Shit. I thought I was ready to say it, but I couldn’t. The circumstances were rushing in again. Kiara’s safety. Mine. Theirs. It would be safer for all of them if I kicked them unceremoniously from this apartment—it would have been better if I’d done that from the beginning.
Maybe I’d still need to do it, and I wouldn’t have the guts to even try if I cracked now and told Ambrose what I wanted to say.
Ambrose sighed, his lips landing on my nose and then each cheek. “I’m just grateful you didn’t flee the scene after I said it, doll.”
“You know how I feel,” I murmured.
He nodded. “I do. When the dust settles, then we can work on your ability to say it out loud. I’ve made you say plenty of other things you never thought you would say.”
My cheeks flushed. I settled back down on his lap, taking comfort in his warmth and closeness and reminding myself of the truth in my head.
I loved him.
And Kiara.
Dash and Mercury were next, if we continued on this trajectory.
Yet, I couldn’t find a single internal problem with that.
* * *
Dash crashed into the condo with a grin on his face.
“I made it back alive!” he proclaimed, tossing his keys onto a console table in the living room. He was definitely going to forget where he’d left them the next time he needed to leave. The man was pure chaos.
Ambrose rolled his eyes, kissing my head and lifting me off his lap to stand. “Proud of you, bud.”
“Bud?” Dash wrinkled his nose. “Now you sound like my dad. Do I have to call you Daddy too?”
“Please don’t,” Ambrose said.
Dash observed him, seeming to decide if he wanted to test him. “Anything you want, Daddy,” he said eventually.
Ambrose, halfway to the kitchen, let out an irritated groan. “You’re evil. I never should have let you have pack lead.”
Snickering, Dash flopped down onto the couch next to me. His arm slung casually over my shoulders, like it belonged there. I let him bask in the touch until Mercury came out into the living room. He was tired, blinking the haze of sleep from his eyes, with a disgruntled expression on his face.
“Kiara heard Dash come home. Wants him,” he muttered, narrowing his eyes at his packmate.
Dash tried to release me and leap to his feet, but I didn’t let him. My hand came down on his upper thigh, right where his thigh met his hips, and I held him down on the couch. His lips dropped into a pout. “She wants me,” he said.
“Yes, but cuddling her in her nest would be a reward. And you know what you don’t deserve?”
I paused, waiting for him to tell me. He bounced on the cushions. If he’d tried he could have dislodged my grip on him and stood, but he didn’t. Spring rain and peaches grew heavy in the air as a bulge grew in his pants. Mercury sighed and vanished into the kitchen.
“A… reward?” he said hesitantly.
“Exactly. Why would you get rewarded when you haven’t been punished yet?”
A full-body shudder rolled through him. His green eyes locked with mine, his movie star handsome features softened with desire. He nibbled his bottom lip.
“Punish me, then,” he whispered. “Because I want to be in the nest with both of you.”
I could have teased him—I’d never said anything about cuddling in the nest along with my omega. He was being vulnerable, though, and I didn’t want to risk embarrassing the normally shameless alpha.
“Don’t you want to know what punishments I have in mind?” I asked.
He shook his head. “You could do literally anything to me.”
