Leo kept up a running commentary of terrible jokes and worse puns, making me laugh despite myself, his hand never leaving mine. Every time I laughed, his eyes lit up like I'd given him a gift.
Ethan kept track of everything — how much I ate, how much water I drank, when I started to tense up — but his touch was gentle when he checked my pulse, when he brushed hair from my face, when he pulled me against his side while he read.
By evening, I was overwhelmed in a different way. Not by fear or anger or the desperate need to escape. Overwhelmed by tenderness. By care. By four men who looked at me like I was the most precious thing in the world. We ended up in my nest as the sun set, the four of them arranging themselves around me like a protective wall. Mason at my front, Leo at my back, Caleb at my feet, Ethan at my head. Touching me constantly. Surrounding me completely.
"I still don't understand," I whispered into the dimness, my voice small. "Why me? Why go through all of this for me?"
Mason's hand found mine in the darkness, his fingers interlacing with mine. "Because you're ours," Mason said simply, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "We knew it the moment you presented. You were always meant to be ours, Avalon. We just had to wait for you to be ready."
"And when I wasn't ready, you took me anyway."
"Yes." No apology. No justification. Just truth.
"I should hate you for that."
"Do you?" Leo asked against my neck, his voice careful, vulnerable.
I thought about it. Really thought about it.
"I don't know," I admitted finally. "I don't know what I feel anymore. Everything's tangled up — anger and fear and something else I don't have a name for. When I'm fighting you, I feel like myself. When I'm not fighting..." I trailed off.
"When you're not fighting?" Mason prompted.
"I feel like I'm disappearing," I whispered. "Like I'm becoming someone else. Someone who purrs and submits and needs you. And that terrifies me."
Silence. Then Caleb's deep voice: "Maybe you're not disappearing. Maybe you're becoming who you were always meant to be."
"A kept Omega? A possession?"
"Pack," Caleb corrected gently, his hand tightening around my ankle. "Family. Ours."
I didn't have an answer for that.
We lay there in the darkness, the five of us tangled together in my nest, and I let myself feel them through the bond. Mason's steady certainty. Caleb's quiet devotion. Leo's chaotic affection. Ethan's quiet care.
They weren't trying to break me. They were trying to keep me. I still wasn't sure if there was a difference.
Sometime in the night, I started to purr.
I tried to stop it, clenched my jaw, held my breath, anything to silence the traitorous sound. But it kept coming, a low rumble in my chest that seemed to have a mind of its own.
Leo made a sound against my neck, something between a groan and a laugh. "There it is," Leo breathed, his arms tightening around me. "God, I love that sound."
Mason's purr joined mine, deep and resonant. Then Caleb's, so low I felt it more than heard it. Then Ethan's, precise and controlled like everything else about him.
Five purrs, harmonizing in the darkness. Pack. I should have been horrified. Should have fought it, resisted it, refused to let my body betray me so completely.
I was so tired. And for the first time in longer than I could remember, I felt... safe. That was the most terrifying thing of all. I fell asleep to the sound of our mingled purrs, surrounded by my Alphas, held and claimed and kept.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
AVA
Something was wrong with me.
Not the usual wrongness, not the anger or the fear or the constant thrum of awareness that came from being bonded to four Alphas I hadn't chosen. This was different. Physical. A crawling discomfort under my skin that I couldn't shake no matter what I did.
I couldn't settle. The couch was wrong. Too exposed, too open. The bed in the room they'd given me felt empty and cold without walls of softness around me. Even the corners I kept finding myself in, tucked behind the armchair, pressed into the space between the bookshelf and the wall, weren't right.
