Today, however, Cini’s scent had shifted. Even in her sleep the mouthwateringly sweet honeydew scent wafted off of her in rolling waves that had made it impossible to drive with the windows up in the car.
“Is she still feverish?” Elio asked as he smoothed her damp blonde hair away from her forehead and pressed his palm to it before cursing under his breath. “Dante, take her to the back room and try to get some fluids in her?”
The alpha nodded once, his face stony as he climbed the steps and disappeared. Nico, who had been digging around in thecupboard hurried after him with two plastic water bottles and a fever reducer in hand.
Elio turned to me again, his lips pressed into a thin line. “Iknowit’s dangerous to go into the city, but Edison hasn’t been answering the phone and I need to know just how much support we’re going to have to take Amante out. Shit, I’m half-tempted to tell them that if they help us get rid of the old bastard that they can have the family business.”
That surprised me.
Ever since Alesso had died, Elio had been hellbent on taking over the Amante family and turning it into the future that Alesso used to talk about. Alesso had always wanted to take the whole damned thing out of the dark and bring it into the light as a legitimate business.
I’d believed in that once too, but now I was just exhausted from years of bending the knee to a monster who treated those around him like disposable puppets—even Cini who he should have treasured the most.
“What about Alesso’s vision?”
Elio shrugged. “Cini was at the core of that vision and before all of this I used to think that we had to earn her and the only way we could do that was to complete what Alesso wanted to do.”
“So, what changed your mind?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
The other alpha pointed to the bite mark on his neck. “The moment she claimed me as hers, nothing else seemed to matter.”
Could a bond mark be so potent? To change someone’s goals so completely that they seemed like a different person?
The Elio before Cini’s kidnapping had rarely smiled or laughed and he worked tirelessly to free her and to reach his goals. But the Elio I had seen since was brighter, like being with Cini had lit a match inside of him. He had spent half of the boat trip jokingand teasing me for being so sea sick and the other half curled around Cini like a cat, seemingly content just to be touching her.
Dante and Nico were the same. They worked more cohesively, and more often than not, they didn’t even need to speak to each other out loud to do so.
Watching them on the boat had been sobering and seeing them all be with Cini had stirred up a jealousy that I had never felt before.
It was different when Alesso was alive. We’d made it clear that we didn’t own each other, that going out and sleeping with whoever we wanted was permitted because we were two alphas who were best friends and lovers.
But I had never been on the outside looking in as much as I had now, and despite my best efforts to remain aloof, I found my resolve shaking.
“You look like you have a question,” Elio stated, leaning against the counter.
I did. We had never explicitly spoken about it before even though the other guys definitely knew my relationship with Alesso was a bit different than theirs. Even after he died, we avoided the topic like it was Pandora’s Box of unspeakable worldly horrors.
A box I was about to open because I wanted to know what it was like to truly be in their pack.
Up until our trip to the island, I had been firmly on the side of remaining a platonic member of the pack. Living on the fringes. Hells, at that point I was still toying with the idea of leaving once everything had settled down and finally travelling the world like I always said I would.
Then I watched as, one by one, my pack mates fell into a true pack with Cini at its center. It looked as natural as breathing, and after my conversation with Cini the day before the attack, I wanted to know what that felt like.
“Is…” I trailed off, for once at a loss for words. “Do you think Alesso would hate it if I was with her? With Cini, I mean.”
Elio could read between the lines of my question and a sigh whooshed out of the alpha as he crossed the kitchen and patted me on the back.
“Did you know that I kissed Cini the night Alesso died?”
I blinked, surprised by the admission, and shook my head.
“Yeah. It happened right before we left, I just couldn’t help myself and I didn’t really understand it at the time. Now I understand that what we have is fate because we are matched by our scents—but before that I was just an idiot who had impulsively kissed my best friend’s little sister and then he died. Fucked up, right?”
I held my thumb and forefinger a few inches apart. “Maybe just a little bit.”
We exchanged grins.
“That wasn’t even the worst part, though. When Alesso was bleeding out later on that night he told me he’d seen us and he never got the chance to tell me how he felt about it. I figured for years that he was pissed at me for it and that had been the last thing he thought about before he died.”
