Luca stands up and climbs to get out from between Ace and Aura. “Enough. Enough. I need the ocean.”
Suddenly, he rushes over behind me, and I hold on to North. “Luca, don’t you dare.”
He ducks low, his arm comes under my thighs, and I am airborne in one smooth motion. Then I’m upside down over his shoulder. He’s striding across the sand toward the water, and I’m kicking my legs while Clio is screaming, “Dunk her!”
The cold water hits my head, and I’m in the air for one suspended second, and then I’m under.
I come up gasping, and Luca is two feet away, grinning like he’s been rewarded by God. I splash him in the face. “You deserve that,” I tease.
“Entirely fair. I accept it.”
Before I can do anything about his cockiness, North is in the water too. In moments, he surfaces behind Luca in complete silence, gets an arm around his chest, wrestling him back. “Swim away, my sweet Omega, be free!” he says, overly dramatic, which only has me bursting out laughing.
Then North grabs me, and I shriek before we go under. I come up splashing water straight into his face just as Ace joins us, followed by Clio and Aura. Within seconds, all six of us are in a full-blown water fight, laughing and shoving and throwing handfuls of seawater at each other, the water up to our shoulders and doing absolutely nothing to slow any of us down.
Then Clio catches hold of my wrist with a grin and tugs me out of the chaos toward the side, and we float back in the shallows with the sun on our faces.
She shades her eyes with a hand. “You realize you’re insanely lucky.”
“Yeah, I’m really starting to see that.” With it comes a grin I simply can’t hold back… just thinking of my Alphas, staring at them, I’m completely smitten.
“In the good way,” I say, staring at them trying to drown each other.
“If anyone ever comes for you again, you have three very protective shields.”
We’re both laughing.
She hooks her pinkie around mine in the water, the way we’ve done since we were in school, and for a moment, we just float there.
“They feel like family,” I say.
“That’s because they are. I’m so happy for you, babe. And one day, I’ll find my match.”
I lean into her shoulder. “I bet you will in no time.”
Strong arms suddenly wrap around my waist from below, and I am hauled half out of the water with a yelp, and a grin is pressed against my temple.
I twist around to find Ace watching me.
“You were too far from me.” He drags me into his arms, and I press closer, staring out at North and Luca, just floating, chatting.
I’ve loved them for a while, quietly, inside myself, while I worked out how to trust it.
It’s been sitting in me for days, and I’m going to tell them tonight. Or tomorrow. Or the next time one of them annoys me in the kitchen and it falls out of my mouth.
North and Luca are swimming over, while Clio is body surfing on the small waves, Aura copying her.
The four of us are floating together now, me in the middle, being kissed and held, and there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.
North keeps one arm firm around my waist and brushes his mouth against my temple. “You know,” he says quietly, “I’ve spent most of my life feeling like I was built to survive things. Then you came into it and somehow made all of this feel different.” His hand slides up my back, holding me closer in the water. “We love you, Adelaide.”
My breath catches so hard it almost hurts.
Ace lets out a soft laugh beside me, the kind that sounds wrecked around the edges. “Yeah, well, he was always going to share in love beautifully and ruin the rest of our speeches.” He cups the back of my neck and grins at me, but his eyes are too bright. “We love you. Completely. Stupidly. With absolutely no self-respect left.”
Luca’s mouth finds my shoulder, and when he lifts his head, his arm tightens around my waist like he’s making sure I feel every word of it. “So much, baby. More than my own peace, than my pride, and more than I know what to do with half the time.” He kisses me again, softer this time. “We love you.”
My chest tightens, butterflies fluttering in my stomach.
