“Again,” Ronan said, an edge to his voice. “What are you proposing?”
“Well,” Niall replied. “We keep living next door. To the rest of the world, we’re your neighbors, and your friends of course, since I’m the boys’ nanny. If you need us to, we were thinking we could pretend that Sorcha lives on our side, that he’s our surrogate. Betas do that all the time, provide their surrogates with money or housing.”
A deep frown took over Ronan’s face.
Jax hurried to add, “Of course this would just be a story for the public. So they don’t bother you. Behind closed doors, of course, you could be a family and of course the baby will know who his real parents are.”
Sorcha and Teal joined in frowning at the betas.
“I’m sorry,” Niall said, shaking his head. “This is clearly coming out all wrong. We don’t mean to overstep. We just know that Teal’s work is important and his bosses might not like it if he’s in a polyamorous relationship, or if his alpha has another baby—” Niall put his fist in his mouth. “Shit! I’m sorry if I’m making it sound awful. You know how much Jax and I love you guys. We’re just putting it out there as an option. You know we’ll do whatever we can to help. Whatever you need.”
A heavy silence took over the room as Jax placed an arm around Niall’s shoulders, staring at Ronan levelly before murmuring, “We’re trying to help. If we’re out of line, we’re sorry, like Niall said.”
Ronan exhaled, long and loud. Gently transferring Teal’s weight over to Sorcha, he stood and began pacing behind the couch, shaking his head before speaking.
“Let me get this straight,” he boomed. “Your plan is for you and Jax to live on the other side of the duplex so that me and Teal and Sorcha can raise our family without the watchful eye of the public.”
“Basically, yes,” Niall said. “I mean, of course our friends would know, Dayson and whoever you wanted. And we don’t have all the details yet, but—”
“What about you and Jax?” Ronan interrupted.
Niall startled. “What about us?”
“Where are you in all this? Helping? Being part of our family?”
“Oh, Ronan!” Niall exclaimed. “Of course we’re a part of your family. Your betas. We love you guys so much and we want to be a in your lives, and with the boys, all of us together, and…and in your bed…however much you want us.”
Ronan paced faster, muttering as much to himself as in reply to Niall. “I feel like we’ve been clear. I don’t know how much clearer I can be without being an actual piece of glass. What more I need to say.”
“I’m sorry.” Niall sighed. “I don’t know what you mean. If you don’t like the plan, we’re happy to formulate a different one. Just name it.”
“No!” Ronan barked. He eyed Jax and Niall, rendering them silent with his alpha voice. “I need you to understand.”
Stunned into submission, the betas stared at Ronan, sensing the alpha’s underlying desire to roar as he rumbled deep in his chest.
But it was Sorcha who broke the silence. “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” The little omega balanced Teal against the armrest and stood up, thundering through the kitchen and into the garage. The distinct sound of metal hitting the concrete floor reverberated, followed by Sorcha tearing back into the living room, dragging a sledgehammer behind him.
Ronan watched with a mix of envy and pride as Sorcha went to the wall on the far side of the living room and attacked it with the heavy tool. His small, lithe muscles rippled and flexed as he swung the sledgehammer, pounding at the drywall while the others gaped at him.
After ten hard swings, Sorcha punctured a basketball-sized hole in the wall separating the two units of the duplex, until Niall and Jax’s living room could easily be seen.
Leaning on the sledgehammer like a cane, Sorcha glared at the betas. “Do you understand now?”
Niall and Jax stared at the hole but offered no immediate reply. Ronan’s growling continued.
“My betas,” Teal said diplomatically. “I love you. We all do.” Sorcha nodded enthusiastically. Ronan’s rumbling subsided as he did the same. “And I thought we’d been clear, but perhaps we haven’t done an adequate job trying to understand how all this must look from your point of view, to be a beta in a world where so much of the back and forth is between alphas and omegas. Not to mention that we were so adamant about keeping things secret with Niall for so many years.
“So let me be clear. When Ronan said we need to talk about what’s next, it was already a foregone conclusion that what’s next will be the five of us, raising our boys together…” Brilliant orator that he was, Teal stopped for a dramatic pause. “Openly.”
“Openly?” Jax asked, incredulous.
“Openly,” Teal stated.
Ronan had been almost positive that was how Teal would feel, even if Ronan had been reluctant to codify it in the hospital while Teal was unconscious. To see Teal—and Sorcha, fuck, Sorcha had been magnificent with that sledgehammer!—expressing the sentiment now only made him feel even more sure of his own heart. There would be no going back. No hiding.
“The only thing we need to discuss is what living openly looks like,” Ronan chimed in, calm enough to sit on the couch again. “We don’t owe the public anything, but that being said, we should probably prepare for some fallout.”
“Wait,” Niall said. “When you called us a family, you meant—”
