Page 7 of Knotting Before Them

I approached the house with my heart hammering inside my chest. Noah was outside, collecting logs, when he saw my truck ambling down the road. He glanced over his shoulder, staying away from the spot I usually parked, and I cursed, wishing I met Wylder first.

Wylder was easier. He would see Julia was ours. It wasn’t hard to see.

But Noah? He was stubborn, set in his ways after years of suffering. I couldn’t blame him. People grieved in different ways, and Noah coped the only way he knew how.

I took a breath and looked over at Julia, her eyes on Noah, looking interested. I wanted to ask her if she felt something when she looked at him, when she looked at me. I wanted to know if it was as obvious to her as it was to me.

“Stay here, okay?”

Julia furrowed her eyebrows in the cutest way possible, and I groaned, trying to keep my feelings at bay.

“What’s up?” Noah called, still not seeing I had someone in the car with me.

I moved closer, so close that he dropped the logs, sensing something was wrong.

“I need you to keep your mind open.”

“What are you—”

I didn’t have time to prepare him. In that moment, like I never said a word, she opened the passenger door and dropped into the snow, almost falling as she did.

Noah’s eyes followed the noise and locked on. Tiny frame, big curtain of black hair. Freckles, high cheekbones, and a loud orange coat.

“No.” That was all that he said.

Great.

The girl winced atthe bluntness of my words, but I didn’t spare her a second glance as I headed inside.

Theo shook his head, turning to her. “I’ll talk to him.”

There was nothing to talk about. He knew I hated visitors. Whoever she was, she wasn’t welcome.

I was removing my thick coat when I heard Theo on my heels, closing the front door and coming after me.

“Noah, hear me out.”

I grunted a reply as he followed me into the kitchen.

“Noah, she just wants to rent a room. She’s an artist and—”

“Since when do we rent rooms?”

I meant to grab a bottle of water in the fridge, but my fingers closed around the beer bottle instead. I hated people. I hated their pitiful looks, hated their happiness around their mates.

I hated everything here, and if I didn’t hate the outside world too, I’d leave this community behind.

But I was born here, right here at the bottom of this mountain. This land belonged to my family since the beginning of time, the land my dads offered to my mother. It was the land I wassupposed to offer to our mate.

Now, it was a sign of our failure.

We lived this shallow existence, just surviving day by day. The furniture was dated from when it belonged to my parents. We were supposed to redecorate for our omega, but that never happened.

The house was the salt in a wound that would never heal, and I preferred to suffer alone. In silence. With a beer in my hand.

“Send her away,” I told Theo.

“You’re not listening to me…”