22. Ivy

22

IVY

Something furry had crawled into my mouth and died.

I got flashbacks of many gulps of champagne. Well, that would certainly explain it. My skin felt like it was stretched too thin and there was someone playing drums on my forehead. The echo in my ears rang faintly of…card suits?

Right, I learned how to play Big Two last night. Diamonds, clubs, hearts, spades . From James who?—

I sat up sharply and almost threw up from the sensation that my head did not follow at the same time as my body.

Oh no.

You invited your pack over for New Year’s Eve and instead of ringing in the New Year in your nest, you got drunk and fell asleep before midnight.

I mashed a pillow over my face and let out a silent scream.

Where were they now? Probably at home rethinking this courtship. Omegas were meant to bring packs together, not implode them. I couldn’t believe I’d let Sean set up rent free in my head and ruin everything.

I stood up gingerly and wobbled my way down the hallway. Water. Two giant aspirins. Maybe then the marching band would vacate my skull.

A startled scream trapped in my throat as I nearly stumbled over a dead body. Two feet stuck out lifelessly between my couch and coffee table.

“Oh my god, I’m never drinking again,” I wheezed.

I inched forward slowly, wincing at what I was about to find when I entered my living room. What I saw made me feel even worse and made me wish it had been a misplaced corpse instead.

Logan, Rome and James were asleep in uncomfortable piles. James was curled up in my arm chair, Rome on the couch and Logan was the aforementioned dead body on the floor with a single cushion. They’d given him one of my throws at least.

They slept out here because you never invited them into your nest.

So thoughtful to the point of martyrdom. I could scream from the frustration of putting them in this situation. I tiptoed to the kitchen and found it sparkling. They must have cleaned up last night after I passed out.

“Ivy, you are the absolute worst,” I berated myself.

Should I wake them? Invite them into my nest now? I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror and flinched. Maybe I should look less like I had been mauled by a raccoon first so they wouldn’t say no.

I threw back some aspirin along with about a gallon of water before making my way quietly to the bathroom. I stared at my closet as I brushed my teeth, trying to decide what to wear. What would say I am not in fact a hot mess express, please come into my nest?

A quiet knock rapped on the door.

They’re up. Instant panic.

I threw on a t-shirt, rinsed my mouth furiously and opened the door to a rumpled, slightly worse-for-wear James. Who was still so damn cute even after a terrible night’s sleep.

“Are you spiraling in here?” he said with a knowing smile.

“How did you?—”

“I was semi-awake and heard you insulting yourself.”

Great.

“The others are still out cold though,” he said, throwing a look over his shoulder. “Can I come in?”

He asked it so casually, like it wasn’t a big deal that he would be entering my nest for the first time.

“Yes.” I swallowed and stepped aside for him. Something about seeing him in the space I had worked so hard to make perfect for them cracked something inside me. I gave a low sob and threw my arms around him. He held me tightly, rubbing soothing strokes up and down my back and assuring me it was ok.

“Can you,” I stammered into his neck. “I need, um, I want you to?—”

“Lie down?”

“Y-yeah.”

I started to feel much better when he was propped up against all my pillows. I rubbed my nose impulsively against his shoulder and wondered if it was too soon to ask him to let me have his shirt. His beta scent was fainter compared to the alphas, but after sleeping in it all night, his shirt was creamy, sugary sweet. My fingers fiddled with the buttons, wanting to slide them free and slowly reveal more of his golden skin and feel the toned muscles of his chest.

“Do you want to tell me what was bothering you last night?”

Well, that yanked me firmly back from my fantasy.

I did owe him an explanation. I owed all of them, but it was certainly easier to start with one person.

“Um, this is not my first time being courted.” I stole a glance and found him waiting patiently for me to continue. Suddenly, I was grateful that it was James here with me. No chance of triggering some sort of alpha outburst. It made my next words flow easier. “After I graduated college, I started seeing an alpha I’d sort of grown up with. Sean. He asked me to be his omega after a couple of months and I said yes.” I let out a resigned breath. “We never even made it close to the bonding stage though. It didn’t work out because I should’ve prioritized him better.”

James didn’t counter what I’d said but the hard line of his jaw tensed visibly.

It was good that he didn’t waste his breath because Sean had been right. Memories of fights rushed by me like passing trains. Our past voices snatched by the wind until only the most devastating words lingered. That time I canceled a date because I had to revise a whole stack of planning documents after a last-minute curriculum change. When I’d promised to cook dinner the same day there had been a terrible bullying incident and I stayed back to mediate. And of course, why I was never ready to go off suppressants so we could spend a heat together.

“When we broke up, he said he was disappointed in me. That I was barely an omega.” I forced each painful syllable out. “That got to me harder than losing him, to be honest. I accepted that we weren’t compatible but that comment…I think I…closed off that part of myself for a long time.”

I could feel how angry James was on my behalf. There was a stiffness to the way he kissed my forehead and tightened his hold on me.

“Sean comes into town every winter break to visit his parents,” I sighed. “I bumped into him at Mariposa’s yesterday after I’d gone nest shopping with the girls. H-he made a comment about shopping for my own nest. Reminding me that packs are meant to provide and even though I was being courted, I still had to—” I snapped my lips shut and shook my head.

“Ivy.”

“It’s stupid. But it made me feel so unworthy all over again.”

James picked up the blanket they had given me last night and draped it over my shoulders. “This was for your nest, Ivy. It always was.” His deep voice was laced with both tenderness and regret.

“It was? But Rome said?—”

“He was afraid of scaring you off, Ivy. We’re trying to figure this out just as much as you are.”

Gosh, we’d all made a mess of things. James played with the ends of my hair, curling and uncurling it around his fingers. “Is it alright if I get the alphas?” he asked me hesitantly.

My reply blossomed warm and ready at the base of my throat. I wanted my nest to feel complete. I had wanted it since last night. Or if I was being entirely truthful with myself, probably since that first morning when I woke up between James and Rome.

“Yes,” I whispered.

I wondered if James would tell them what I’d shared with him, but it felt like they were at my door within seconds. Logan was still blearily rubbing sleep out of his eyes but Rome had a little glint of crazy in his. What did it say about me that I really liked it?

“Ivy.” His roughened tone made something primal inside me sit up. “Can we?—”

“ Yes .”

I practically dragged them in there. The twist of fabric in my fist called to me and I instinctively lowered my nose to Rome’s shirt. Alpha, alpha, alpha.

“Off,” I demanded.

There was something else driving me, my body on auto-pilot. My pack hurriedly shed their slept-in clothes and I hugged them covetously. This is what I still needed in my nest. Every item I wove amongst the lush new bedding sparked a satisfying kind of bliss inside me. The final touches that made a house a home. Once I was done, I settled back onto my pillows with a contented sigh and motioned for them to join me.

Our limbs were tangled, over and under, arms overlapping until the space between us vanished. The heat of their skin on mine, their perfect combined scents. My nest had never felt like this before. I let out a small whimper and buried my nose into Logan’s chest.

A gentle purr began to thrum immediately from him. Right beneath his breastbone, the vibration traveling all the way down my spine. The sensation was like a pleasurable head scratch amplified several times over. Behind me, Rome pressed closer, his own purr rumbling against my back.

“You have such a pretty nest, baby,” Rome said, burrowing against my neck and leaving his aromatic scent on my skin.

I arched into his touch. “Is it really ok?”

I honestly had no idea.

“I never want to leave,” Logan groaned against my hair. “How have you…it’s just…it makes me feel so safe and hidden in a good way.”

Despite how tightly the alphas had me sandwiched between them, James still managed to have a leg hooked with mine, our fingers interlaced. “Do you want to tell them what you told me?” he prompted me carefully.

I should. They deserved to know.

It was probably a good thing I’d gotten the story out first with James. I was able to retell it feeling much more detached. Even so, by the time I was done, the alpha purrs were long gone and it felt like I was holding the leashes on two rampaging bloodhounds.

“He’s fucking dead,” Logan growled.

“Logan,” I gasped.

“We’ll murder him so quietly for you, baby.” Rome’s purr was different now, like the rev of a car engine presumably getting ready to run Sean over.

James yanked him back by his hair. “You are a music teacher,” he scolded his alpha.

“Princess, I’ll find out where he lives.” Logan was undeterred. “A few little snips and his house will be back in stone ages. Maybe he’ll go into debt trying to fix it. Maybe it’ll be the first of many terrible incidents that eventually results in him living in a cardboard box somewhere.”

“Logan, sometimes your inside thoughts should stay that way,” James said after a beat.

I really didn’t understand their vehemence. “It was a cruel thing to say but he was right, too. I didn’t know how to be a good omega for him,” I confessed.

James squeezed my hand. “Ivy, why don’t you think you’re a good omega?”

“I researched it,” I said matter-of-factly. “After we broke up.”

“You…”

I began to recite my findings, ticking them off on my fingers. “Omegas are able to balance the needs of several alphas. I wasn’t able to manage even one. Many omegas find their packs by the age of twenty-four because alphas are driven to want to care for them. I’m thirty-one.” I tapped my chin, trying to remember the rest. “I’m also nowhere near the ideal omega’s waist-to-hip ratio. Omegas have the highest sex drive of all designations and I have trouble, um, finishing sometimes. So even physically I fall outside what’s normal.”

They gaped at me with horrified expressions.

“All the evidence supports that I am not what is expected of an omega,” I said, waving my fingers to emphasize all the points I laid out. “I accepted it a long time ago.”

Logan smashed his head into the pillow. “God, I don’t even know where to start.”

The crazy glint in Rome’s eye was back and dare I say it, more insane than ever. “ You are not supposed to be a one-size-fits-all omega designed to be matched with any alpha.” He pressed my fingers down one by one as he countered each argument. “A pack is a living, breathing relationship where all parties contribute to make it work. Does age really matter when it gave us time to become our own people first?”

“I-I don’t, um?—”

Rome skimmed the shape of my waist, the slow glide worshipful and loving. “I couldn’t give a shit what’s normal , Ivy. You fucking drove me crazy from the day I met you, wondering what was hidden under those sweaters of yours. And now that I know, I’m only more addicted. Addicted to everything that makes you who you are.” He kissed me right over my pounding pulse point in my neck. “ Especially how long we get to enjoy earning every single one of those orgasms of yours.”

I had no words. He’d ruined me, broken me down brick by brick.

Logan gently nudged my chin, turning me to face him. “I wish I’d been brave enough to court you earlier,” he confessed. “But I don’t think either of us were ready.”

Years of polite smiles exchanged seemed silly now.

“There’s nothing to regret, though. I think you were meant to bring us together.” He swallowed thickly. “I think you were meant to make us a pack.”

Me? But I’d barely done anything.

“Pack Winter has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”

I stared at James, propped up on his elbow and casually tossing a proverbial stick of dynamite into the already volatile chaos of emotions.

“You can’t,” I protested.

“Why not?”

“It’s meant to be one of yours,” I said, looking between Rome and Logan.

James tilted his head. “Is it? This pack is whatever we want it to be.”

All those years of wondering what the intimacy of pack life looked like. Trying to figure out what an omega was supposed to do . I looked around at my nest, imbued with scents I’d come to crave and the men I cared for.

Was it really that simple?

I was intimately aware of all the ways we were touching. How easy it would be to close the distance between us all. Guide a grasping palm to the aching parts of me and stroke the hardening flesh against my thigh until it?—

My stomach growled loudly, a rude and uncouth intruder smashing the dreamy atmosphere of my nest.

“Oh no.” It happened again and I shrank, hugging my traitorous tummy. My night of drinking on an empty stomach was catching up on me at the worst possible time. I couldn’t believe we’d just become a pack with a name . There was a brief pang of disappointment, worried I’d ruined the moment somehow.

But Rome just kissed my nose. “I think we can all do with some food,” he chuckled. “And if you’re willing to let one of us have at least a pair of pants back, we can grab some fresh clothes too.”

As much as I didn’t want to pillage my perfect nest, I was not about to feed the town’s rumor mill for a month by having a naked alpha leave my house.

“No need to rush this,” James reassured me. “Whatever we want it to be, ok?”

“Whatever we want it to be,” I repeated, feeling hopeful in a way I hadn’t felt in a very, very long time.