Sierra
The knock on my door comes twenty minutes after Malik’s dinner inquiry, and I’m seriously considering just pretending I’ve fallen asleep.
Except I’m absolutely terrible at pretending to be asleep. I always get the giggles. It’s a problem.
“Sierra?” Cole’s voice. “I brought you something.”
I eye the door suspiciously from my position in my half-built nest. “You brought me something?”
“It’s tea.”
I pause. “What?”
“Tea. And some snacks. I’m leaving it at the door. You don’t have to open it if you don’t want to.”
This is... unexpected.
I stay where I am, pulling one of my carefully arranged blankets around my shoulders. “Why?”
“Because...” he pauses, and I hear him shift his weight. “Okay, I’m just going to be direct, because I feel like that’s probably better than dancing around it.”
My stomach drops. “Okay,” I say slowly.
“We know you’re going into heat.”
My entire body goes rigid. “I—what—how?—”
“Jalen noticed. Then we all kind of put it together. You being here alone, the stress baking, the...” he makes a vague sound, “general vibe.”
“General vibe,” I repeat, staring at the door like I can will myself to disappear through sheer force of embarrassment.
“You know what I mean.” I hear him lean against the door. “Look, I’m not trying to make this weird. I just wanted to say that we’ll stay out of your way. We’re not going to bother you, we’re not going to make comments, we’re not going to be... creepy about it.”
I pull the blanket tighter, processing this. Of all the ways I expected this conversation to go, this wasn’t it.
“Oh,” I say. “That’s... actually really considerate.”
“We’re not complete assholes.”
“Professionally, you absolutely are.”
“Okay, fair,” he admits, and I can hear the smile in his voice. “But personally? We can be decent human beings when the situation calls for it.”
“The situation being that you’re trapped in a house with me during a storm while I go into heat.”
“Yeah, that’s a pretty specific situation.”
I lean my head back against the pillows, suddenly exhausted. This whole day has been too much. The drive, the storm, the booking error, the realization that I’m going to be vulnerable in front of the last people I want to see me like that.
“This is a disaster,” I say.
“It’s definitely not ideal,” Cole agrees. “But we’ll make it work. You stay in there; we stay in the living room. We’ll coordinate bathroom and kitchen times so we’re not running into each other. It’ll be like we’re not even here.”
“Except you will be here. And I’ll know you’re here. And my stupid omega is going to know there are four alphas in veryclose proximity, and it’s going to make everything so much worse.”
The words come out before I can stop them, and I immediately want to take them back. That’s too much information. Too honest.
A whimper rises in my throat. I bury it in the pillow, hoping he didn’t hear.
