“It shouldn’t have taken this,” I gesture toward Zoe’s still form, “for us to realize what she means to us!”
My chest is heaving, my accent growing thicker with emotion as my control slips further. I rarely lose my temper. I’m the peacemaker. The one who smooths things over. The one who makes sure everyone is fed and comfortable while my alpha brothers handle the important decisions.
But not this time. Not with our bond with Zoe hanging in the balance.
“You’re right.”
The quiet admission comes from Dane. He stands by the door, his pale eyes fixed on Zoe. “We’ve been cowards.”
Tristan makes a noise of protest, but Dane silences him with a look.
“We have,” he continues, his voice flat. “We’ve been hiding behind excuses. Too afraid to admit what was really happening.”
“And what’s that?” Rett demands, his voice a low growl.
Dane turns to him, his eyes cold and clear. “That we’re in love with her. All of us. And we’re fucking terrified of it.”
The words land like a bomb in the center of the room. No one speaks. No one breathes.
Love.
It’s a word we don’t use in the Sterling pack.
“Shit,” Tristan says finally, dropping into a chair and burying his face in his hands. “He’s right.” He looks up, his dark eyes bright with a realization that seems to both thrill and terrify him. “I don’t give a shit about the static. I wanther.”
The admission seems to break something open between us, adam that’s been holding back a flood of truth we’ve all been too afraid to face.
“Her laugh,” Dane says quietly, the words clearly difficult for him. “The way she challenges everything. The way she isn’t afraid of us.”
“The way she looks at art,” Tristan adds, a soft, genuine smile touching his lips. “Like she’s seeing something no one else can see.”
“Her kindness,” I say, my voice thick with emotion. “The way she cares about people. The way she looks out for everyone but herself.”
We all turn to Rett, who’s standing rigidly, his back to us, his shoulders a tense line under his rumpled shirt. For a long moment, he says nothing. Then, so quietly I almost miss it:
“Everything. I love everything about her.”
He turns, and the look on his face nearly breaks me. Our pack alpha, always so controlled, so certain, looks utterly wrecked. Raw.
“And I let her walk away,” he says, his voice a ragged whisper. “I let her think she was nothing to me but a cure for the noise in my head.”
“We all did,” I remind him, my earlier anger softening in the face of his obvious pain.
“So what do we do now?” Tristan asks, looking from one of us to the other. “How do we fix this?”
A sense of purpose begins to fill the room, replacing the despair of moments before. We are alphas. We are a pack. And our beta—ourmate—is in danger.
“We show her,” Dane says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “We prove to her that she’s not a temporary solution. That she’s everything.”
“How?” Rett asks, and the fact that he’s deferring to Dane, asking for guidance, shows just how desperate the situation is.
“We do it her way.” Dane’s eyes never leave Zoe. “With art and books and all the things she loves.”
Rett’s expression shifts, the despair replaced by a fierce, focused determination that I recognize. It’s the look he gets when he’s about to close a deal, to win a battle, to claim victory against impossible odds.
“We bring her home,” he says, his voice regaining its strength. “We heal the bond. And this time, we make sure she knows exactly why we want her to stay.”
“And if she still says no?” Tristan asks, voicing the fear we all share.
