“Should I be concerned?” I ask, keeping my voice low.
Aspen shakes her head. “Grayson’s harmless.” She pauses, reconsidering. “Well, not harmless, exactly. But he would never let any harm come to you. Trust me, I know a crush when I see one.”
“A crush?” I repeat incredulously. “He barely speaks to me.”
Outside of my heat, when he used his fist like a knot…
Nope, we’re not thinking about that right now.
“That’s just Grayson,” Aspen says with a knowing smile. “He’s not big on words. More of an actions guy.”
“You’re telling me.”
She shoots me a look of confusion. “Huh?”
“Uh…nevermind.”
I watch as Grayson shifts his weight from one foot to the other, his eyes scanning the street but inevitably returning to the coffee shop window where we sit. There’s something both unsettling and oddly comforting about his vigilance.
“Have they...” I begin, then stop, unsure how to phrase my question without sounding like I’m fishing for information. “I mean, do Kai, Grayson, and Noah date a lot? In town, I mean.”
Aspen’s jaw drops, her eyes widening in genuine shock. “Does that mean you don’t know?”
“Know what?” I ask, suddenly wary.
Aspen sets down her drink and leans forward, her expression turning serious. “About Jamie.”
“Jamie?” The name means nothing to me.
“She was the last omega to catch the interest of all three of them. This was about five years ago, I think. But she was patently uninterested in being with a pack.” Aspen hesitates, as if carefully choosing her next words. “She dated all of them individually for a little while, but like…at the same time. Like she was sampling ice cream flavors before buying a cone, or something,” she scoffs, her opinion on that abundantly clear. “Jamie ended up choosing Noah, and they were exclusive for a while.. Until…” she trails off, glancing around the cafe as if to ensure no one is listening.
A cold feeling settles in my stomach. Something tells me that Jamie didn’t take a job out-of-state or decide end things amicably. “Until what?”
“Jamie and Noah were on a hike—she was a real outdoorsy type too, apparently—and there was an accident. She fell down a ravine and broke like half the bones in her body. Noah managed to get down to her and carried her back down the mountain, but by the time he got back in cell phone range she had already bled out and died.” Aspen’s eyes are sad now. “Noah couldn’t save her, even with all his training. He blames himself… packed upand moved away from town right after. He only came back to Heat Mountain a few months ago.”
I open my mouth and then close it again, an emotion yawning inside me that I don’t want to name. “That’s awful.”
“It was,” Aspen agrees. “The whole town felt it. Noah was...different after. Harder. Colder. If he’s dated anyone since, it’s been so far on the down low that even my gossip network hasn’t picked up on it.”
“I had no idea,” I say quietly.
“Most people don’t talk about it anymore,” Aspen says. “It’s kind of an unwritten rule. But I thought you should know, especially if you’re living with him.”
Suddenly, so many things make sense—Noah’s reluctance to engage in any way not strictly professional and his emotional distance. He lost someone he cared about, someone he couldn’t save despite his medical expertise. And now he’s bonded against his will to another omega who loves climbing mountains in her free time.
No wonder he’s been avoiding me.
But that still doesn’t answer the real question that has been pinging through my head since my heat ended. “You said that Noah hasn’t dated. What about Grayson and Kai?”
“I’ve heard of a bit here and there, but nothing serious.”
I spit the words out before I lose my nerve. “So as far as you know, they aren’t packed anymore?”
She considers that for a second. “I mean, they live together and they’re clearly still as close as alphas can get without killing each other, but I don’t really know. They haven’t been with anyone as a pack since before Jamie. I have no idea if they’re still interested in that anymore. You’d have to ask them.”
If I had the nerve to justask,then I wouldn’t be here spilling my guts to someone I barely know.
Though Aspen doesn’t actually feel like someone I barely know. Everyone in this town just has an air of familiarity about them, as if they’re all eager to make me feel like I belong.
