Our pack.
Whatever she needs.
Well, now.
It sat with her... right. Just right.
She hadn’t thought about the collection day in those terms, hadn’t realized there was more underneath. She’d been thinkingabout the forest, about the data, about the problem in front of her. She’d shown up with samples and instructions, and it had felt like work—good, meaningful work, but work nonetheless. She hadn’t thought about what it looked like from the other side. Hadn’t realized, really, that there was another side.
But the pack had come. All of them, even wolves she hadn’t recognized had turned up at the tree line mid-morning because word had apparently traveled. They’d taken her instructions without question. They’d brought back everything she’d asked for and then some, neatly bagged, carefully handled. The bigger ones had covered more ground. Someone had brought her coffee at noon, appearing at her elbow without announcement and disappearing to go back to the task.
She’d thought they were being kind. Polite. Welcoming Rex’s mate the way you welcomed anyone new. She hadn’t understood that they were doing something else entirely—something deeper. Accepting her. Their Omega.
Lachlan grinned at the confusion that must have been clear on her face. “Glad the pack took ye.”
“I —” She stopped to turn and look at Rex—who was, suspiciously, looking hard at the computer. “Is that what it was?”
“Yeah,” he dragged out.
She stared at him, her mouth slightly open. “And you didn’t think about giving me, I don’t know, a heads-up?”
He didn’t even have the grace to look too apologetic. “Normally, everyone would know what was happening and with whom as things go. There would be some kind of...”
“Prior evaluation,” Lachlan offered.
“Yes. Thank you, man. The Omega is known; the pack has context.” He shrugged. “But you’re human. If I’d told you, you would have been aware of it and maybe performed for it, even without meaning to. I needed to see it happen on instinct—yours and theirs. I needed to see what they’d do when it was just you.”A warm, bright wave came through the bond. “And they saw what I see. Loved what I love.”
She... glitched.
Literally.
Her mouth opened.
Closed.
He just said... he did, didn’t he? And oh, God, of course she loved him too. Screw the unreasonably short time they have been together—she would not think of that. Screw the bond, too. She brought a hand to her mouth, found it reasonably trembling. She was going to need a second. She was going to need several seconds, possibly arranged in a row long enough to resemble a minute, during which she could locate her brain and reboot it. The bond was doing that thing, that full, bright, overwhelming thing it did when it was overloaded with feelings, and she was sitting in the middle of it trying to remember how words worked.
Lachlan was determined to mind his business, his attention completely focused on his phone.
Rex was looking at her, patiently, as if he was waiting for her to catch up with something he’d known forever.
And she was... the most messed-up version of herself.
She swallowed. “Mr Fraser, would you, um, excuse us one second?”
Lachlan waved her away without taking his eyes off the phone. “Aye, dinnae mind me.”
“Rex?” Shrilly. Her voice was shrill. At best. But also, what the hell?
She took him to her office without running. Closed the door carefully. Then looked at him. “Did you just say,” she went closer to whisper, “The L word?”
He leaned in. “Yeah. Why?”
“... what do you mean, ‘why’?”
“Of course I love you. What do you think we were doing?”
She had to look at him, in silence, for a full minute. “The bond?”
