"Hey, still going at it in there?" Aiden appeared at the end of the hallway with a tray.
"They just finished round fifty million," I said morosely.
"Good." He walked to the door and tapped it.
A moment later, a weary looking Geo opened the door. There was a moment where I locked eyes with Liora, who was sitting on the bed, a blanket drawn around her. She looked . . . satisfied. Well-loved. Her dark hair was messy, her lips pink from kissing and her skin flushed, but not with heat, with lovemaking.
It hurt my heart. I wanted to go to her, to love her, to knot her, but even tired, she was shooting daggers at me.
Geo took the tray from Aiden and went back into the room. He kicked the door shut, cutting off my view of my omega. Even if she wasn't mine anymore, my heart couldn't give her up.
"Why were we so dumb?" I groaned, thumping my head against the wall.
"We put success and money over a woman who loved us without condition." Aiden slid down to sit beside me, looking broken.
"Is this our life now? Sitting outside a room while another alpha takes care of her?"
"No. He'll take her away and we'll never see her again."
That sent a stab of pain through my heart. It had hurt when we realized what we'd done. After we signed away our rights, and came home. The pain hadn't been immediate, but within a week, we'd realized that Liora had left a huge hole in our lives. It wasn't about the sex or having to take care of an omega, it was about missing an integral part of ourselves.
I needed to talk to her, but how? She was deep in her heat and those usually lasted five or six days for her. We were only 48 hours into this one. I thudded my head against the wall again.
"Go take a shower, you stink," Finn said, coming in. He handed us each an energy drink and glared at me. "Seriously. Go."
He was right. Even I could smell how ripe I was. Getting to my feet, I opened the drink and chugged it as I headed upstairs. It took me five minutes to scrub myself clean, another twenty to fist myself to completion three times, thinking about Liora moaning and begging for a knot. She'd always done that and now it drove me insane, making me hard again and again.
Finally somewhat sated and definitely clean, I headed downstairs. Finn was in the kitchen and he called me over. "We're going to stop moping around, make a plan, and get some good food into us."
Aiden was already sitting at the table, so I helped Finn carry in a lasagna and garlic bread, then took my place at the head of the table. It was too empty without our girl, just like it had been the past two years. A lump formed in my stomach, but I forced myself to eat anyway.
"After we eat, we're all going to go to sleep and start new in the morning," Finn said.
"I'm not leaving her alone in there," I said blearily. I hadn't slept in days.
"You are. No arguments."
"Who died and made you boss?" Aiden grumped at Finn.
Finn looked at us. "We fucked up and we need to make it up to her. We can't actually make up two fucking years of abuse though, so we go into this knowing that she will never forgive us, but that we need to make amends."
"How?" Aiden bit savagely into his garlic bread. "What will make a difference to her now? She's been broken and hurt by other alphas, by us."
"First, we stop judging Geo. He's obviously what she wants right now and that means no dirty looks, no comments. Just make his life really, really easy."
I nodded. I'd heard all the work he was putting in. Even the soft pillow talk that I couldn't actually understand, filtered through. He was definitely good at this, job or not.
"I made a list of things we can do," Finn said. He pulled a crumpled sheet of paper out of his pocket. "We're going to pick some of the ideas and make them happen."
He smoothed the paper out on the table and started reading off all the things he'd written there.
I had to admit, the man had some good ideas. He'd obviously spent a lot of time thinking about this and I knew we had to at least try this. If we didn't, we'd end up losing Liora completely. And if we did, maybe, just maybe, she'd let us stay in her life, even as friends.
"Let's do this," I said, leaning forward. And we started to plan.
Chapter 24
Waking Up
