There are hints of bitterness and lingering anger in his voice that prick my alpha’s curiosity. Maybe even rouse a willingness to bump shoulders in classic ‘I’ve got your back’ fashion.
“Johanna, Max, and I never made anything official in anyway, but we’ve lived a pack-adjacent life,” Corin continues, fortunately unaware of my musings. “Still, my primary pack experience is as a child, not an adult.”
“Pack-adjacent?” Dan asks.
“Shared house, mostly integrated finances, regular meetings to work out any problems and make sure business issues don’t poison the atmosphere at home. Johanna is not just my daughters’ aunt, but their mentor and all-but-mother. We’ve kept mostly separate bedrooms,” he admits, a hint of fire in his eyes as he adds, “until recently.”
Dan nods, face showing no clear reaction.
They both turn to me.
I wait, steepling my fingers and angling my body so they don’t glimpse the tent in my pants. Think about what I want to say. Think twice, and a third time, before I speak.
“I had a pack. Two mates. A car crash took them from me.” Bare bones though the story is, telling it still hurts. I live, I love, I’m looking at possible future packmates, but the words won’t come. Not in this brightly lit room with the hissing air purifiers abstracting our mixed scents. Not with two men I barely know, am only beginning to consider trusting, and find myself unexpectedly considering as potential pack.
When I shared my story with Johanna, we’d already spent hours together. We sat, side by side, in the dim nest, our scents mingled with sweat and slick and cum, both weary from hours of joint labor sating the desperate omega who’d brought us together. Telling hurt less with a warm body pressed against me, fingers twining with and squeezing mine in wordless comfort.
For all the secrets we’re baring—the others, at least—we’re still roughly where we started: evenly spaced around the room with Corin at the head.
“I’m sorry for your loss.” Corin drums his fingers against the table.
Dan echoes the condolences.
Pretty words I’ve heard a thousand times before, but repetition doesn’t dim their sincerity.
Another long silence. Again, Corin breaks it—the privilege of the most dominant? Or, perhaps, because he’s the one who called us here, and we’re on his territory.
“That’s more recent pack experience than either of us,” he says. “What’s your advice?”
“This is what my mates and I told our eldest when she joined a pack: talk often. Listen. Ask questions to make sure you understand what your mates meant, not what youthinkyouheard. Keep talking. Keep listening,” I say, repeating the litany the three of us had collectively come up with after deliberating over our daughter’s request for advice. Then, with my first love, my wonderful dominant alpha Renee’s voice ringing in my head, I finish with the spontaneous addition she’d snuck in at the end. “Remember that a pack is only as strong as the links between any two of you.”
Dan smiles. “I like that.”
For a moment, I see flashes of similarity to my packmates, Renee and Lawrence. As quick as they come, though, they’re gone. Dan isn’t either of them, of course, but he’s here showing that he listened and maybe even understood.
“Only as strong as the links between us as individuals. Four of us, three one-on-one relationships each, and one all together.” Corin claps his hands together and swings a challenging gaze from me to Dan and back. “Clear time on your calendars, alphas. If you want in, it’s time to put in the work.”
My alpha snarls at the challenge, at Corin’s presumption that he can levy it, but I wave a hand for him to go on. Share his plans, then I can poke holes in them.
Except they turn out to be fairly well-thought out: a series of one-on-one dates, lunch or dinner, ensuring all combinations have time together to see how well we get along.
The carrot: we each get alone time with Johanna.
The stick: the other two alone times are with each other, alpha to alpha.
Three days, six combinations—no wonder he said to check our calendars. I’ll have to do some serious juggling and ask my assistant to make a number of “so sorry, need to reschedule” calls, but it’s do-able on my end. The only thing ...
“That’s moving pretty fast.”
“It’s a stress test,” Dan answers, though he’s facing Corin. His midnight-forest scent has a crisp edge to it, providing a lowconstant beneath the sideways cedar-cider swings of Corin’s. “Moving fast leaves little time for second thoughts, and we’ll have to rely on instinct enough to see if our alphas really can get along.”
“I’m not proposing we bond at the end. This is a starting point. A baseline.” Corin stands and crosses his arms over his chest.
His scent shifts to a tangy cider so strong I can almost taste it, raising a tinge of curiosity in my alpha. People generally taste the way they smell, at least to alphas and omegas. I’ve never met anyone, regardless of designation, whose scent fluctuated quite as much.
I don’twantto be attracted to him. If I have to pack up with him—and, if I want to get Johanna, that looks likely—friendship would be best. We haven’t tested each other, as I’m too used to concealing the full extent of my dominant side. My alpha’s ready to try it, but my saner side suspects, even dreads, that Corin’s stronger. That theybothare.
That’s fine when it comes to daily life. There are plenty of work-arounds. Sex, however, is another matter. Only one person has ever dominated me in bed, and she’s dead. Every man I’ve slept with—various before meeting her and only Lawrence after—I ruled, both in and out of bed.
