I think I'm going to destroy her. I'm confident. I'm cocky. I'm absolutely certain I'm about to have an easy win.
Forty minutes later, I'm staring at the board in disbelief as Sharon moves her knight into a position I didn't see coming. I've been maneuvered into checkmate, and I didn't even realize it was happening until it was too late.
"What?" I say. "That's not possible."
"You're in checkmate," Sharon says sweetly, reaching over and tapping my king. "See? Your king has no legal moves that would get it out of check. I've trapped you. You lose. I win. Better luck next time."
"One game proves nothing," Cassian says, but he's trying very hard not to laugh at my expression. "You could have just gotten lucky. Jett probably wasn't paying attention."
"I was," I protest.
"Okay, let's play," Sharon says, already resetting the board with practiced ease.
Cassian is white this time. He's cocky about it too, talking about how chess is all strategy and he's very strategic because he's a firefighter and firefighters have to be strategic in order to save lives and not die in fires.
Thirty-five minutes later, Sharon checkmates him too.
"Best of three," Pine says, settling down for his game with intensity. "I'm going to prove that at least one of us can actually play."
Sharon destroys him in twenty-seven minutes.
"How are you doing this?" I demand as Sharon resets the board for the third time. "Who taught you to play chess like some kind of grandmaster?"
"My dad," she says quietly. "Before he left, and everything got complicated."
"You're basically a genius," Cassian says, sounding both impressed and slightly traumatized. "Sharon, you've destroyed all three of us."
"This isn't competition anymore," I correct.
We play another three games. Sharon wins all of them without any effort. By the fourth game, I'm not even trying to win anymore because it's become apparent that Sharon is operating on a completely different level than we are.
"Okay, I have a question," Pine says during the fifth game. "Are you letting us win sometimes, or are you always this good?"
"I'm always this good," Sharon says, moving her bishop with precision that suggests she's calculated at least ten moves in advance. "But I could let you win if you want…”
“Come on, we’re not that sensitive. We just need to try harder!” Cassian says.
By the time we're done playing chess, it's late. The clock on the wall reads eleven thirty, and Sharon keeps yawning. Her eyes are getting droopy. She's leaning against me like I'm a comfortable piece of furniture that happens to smell like cedar and gunpowder.
"You should probably stay over," I say. "It's late. You're tired. We have beds."
"If you want," Cassian says carefully, leaning forward. "We don't want to push you into anything you're not ready for. But wehave beds. We have space. We have blankets. We can keep you safe."
Sharon considers this for a long moment. I can see her working through it in her head, weighing the options and the implications.
"Okay," she says finally. "But normal staying over. No weird alpha stuff. Just sleep."
"Just sleep," I agree, even though my alpha brain is definitely having thoughts about her in my bed and her scent mixed with mine.
I show her to my room at the end of the hallway. Pine's room is down the opposite direction. Cassian's is on the other side of the house. My room is not fancy, but it's clean and organized in the way that comes from having a mother who drilled that into you.
"This is nice," Sharon says, looking around at my room. The walls are covered in posters of bands I like and some abstract art I picked up over the years at various venues and festivals. There's a bookshelf full of books that I actually read, not just for show. There's a guitar in the corner that I play when I'm thinking. The bed is big and comfortable and smells like me.
"You can wear something to sleep in," I say, pulling out a t-shirt from my drawer. It's soft and worn from years of use, and it will probably fall halfway down her body. I want her swimming in my clothes. I want her to smell like me.
She changes in the bathroom. When she comes back out, she's wearing my shirt and nothing else visible, and I'm trying very hard not to think about the fact that she's basically naked under my shirt except for underwear. Trying very hard not to think about how that would feel. How she would feel against me without any barriers between us.
Cassian and Pine arrive as she's getting into bed. This is apparently the plan we've collectively agreed on. The three of ussleeping in my room. Which makes sense from a pack protection standpoint, except it's also torture. The kind of torture where I get to have her close but I can't actually do anything about it.
