XANDER.
I lingered in the hallway, listening through the cracked open door. Heat from the kitchen drifted out in sluggish breaths, tinged with the scent of gas, sweat, and Alpha pheromones gone unchecked. Like always, every sound funneled into my head and refused to exit. Thunk. Click. Another click. Kane pissed that I hadn’t shown up yet. Asher defending me. Click. Click. Another motherfucking click.
Moving to the wall, I pressed my forehead against its smoothness and let it ground me. The noise from the common room continued, but I found the will to peel myself away from the wall and face the pack. What I was going to tell them could be the best news in the world, or the worst. I hadn’t decided yet.
As I stepped into view, I watched their reactions with keen eyes. Asher, hand on a stove knob, went perfectly still, not moving even as the clicking gave birth to blue flame. Fallon backed a foot closer to the fireplace, sweat beading on his brow. Kane dropped whatever he was holding; it thudded hard against the floor. Nitro slammed his bladed into the countertop but thenplaced both palms flat on either side of it, not yanking the knife free again.
“Turn the stove off, Asher,” I commanded in a low voice.
“Turn all four burners on?” he challenged.
I just stared him down, unblinking, until he shrugged and killed the flame.
FALLON.
Xander looked… torn.
I stood with my back to the fireplace, its hearth raging with a well-fed fire, letting its heat seep through my clothes while my face remained carefully neutral. The common area of the DemonX compound stretched before me—exposed brick, industrial steel, our signature blend of grit and precision. My pack brothers were all in sight, not far from one another, still drawn together by every scar we carried on our bodies and souls and fucking hearts. Xander asked us all here, but he didn’t say the reason.Was it Eros? No, that was improbable at this point.We’d been under contract with the Institute for over a year. Despite their promise and hefty fee, they couldn’t find an Omega who was batshit crazy enough to match us. I moved a little, shifting so that my back was more parallel to the fire. My left side, which had been fractionally closer to the flames, had gotten uncomfortably warm.
We were all staying so quiet. Every mouth glued together. Every set of eyes narrowed. Every brother fidgeting.
“Eros called.” Xander finally broke our bubble of silence.
The two words seemed to explode into the room.
He didn’t say more.
Why the fuck did he only say those two words?
Quiet again. Achingly so. A deprivation tank rather than a living room.
Was he just gearing us up for disappointment again? Or maybe he’d brought us all here to discuss giving up on Eros and its empty promises.
The silence stretched out, becoming miles long.
None of us mentioned the client baskets, full of inane bullshit, that we’d either destroyed or mailed back to Eros mutilated… once containing several dead rats. None of us mentioned the scent sampling and bloodwork, how our glands ached for days afterwards but we embraced the pain as proof we were solving our problem. None of us voiced that we—DemonX, a pack of daredevils who never said die—were slowly losing our mother fucking minds. Tension grew between us all, years of bandages over unhealed wounds sloughing off to reveal acrid puss. We were all so damn stubborn that we’d ride our bikes off a cliff before we admitted weakness. My gaze roved over each of my pack brothers. I catalogued their silent tells—Nitro’s twitching shoulders, Kane’s fingers twirling that car part, the muscle in Xander’s jaw jumping, Asher with one hand in a pocket, likely toying with his lighter. Once upon a time, when our unit felt solid as rock, these details would have slipped past me but now they screamed for mercy.
“You got to give us more than that, you bastard.” Kane’s voice burst through the tomb-like air as he slid off the barstool and closed the distance to Xander.
A foot from our brother, Kane halted. He waited, hands curling into fists.
I moved over to them. I gripped Kane’s upper arm with all my might. He winced and then glared at me. “Get your hand off me.”
“I will if you take a step back.” My grip tightened. I wasn’t bigger or stronger than Kane—in fact he had at least twenty pounds of muscle on me and far more hours lifting heavy shit in the garage—but he seemed to come up for air, stepping back from Xander.
Xander cleared his throat. “They found us an Omega.”
The mood of the room shifted lightning fast, giving me whiplash. Excitement. Relief. Curiosity over what she’d look like. She had to be a fearless badass.
My brain began envisioning the perfect woman. Tall. Amazonian. Fierce.
“She’s a goddamn medical nightmare,” Xander breathed out. “Hospitals most of her life. A fucking case of Severe Combined Immunodeficiency and Omega genetic abnormalities. They haven’t sent a photo of her yet. Think they’re trying to keep that under wraps. Fucking lifetime of sickness. Can’t imagine what she looks like.”
The exhilaration gave way to disbelief.
“There’s no motherfucking way our perfect mate is some weak ass Omega with one foot in the grave,” Nitro snarled, yanking his knife from the countertop and brandishing it as if he planned to throw it right at Xander’s head.
Xander continued. “Apparently, they’ve found a way to cure her. She’ll have to take precautions when she comes here from Seattle, but?—”
