“Yes.”
“Even if I’m a pain in the ass.”
“Especially then,” Alex says.
Hudson lets out a broken laugh that turns into a sob. He presses the heel of his hand to his eyes. “Stupid hormones.”
I lean in and press my forehead to his. “Hormones or not, I mean every word.”
His scent swells, warm and sweet and threaded with the faint sharp notes that belong to the pack. The room feels full, charged with something that feels like hope. Or maybe it’s magic.
I don’t know. All I know is everything feels as though I’ve entered another realm, like I’ve been walking through the best kind of dream ever since Hudson handed us that sonogram with three little blobs indicated by three letters.
“I’ll think about it,” he whispers against my mouth when I brush a light kiss over his lips. “I want to say yes right now. I just need… a little time to believe it’s real.”
“You can have all the time you need,” I say.
Alex curls around his other side, arm thrown across both our waists, as if he can keep us all in place through sheer stubbornness. “Take your time, omega. We’re not going anywhere.”
Hudson sinks between us with a long, shaky exhale. His head tips onto my shoulder, his hand splayed over his small bump. Under his palm, three lives grow. Between us, something new settles into shape, not quite named yet, but solid.
For the first time, the future doesn’t feel like a negotiation or a compromise. It feels like a path we’re already standing on, all four of us, facing the same direction.
I tighten my arm around him and close my eyes, letting his scent pull me under.
Whatever comes next, I know one thing with absolute certainty.
I amnotletting him go.
CHAPTER 45
Mason
Iknow I am an idiot long before the universe decides to prove it.
It happens in tiny cuts, like slices to my heart.
Hudson laughing softly in the kitchen while Alex insists on slicing his apple, even though Hudson has two perfectly working hands. Desmond leaning over the back of the couch, pressing a kiss into Hudson’s hair, murmuring something that makes our omega’s cheeks flush.
The way Hudson’s scent keeps getting stronger, richer, sweeter, threaded through every damn room of the house, even though he’s spending more and more of his day in bed or in the nest because the fatigue hits harder now.
And then there’s the way my chest keeps tightening any time I walk into a room and he’s not there.
That actually isn’t new. It started the day we came home to find he’d returned to his own apartment.
But even with him here, I find myself constantly seeking him out when I can’t see him with my own two eyes.
I tell myself I’m managing it. I go to work. I stay late. I shoulder the heaviest cases so Des and Alex can go home earlier. I rationalize that I’m doing what a pack lead is supposed to do, what a provider is supposed to do.
There’s a folder on my desk with the contact information for the clinic that dissolves bonds. I haven’t called.
I tell myself that’s restraint.
It’s cowardice.
I realize that on a Tuesday afternoon, in the middle of a deposition, when my phone starts to vibrate across the polished conference table.
The vibration doesn’t stop. It repeats, again and again, a sharp, rude buzz against the polished cherrywood surface.
