Theycouldn’tdo this.
“I…” Karma looked lost. “I don’t know if I can…?”
Could he?
I turned. Sin had stopped scribbling, tense as he watched—but he couldn’t stop this.
I hurried to Vandle, tugging at his shirt. “You’re pack lead. You can… you can undo it?”
His hand cupped my cheek, but his eyes flicked from me to Phantom.
“Alpha!” My voice wobbled.
“It’s only three days, Princess. I think Phantom’s right.”
No…
Everything waswrong.
But Vandle was a seer, so he couldn’t be wrong.
A low whine sounded in my chest as I tried to make sense of this.
I looked back to Phantom, whose rich, freckled skin was paler than usual, but his jaw was set.
Devil!
If they were going to ban me, what was next?
I knew they’d gone through my nest yesterday—they hadn’t put the keys back right.
What if they took them?
I couldn’t keep them like this. They needed to be safer.
I stumbled away from Vandle and made a beeline for all the nesting places.
PHANTOM
I wasn’t quite sure what I was watching. All I knew was that my omega was a storm of hormones in the bond.
She was digging keys out of the most unexpected crevices—most of which I hadn’t known existed in the room. I definitely hadn’t found them all when I’d done my search earlier.
After the bundle was barely contained by her fist, and she’d pulled the last one free from a crack in the wall beside her bunk, she burrowed under the covers of the nest.
Ah.
I glanced at Vandle, who was watching with a concerned look on his face. Karma looked curious, and Sin looked sympathetic, though I’d never seen him nest a day in his life.
I sat down on the bed. The mattress creaked, and an angry little growl rose from the bundle at my side. I tried to pull the blanket up, but she ripped it back down.
She didn’t fight me the next time I tugged it up, but she did shoot me a distrustful glare. She was currently sliding all the keys onto the big ring she’d refused to let me give back to the librarians.
She ignored me as she worked, though she got more frantic the longer I was staring.
This was a hormonal crash-out like I’d never seen.
Finally, when she was done, Crescent looked up at me with eyes shining and clearly on the verge of tears. “I needmore.” Her voice broke.
