"The compounds are working." Ethan appeared on my other side, tablet in hand, ever the strategist. His eyes flicked between the screen and his data with clinical precision, but I knew better than to be fooled by his detachment. Underneath that cold exterior, Ethan wanted her just as badly as the rest of us. He just expressed it differently—in spreadsheets and surveillance reports and the methodical dismantling of every barrier between us and our Omega. "Her system has almost completely rejected the suppressants. Based on her symptoms, I estimate she'll go into full heat within seventy-two hours of sustained exposure to our pheromones."
"Seventy-two hours." Leo dropped onto the couch behind us, sprawling across the leather like he didn't have a care in the world. But his gray eyes were fixed on the screen, on Ava, and there was nothing casual about the hunger in his gaze. "That's a long time to wait when she's right there."
"We've waited three years," I said. "We can wait three more days."
"Can we though?" Caleb's hands clenched into fists. "Look at her, Mason.Lookat her. She's suffering. She needs us."
I was looking. I was always looking. On the screen, Ava had kicked off her blankets, her sleep shirt riding up to expose a strip of pale stomach. Even through the camera, I could see the sheen of sweat on her skin, the way her thighs pressed together, searching for friction that wouldn't come.
She was producing slick. I couldn't smell it through the screen, but I knew. I'd memorized every sign, every symptom, every subtle shift in her body over three years of obsessive observation.
Burnt sugar. Ripe peaches. The electric crackle of ozone before a storm. That was what she smelled like. That was what had brought me to my knees the day she presented, a fifteen-year-old girl standing in the hallway of our father's house with no idea that her entire life had just changed.
That was what I'd been dreaming about every single night since she ran.
"She's not suffering," I said, though the words tasted like ash in my mouth. "Not yet. This is just pre-heat. Uncomfortable, but manageable."
"For now," Ethan agreed. "But once she's at the cabin, surrounded by our scents, with no suppressants and no escape..." He adjusted his glasses, a rare smile playing at the corners of his lips. "Then she'll suffer. Beautifully."
"You're a sick fuck, you know that?" Leo said, but he was grinning.
"We're all sick fucks," I replied mildly. "That's rather the point." On the screen, Ava whimpered again, her hand sliding down her stomach toward the waistband of her sleep shorts. My breath caught. This was new. Usually she fought it, denied herself, forced her hands to stay above the covers even when her body was screaming for release.
But tonight?—
Tonight she was too far gone to fight.
I watched as her fingers slipped beneath the fabric, as her back arched off the mattress, as her mouth fell open in a silent moan. The cameras didn't have audio—a security measure, in case anyone ever found them—but I didn't need sound to know what she was doing. What she was feeling.
I knew her body better than she did.
Caleb made a sound like a wounded animal, low and desperate. "Mason?—"
"No." My voice was firm even as my cock throbbed painfully against my zipper. "We watch. That's all. For now."
"She's thinking about us." Leo's voice had dropped an octave, rough with want. "You know she is. Every time she touches herself, she thinks about us."
He was right. I knew he was right. I'd read her diary before she ran, every fevered entry about the stepbrothers she wasn't supposed to want, the Alphas she couldn't stop dreaming about, the shameful heat that pooled between her thighs every time one of us walked into a room.
She'd wanted us then. She wanted us now, even if she'd never admit it. Soon, she wouldn't have to pretend anymore. On the screen, Ava's movements grew more frantic, more desperate. Her free hand fisted in the sheets, in the cashmere throw I'd sent her, I noticed with vicious satisfaction—and her hips rolled against her own fingers in a rhythm I ached to replace with my own.
"Come on, Red," I murmured, leaning closer to the monitor. "Let go. Let yourself feel it."
She couldn't hear me. I knew she couldn't hear me. But somehow, impossibly, she obeyed. Her body went rigid, her mouth falling open in what I knew was a scream, and then she was coming, shaking, falling apart in her lonely little nest three thousand miles away from the men who should have been there to catch her.
The room was silent except for the harsh sound of four Alphas breathing.
Then Ava curled onto her side, pulled a pillow against her chest like she was holding onto someone who wasn't there, and started to cry.
Something cracked in my chest. A fissure in the careful patience I'd cultivated over three long years.
"Soon," I said, and I wasn't sure if I was talking to my brothers or myself. "So fucking soon." My mind turned to the past.
We'd found her within two weeks of her running.
I remembered that night like it was yesterday. Coming home from a business trip to find her room empty, her nest torn apart, her scent already fading from the sheets. The sound that had ripped from my throat—half growl, half scream, entirely animal.
Caleb had put his fist through a wall. Leo had laughed, that sharp, dangerous laugh that meant someone was going to bleed. Ethan had simply sat down at his computer and started typing. By dawn, we knew where she'd gone. By noon, we had her new address. By the end of the week, we'd installed cameras in every room of the shabby little apartment she'd rented under a fake name with money her mother had given her.
