Put your big girl panties on and come out.
My thumb hovers over send. My heart is going too fast. This is me telling an alpha what to do. This is me deciding I have the right. Six months ago I couldn't have done this. Six months ago I could barely string three words together out loud.
I hit send.
The light-headedness hits immediately, a quick dizzy rush, but underneath it something in my chest loosens. Some locked-up thing I didn’t realize I was still carrying. I'm an omega. I'm not a victim. I'm done being handled like the truth might break me.
I put his phone back on the table and take a breath.
Ezra is watching me. There's something in his expression that takes me a moment to name. Not pity. Not relief exactly. Something quieter than both.
“That was good to see,” he says. “That's you healing, Aubrey.”
I have no idea how to handle that. I look at my hands instead.
“You want her too,” I say. “Ezra, I'm her scent match, I know what that pull feels like. But you and Kev and Lex, you act like she's yours as well. Like the bond is already there even if biology didn't hand it to you.”
Ezra goes quiet. A real quiet, not the kind where someone's waiting to speak. The kind where something landed.
Then he says, “You think so?”
He's asking me. Not to be polite. Not to manage me. He's actually asking, like my read on this matters, like I'm someone worth listening to. “Yeah,” I say. “I think so.”
He wraps both hands around his mug and looks at me with a steadiness that means he's about to say something he's been working up to.
“Your heat is coming soon.”
“I know.” There's no point pretending otherwise. My body's been telling me for days.
He takes a breath. “You're going to need Sera. She's already eased a spike for you and that matters, that connection is real.” He pauses. “But you might need a knot too.” He keeps his eyes on mine, calm and direct. “I need you to know that we won't touch you without your agreement. Not even in heat. There are other options. Toys. Ways to get you through it that don't involve any of us if that's what you want. I needed to say this before it hits, while you can hear me clearly. Nothing happens to you that you don't choose.”
The ice in my gut fractures. Just enough to let a little warmth seep through.
“You mean that.”
“I've never meant anything more.”
My eyes sting. I blink, hard.
“Okay.”
The word comes out quiet. I mean it.
I look at his hands instead of his face. His hands are wrapped around his coffee mug now, his fingers gentle on the ceramic, unhurried.
The way Thomas used to hold his coffee. Gentle fingers. Unhurried. Like he had all the time in the world.
The breath goes out of me. He didn't have all the time. He didn't have any time at all.
“Thomas held his mug like that.”
Ezra sets down the coffee. His whole body goes still and listening. “What was he like?”
Ezra holds my gaze, open. Interested. I should talk about my first pack. They lived. We loved each other. Just because I have scent-matches doesn’t mean my first pack were any less important. If I’m honest, there’s a scar on my heart where they’ll always live. And I don’t want them to go.
“He wasn't my scent match. But he was my first.” I'm talking. I can't stop. “He taught me to drive. Laughed when I ground the gears, his whole face crinkling, and told me I was capable. That I mattered. I believed him.”
Ezra nods slowly.
