How am I ever going to feel whole again without him?
ELEVEN
Jagger
PRESENT DAY GOING FORWARD…
“All fixed!” Nash rubs his hands together triumphantly as soon as Tae and I arrive home, a stony silence still hovering between us since scrubbing down every inch of the Tea House kitchen without talking. “Did you hear me? No leaky shower!” Oblivious to the tension in the room, Nash heads to the kitchen, opens the fridge, then holds out a beer. “Want one?”
As we shake our heads, I feel Tae’s glare burning into the side of my face. I deserve it.
As a beta, his natural scent is usually very faint, but right now I get a whiff of over-extracted coffee. Strong and bitter, like his mood.
“What happened?” Nash slams the fridge door closed, wrinkling his nose. “You both smell like bleach.”
“Tae went on a date,” I say through gritted teeth.
“And Jagger ruined it.” Tae crosses his arms over his chest. “For some mysterious reason that he’s not telling me.”
“Shit.” Nash opens his beer and takes a long, loud slug. “I definitely need a drink for this.” He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Why didn’t you tell us you were going on a date?”
“Yeah,” I snarl at him. “Why didn’t you?”
Tae narrows his eyes. “I didn’t know if she would even show up. I didn’t want to…” he waves his arms around, “jinx anything.”
I snort. “How did you meet her?”
“I should be asking you the same question,” Tae retorts.
“Hold up!” Nash raises one hand. “You both know this girl?”
“Her name is Delilah,” Tae answers him. “And, man, if you met her… you’d know she was special. She’s an omega who loves baking and?—”
“An omega?” Nash’s voice deepens to a stormy rumble, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end as my natural instincts respond like it’s a bark. An alpha bark is a tone of voice alphas can use to make omegas comply and can be used by pack leaders on pack members to force obedience. “We agreed that we were focusing on ourselves. No women.”
Because there are only two alphas in our pack, we took the nontraditional route and decided not to have a pack leader. We all agreed that we’d have equal say, not wanting to operate in a hierarchy. If we were to get technical about it, Nash would fall into the leader role as we took his family name, Ward, for official pack registration purposes. Avoiding using my surname seemed like the best way forward to avoid any unwanted publicity, and it’s not possible to use a betas surname due to outdated laws, so using Tae’s was out of the question. Until now, I’ve never seen Nash step into leader mode.
“But she’s different,” Tae argues, not picking up on the alpha signals Nash is putting out.
He’s obviously as taken with Delilah as I am.
“And you.” Nash points at me gruffly. “Why do you look like a pressure valve about to blow?”
“I don’t,” I growl back, gripping the back of my neck.
Nash returns to the fridge, hurling two beers in our direction like he’s serving in the World Series. “We can’t have division inour pack. That’s not how this works. We’ve got to sort this shit out, so one of you needs to start talking.”
“I was making out with her, and then he just rocked up,” Tae grumbles.
“You weren’t just making out with her.” I glare at him. “Your cock was buried inside her!”
Nash’s eyes widen. “You fucked her on the first date? You never do that.”
“I told you already, she’s special,” Tae huffs. “And we were having a great time untilheshowed up.”
“I was stopping by to offer you a ride home,” I hiss. “I didn’t expect to see you wrapped aroundmyomega.”
“Your omega?” Tae’s lip curls. “She’s not yours!”
