It’s going to be a very long few days indeed.
CHAPTER SIX
Sierra
I’m dying.
Okay, I’m not actually dying. But I’m definitely melting from the inside out, which feels close enough.
It started around midnight. A shift from uncomfortable warmth to actual heat beginning. One minute I was dozing in my nest, and the next I was wide awake and feverish, every nerve ending humming with awareness.
Awareness of the storm outside.
Awareness of how wrong my nest suddenly feels.
Awareness of four alphas somewhere in this house.
My omega has been very helpful about that last part.
Alphas nearby, she whispers.Four of them. Strong. Right down the hall.
“Shut up,” I mutter into my pillow.
They smell good.
“I said shut up.”
Remember how concerned they looked? How Cole’s voice got all soft?
“I’m going to fight you.”
Can’t fight yourself. That’s just sad.
She has a point, which is infuriating.
I kick off the duvet for the seventeenth time, then immediately pull it back because now I’m shivering. How can I be burning up and freezing at the same time? Heat cycles are such bullshit.
The nest is wrong, too. Everything was perfect earlier. I’d spent an hour arranging and rearranging until it felt just right. But now the pillows are in completely the wrong positions, and that soft blue blanket needs to be on the left, not the right, and why is this sheet touching my leg like that?
I sit up and start rearranging. Move the pillows. No, that’s worse. Move them back. Add another blanket. Too hot. Remove the blanket. Too cold.
This is hell. This is actual hell.
Outside, the storm is absolutely destroying everything. Thunder shakes the house so hard I can feel it in my bones. Rain hammers against the windows in waves, and the wind sounds like a freight train trying to tear the roof off. Even with the storm shutters, I can hear debris hitting the side of the house.
The emergency lights cast weird shadows across my room too, making everything feel surreal and disconnected. Like I’m not quite in my body. Like I’m watching myself from somewhere else.
And I can hear them.
Even through the storm, even through closed doors and walls, I can hear the Knightley Pack moving around the house. Footsteps in the hallway. Low voices from the living room. I can’t make out words, but the rumble of alpha voices carries. Someone’s in the kitchen running water, opening and closing cabinets.
My omega perks up at every single sound, like a dog hearing its favorite person come home.
Alphas are awake, she notes helpfully.Alphas are close. Just down the hall. Could go see them.
“Absolutely not.”
They stood up for us earlier. All of them. At the same time.
