"It sucked to be cut off financially," I continue. "To have to figure out everything myself at nineteen with no savings and nopack and no safety net. But it gave me an independence that I would not trade for anything. It forced me to be grateful for what little I had. Forced me to stop being cocky just because I was good at a few things. It humbled me."
I meet his gaze.
"I hated my circumstances for a long time. Some days I still do. But I am grateful for what they made me. I just..."
I trail off, the familiar weight settling back onto my shoulders.
"I just wish I did not have to be pressured to find a pack so soon. The university's timeline feels like a countdown rather than an opportunity. Like I have to solve my entire life before Valentine's Day or I lose everything I have worked so hard to build."
The room is quiet for a moment.
Morning light streams through the window, casting golden stripes across the navy bedding. Etienne's scent wraps around me, storm clouds and fresh linen and old books, and I realize that at some point during my confession, the distance between us on the bed has shrunk. He has shifted closer without me noticing, or maybe I have leaned toward him, or maybe we have both been gravitating toward each other the way bodies do when they find someone worth being near.
"Well," Etienne says finally, his voice soft and careful and carrying a question he is clearly afraid to ask. "If we reach your birthday and you have not found one..."
He pauses.
His storm-blue eyes search my face, looking for permission to continue.
I hold his gaze, my heart suddenly pounding in my chest with an intensity that has nothing to do with his book or my rant or the tears that are still drying on my cheeks.
"Could we be your temporary one until you do?"
CHAPTER 21
Temporary
~MABELINE~
Morning light filters through the small window of my closet-sized room, casting pale golden stripes across the thin blanket I have burrowed beneath.
I have been awake for approximately twenty minutes, staring at the ceiling while my brain replays the same words on an endless loop.
Could we be your temporary one until you do?
Etienne's voice echoes through my memory with a softness that makes my chest ache. The way his storm-blue eyes searched my face while he asked. The vulnerability that flickered behind his carefully composed expression. The weight of the question, which was not really a question at all but an offering. A hand extended across the chasm between loneliness and belonging.
I did not answer him last night.
I could not. The words tangled in my throat, caught between the part of me that wanted to say yes immediately and the part that has learned through years of disappointment that wanting things is dangerous. That hope is a luxury packless Omegas cannot afford. That every time I have trusted someone to catch me, the ground has rushed up to meet my face instead.
A temporary pack.
Three Alphas who barely know me offering to fill a role that most Omegas spend years searching for. It sounds like a fairy tale. It sounds like a trap. It sounds like the kind of opportunity that comes with fine print I am too tired to read and consequences I am too scared to imagine.
But it also sounds like exactly what I need.
The conflict churns in my stomach, mixing with the residual anxiety of a day that dumped more chaos on my life than I was prepared to process. A scent match with a French Alpha I met seven minutes before kissing him. A race I won against the hockey captain. A knee injury that forced me to accept help from people I was not ready to depend on.
And Etienne's book.
Charlos and Molly, still suspended in their unfinished story, waiting for someone to write them an ending.
Sounds filter through the thin walls of my converted closet. The dorm is waking up around me, its inhabitants beginning their morning routines with the particular rhythm that develops when multiple people share a single living space.
Cal is humming in the kitchen.
I recognize the tune, a pop song from a few years ago that was everywhere during my first months in communal housing. His voice carries through the apartment with the unselfconscious warmth of someone who does not realize they are being heard, accompanied by the sounds of cabinet doors opening and closing, the clink of dishes, the familiar morning orchestra of breakfast preparation.
