I hadn’t been able to stop myself.
I’d caught her by the wrist, pulling her to me, her body colliding with mine. She’d gasped, her laughter turning into something softer, breathless, as I leaned down and kissed her for the first time.
The rain poured over us, cold and unrelenting, but all I could feel was her—her warmth, her hands clutching at my shirt, the way she melted into me like she was made to fit there. The kiss had been desperate, messy, full of everything I couldn’t say, and when I’d pulled back, she’d looked up at me with wide, wondering eyes, like I was her whole world.
When I look at Ashlyn, I know she’s thinking about it too. I can see it in the way her lips part slightly, the tension in her jaw softening just for a moment.
It shouldn’t get to me. But it does.
“West,” Xayden hisses, snapping me out of it.
I blink, shaking the memory loose as my fingers falter on the strings for half a beat. Xayden shoots me a look, nodding toward the runway as if to remind me where I am.
“Yeah,” I mutter, focusing back on the guitar, but my eyes can’t help but flicker back to Ashlyn. She’s typing something on her tablet now, her expression guarded again, but I know better.
The memory doesn’t let go, even as I force my fingers to stay steady on the strings. That kiss—the first time I’d kissed her—was the beginning of everything.
I kissed her before the others.
We were all sixteen, all circling around her like she was the axis holding us together. And maybe she was. Ashlyn had this way about her, something magnetic, something that made her impossible to ignore. We all felt it—me, Jake, Todd, Xayden. But none of us knew what to do about it. None of us even knew what scent matches actually were. They were some sort of childhood fantasy, not something that happened to real people.
We’d been best friends for years, the five of us inseparable. But by the time we hit sixteen, something shifted. She wasn’t justAshlyn,our partner-in-crime, the one who always had our backs. She was Ashlyn—an omega and the girl who made my pulse race, the girl who lingered in my thoughts long after we said goodnight.
It was like that for all of us. I knew it; we all knew it. But none of us wanted to be the one to change things, to risk what we had.
Until that night in the rain.
That kiss wasn’t planned. Hell, I didn’t even know I was going to do it until it was already happening. But when she spunto face me, her smile lighting up the storm around us, something inside me snapped.
I couldn’t not kiss her.
And once I did, there was no going back.
After that, everything changed. At first, it was just us—secret glances, stolen moments, kisses that felt too big to keep hidden but too precious to share. But the others weren’t blind. They noticed, and it wasn’t long before they started finding their own moments with her.
Jake was the next one. He was quieter about it, more hesitant, but she let him in. Todd, bold and relentless, wasn’t far behind. And Xayden? He made her laugh in ways none of us could, slipping into her orbit like he’d always belonged there.
It wasn’t just about me anymore. It was aboutus. Our pack.
We never talked about it outright, not in the beginning. It just…worked. Somehow, she managed to hold all of us, and none of us felt like we were competing. It wasn’t about winning or losing—it was about being part of something bigger than ourselves.
But that kiss—that first moment in the rain—that was mine.
I glance at her again, still typing on her tablet, her expression carefully blank. But I know what’s behind it. I know she’s thinking about that night too.
Because I felt it. I still feel it.
The music shifts, the runway changing pace as the next model steps out. Xayden glances at me, his smirk fading into something more serious. “You okay?” he asks under his breath, his tone low enough not to carry.
“Yeah,” I lie, my fingers pressing harder into the strings. “I’m fine.”
But I’m not fine. Not when she’s sitting there, looking like the past is just as alive for her as it is for me. Not when I canstill feel the rain on my skin, the taste of her on my lips, the way everything between us started that night.
Not when I know we’re all still orbiting her, just like we were back then.
And not when I’m still wondering if I’ll ever get to call her mine again.
CHAPTER 32
