I reach for my wallet, but Zoe shakes her head. “Oh no. This isn’t your treat, CEO. This is a shared expense.”
I stare at her, genuinely confused. “You want to... split the bill? Five ways?”
“No,” she says patiently, as if explaining a complex concept to a child. “I want to pay for my stuff, and you guys can pay for yours.”
I look at the conveyor belt, now covered in a jumble of groceries. “And how exactly do we determine which items belong to whom?”
She pauses, clearly not having thought this through. “Well... the ice cream is mine. And the bagels.”
“The bagels you specifically told me I needed in my life or I’d remain emotionally stunted?” I counter, raising an eyebrow.
“And the cereal we spent twenty minutes debating?” Tristan adds. “I feel like that was a group decision.”
Zoe’s brow furrows as she looks at the growing pile of groceries being scanned. “Okay, so maybe this is more complicated than I thought.”
“How about I get this one,” I suggest, already handing my card to the cashier, “and you can get the next one?”
She opens her mouth to argue, then closes it again, a hint of pink rising in her cheeks. “Fine. But I’m paying next time. And it’s going to be something ridiculously expensive to make up for this.”
“Deal,” I agree, suppressing a smile at her determined expression. I’m not letting her pay for shit. Ever.
The cashier runs my card, her eyes widening slightly at the total. “Would you like help out to your car?”
“We’ve got it,” Dane says, already gathering bags.
Outside, the bright sun is warm on our backs as we load the groceries into the SUV. The air smells of fresh bread from the bakery next door and exhaust from the traffic. I notice Zoe checking her phone, her brow furrowing slightly.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
“Just a missed call from Helen,” she says, tucking the phone back into her pocket. “I’ll call her back when we get home.”
Home. She said it so casually. Our home. Even if it’s temporary, even if it’s under less than ideal circumstances, she’s starting to think of the penthouse as home?
Another small victory.
I look up from the trunk at my pack. Atourpack.
Diego is laughing, trying to wrestle a bag of chips away from Tristan, who is holding it over his head like a trophy. Dane is just watching them, a rare, almost imperceptible smile touching the corners of his mouth. And Zoe... Zoe is standing in the middle of it all, shaking her head at their antics, a real, unguarded smile on her face.
For a second, a perfect, crystalline moment, everything is quiet. And I don’t mean the absence of the static. I mean the quiet of contentment. Of belonging.
And then I hear it. Two women, a beta and an omega, are walking by, one pushing a stroller. Their voices are hushed, but I hear every venomous word.
“...that’sthem. The Sterling pack.”
“Oh my god, you’re right. And is that...her? The beta from PackTrackr?”
“I think so. She looks so...plain. I don’t get it. Whyher?”
“It has to be a PR stunt. A fake claiming to make them seem more... accessible or something.”
I see Zoe freeze, a bag of bagels clutched in her hand. Her shoulders go rigid. She holds her head high, pretending she hasn’t heard, but I see the way her throat moves as she swallows hard.
The casual joy of our shopping trip suddenly evaporates.
“Right,” she says, her voice a brittle whisper meant only for herself. “A nice dose of reality.”
The sound of her hurt, the sight of that pain—it’s like a lit match to gasoline. My alpha roars to life. Before I’ve even made a conscious decision, I’m moving. Every ounce of my carefully constructed control incinerates.
