I burst out laughing and crying, both at the same time. “What are you doing?” I manage between choking breaths. “You shouldn’t be here. What…?” I gesture at all the flowers. “Ryder didn’t tell you, then?”
“Tell us what?” Zach cocks his head to the side. “About you not being officially an omega? Oh yeah, he did.”
“Then?” I gesture again, helplessly. “Why?”
“What do you mean, why?” It’s Atticus’ turn to speak. His thick brows bunch together. “As if we care whether you’re officially an omega or not. Do you feel like an omega?”
“I… yes?” I splutter. “But…”
“And should we care whether you are an omega or any other designation?”
“Ace—”
“What’s the right answer, Coco?” He pins me with his gaze. His voice is a low rumble. “The right answer for you.”
I blink. “I’m… an omega.”
“Exactly. And why shouldn’t we accept your chosen designation if we love you?”
“If we love you.” Those words snag in my mind and they are all I can think about.
“I… don’t know,” I whisper. “You should.”
“There you go.” He now winks at me, his mouth pulling into a smirk. “So we are here because you are the woman we want, and we figured that you decided to give us a second chance, against all odds. A chance we want to take and prove to you that we do love you.”
“But you need a pack,” Ryder finishes this improbable speech. “Being an omega. And we want to give you one.”
“One… pack?” I’m staring at him at a loss.
“Yeah.”
“Made up… of the three of you?”
“That’s right.” Ryder nods.
I swallow hard, glancing at the others’ faces for confirmation that I haven’t gotten this all wrong. “A pack? You want to form a pack? For me?”
“Yes.”
“Since when have you three been talking about this? You said no more secrets.” Swallowing hard, I turn on Atticus. “Yet you’ve been meeting to… to organize yourselves into a pack?”
“Well, this secret wasn’t mine only to give away,” Atticus replies. “We wanted to be sure first.”
“Sure of what?”
“Of you wanting to be with all three of us. How were we going to offer you a pack if you hated one, or two, or all three of us? We had to make sure we knew the answer.”
“But now you know. You know,” I repeat when he says nothing, “that I’m not officially an omega.”
His smirk returns. “Apologies, kitten, if I don’t give a single fuck about your official designation. It’s you I want, not a designation category.”
“But… but you’re alphas. You need an omega.”
He cocks his head. “Says who?”
“You were made for omegas,” I say, starting to sound desperate. “Your urges?—”
“My urges worked just fine with you,” Ryder says.
