why you always seem at least a little on edge around us?”

“And it explains the anxiety medication,” Hart added. “Though, Mia, I don’t like the idea that you have to take medicine to be around us. That can’t be good for you.”

Why did his guilt bother her? Why was it that, when all of this was at least a little his fault, Mia wanted to reassure him?

Even as she told herself she didn’t need to do that, she found herself responding. “Not exactly. I would take that whether or not I knew any of you.” True.

“But can you deny that you need more because of us?”

She wrapped her arms around herself, not cold but still feeling as if a chill had settled deep inside her. “I guess not.”

“And this is why even though you’re clearly interested, you keep resisting us, huh?” Shepard finally spoke up.

Mia bit her tongue, wanting to ignore the question. Answering it would mean admitting she did want them, but what was the point of pretending anymore? “Whether or not I might be interested doesn’t change that it isn’t a good idea. We aren’t a good idea. I don’t think I want to or even could handle one alpha again let alone three, and you guys aren’t interested in settling down, least of all with a beta, so why are we still having this conversation?”

“Why are you so caught up on the beta thing?” Hart tilted his head, that spark in his eyes saying he’d latched on to something he found interesting, like some new piece of a puzzle he wanted to figure out. “We’ve never put you down for being a beta, yet you wear it like some badge of honor. In fact, the way you brought it up right away, from the start, had me suspecting you were an omega when you interviewed.”

Her chill spread, but Mia kept her face blank. “Oh really?”

He nodded. “At first. Then I did a background check on you and found the medical records for you, along with your results as a beta. I thought, perhaps your behavior and our reaction had implied you weren’t.”

Mia kept herself from reacting. Her mother’s work to keep her designation a secret had saved her more than once, and having those fake test results in her file had kept her safe from all but the most prying of eyes. Then the rest hit her. “Your reaction?”

Hart turned his head to stare out at the lake, a rare avoidance for him.

Shepard picked up the conversation. “Come on, Mia, you have to know we were interested. It’s rare for any of us to feel that sort of want so quickly. I had my money on omega, too. Leave it to you to manage to be the most confusing female we’ve ever met.”

A flutter in her stomach was so the wrong reaction to that statement. Them feeling she was different, special, anything of that sort was a very bad thing for her. She needed to fly under the radar, to be at least unappetizing to them if not wholly invisible.

She swallowed hard. “You’re just saying that because you like the idea of some willing floozy as your secretary. Men are lazy at their core.”

Hart shook his head, though he’d still not brought his gaze back from the lake. “This would be far easier if you were just some woman, Mia. We’ve gone through enough of them. I know you like to pretend that you’re uninterested and we’re just man-whores, but I think we’ve shown we’re all playing a part, haven’t we?”

Mia wanted to argue, but what was there to argue about?

She told herself, yet again, that their words were pretty ones they’d honed on countless women, the ones she’d had to turn away when they came looking for a second night. These alphas didn’t do long term, and the only reason they might want that with her was because they couldn’t have it. It was no different from cats who had a bowl full of food yet obsessed over a morsel in someone’s hand. The alphas wanted something they thought they couldn’t get, and the chase was all that mattered.

Even if Mia gave in, even if she told them everything right then and slept with them all, they’d send her on her way the next morning once they’d sated their curiosity. They would leave her ruined and with nothing.

Mia reached forward and took her coffee again. “So what now?”

She played off her nerves by sipping the cooler drink, pretended she didn’t much care one way or the other.

“Nothing,” Shepard answered. “Nothing changes. It’s up to you—always has been. You know what we want, but none of us will push you. So things will go back to how they were before when we get back. No harm, no foul.”

“Back to how they were?” Mia chewed at her bottom lip as she considered it—considered her lonely place, the quiet nights, the silence of her house. Suddenly none of that sounded nearly as good as it had before she’d had a taste of something different.

A look at the three of them said the same—none of them liked the idea either.

But it was all that was possible, so she nodded. “Right. Back to how they were,” and hoped they didn’t read the lie she knew was on her face.

* * * *

Shepard shoved Dax, but Dax wasn’t one to be easily outdone. He came back faster, catching Shepard around the waist and taking them both to the pine-needle-covered ground.

A crackling firepit lit up the quiet area, and the grunts of the two alphas filled the space. They’d had the little celebration after a call earlier had let them know the police had picked up Mack. With all the charges against him, Mia doubted he’d see freedom in a long while, which meant they could go home. It seemed silly to leave and drive into the night, so they’d all agreed to return the next day.

And yet, even as Mia enjoyed the fire and the fun, she couldn’t shake a disappointment at the idea of leaving so soon.

“Why do men do this?” Mia sat beside Hart, her legs folded in the camping chair, watching Dax and Sheard’s little display.

It had all started with an arm-wrestling challenge, and when that had ended in a draw, they’d shoved playfully which had given way to more roughness.

She winced when they hit the ground.

Hart shook his head. “They’re always like this. They have been since they met, always trying to outdo one another.”

Mia could see it, the way they seemed forever willing to compete. “But not you?”

“I’m not the competing type,” he said. “I figure if I’m good enough, it should show without all that.”

Mia lifted an eyebrow and turned toward him. “You were clearly an only child.”

“Is it that easy to tell?”

She shrugged. “Only children tend to be selfish.”

He grunted softly, as if insulted.

“I mean that you do what you want and don’t worry about what others think. Dax is clearly the youngest, and, I’d bet, spoiled rotten. Shepard is a middle child, used to taking care of himself.”

“Good observations. And yourself?”

“You can’t tell? I’m the perfectionist, always looking for credit and willing to tell everyone else what to do.” She offered a grin. “I am a poster oldest child.” Saying it reminded her of her little brother, who she hadn’t seen in some time since he’d settled down across the country.

Flying was tricky, and she’d always feared she’d end up going into heat a mile above ground where she couldn’t get any space.

“That’s an unhappy look,” Hart mused. “I know you never take vacations. I’m going to guess you miss family?”

“My brother moved to Florida with his wife and children. Since I didn’t have any kids, my mom followed him to be close to her grandchildren.”

“That explains the holidays alone.”

Mia pursed her lips. “How did you know about that? And it’s not so bad.” She knew her words had come out defensive but couldn’t help that. Trying to defend the TV dinner she’d made for herself last Thanksgiving wasn’t all that useful—and it wasn’t like the thing had been good—but it was better than risking pity.

“You’ll be spending Easter with us.”

“Do you hide eggs?”

She’d meant the jab to mock him, but Hart answered as if it were an entirely fair question. “We don’t. Easter is spent with Dax’s family, but yes, they do hide eggs. While it’s usually only the children that search, I’m sure we could make an exception for you.”

The way he spoke, that almost flat quality of his voice, made his joke all the more funny. Whereas Shepard’s sarcasm was loud, something that was easy to see through, the few times Hart decided to joke always took her by surprise.

A weight pressed against her shins, drawing her attention down. Dax had all but collapsed in front of her chair and leaned backward, his head nearly in her lap. “I won.” His smile was bright enough that, had she been standing, she might have swooned.

“He is a filthy liar,” Shepard said as he sat in the chair on the other side of her. His arm against hers, not a bit of space between their seats.

“You’re both children.” Mia cheeks hurt from smiling, the evening reminding her of when she’d been younger and hung out with her family. There was such a nice ease to get-togethers like that, when the people knew each other well enough that no one had to struggle for topics of conversation.

A shared history went a long way toward creating a comfortable atmosphere, and Mia couldn’t deny she had that with the alphas. They’d spent up to sixty hours a week together for six years, and that had bred a familiarity that she’d fought.

However, when sitting there, after they’d dealt with the friction between them—at least somewhat—Mia could admit they were closer than she’d wanted to accept.

The heat of Shepard’s arm against hers, the casual way Dax leaned against her, the way Hart sat close enough that he could speak softly and she could still hear all added to the intimacy of the moment, to the way the flames from the firepit lit up the darkness, bathing them in orange.

“It’s strange,” Hart said.

“What is?” Mia twisted to look at him.

“We haven’t been out here all that long but already…”

He didn’t need to say it. Mia understood perfectly, and if the soft sigh from Dax and Shepard’s pursed lips meant anything, they got it, too.

They’d go back to their real lives tomorrow, when Mia would have to set up those walls of hers, when she’d have to recreate the boundaries she’d made when she’d first met them.

There wasn’t another choice, not for any of them. Still, the way they’d found such ease, the way life had seemed to fall into place made her ache. She thought about what life she had to return to and sighed.

Until then, why not enjoy the short time where she didn’t feel quite so isolated?

She let her head rest against Hart’s shoulder, ignoring his startled look.

In for a penny, in for a pound.