Page 51 of Pack’s Prize
“It’s fine,” she said, and I shook my head, but she continued. “No, really. I don’t know how it happened like this, but I’m glad it did. Honestly. It was good for me to see him today.” She squeezed her shoulders up to her ears, then let them drop. “It was like… closure. Now I know I’ve moved on.” Her tight smile didn’t reach her eyes. “Icanmove on.”
“Ava…” I said, but she turned and started walking again.
“God, he really is an ass, isn’t he?” she laughed, but I could hear the tears in her voice. I jogged a few paces to catch up. “Listen,” she said suddenly, as I fell into step beside her once again. “I’d prefer if you didn’t tell Theo and Elias about meeting him. I don’t want them to… to worry.”
“To beat him up, you mean,” I said, half serious.
“Yeah. Theo needs to keep his knuckles safe if he ever wants to start painting again.”
I wanted to tell her–about the afternoons he’d been spending locked in his bedroom, about the sketches I’d noticed littering his desk, the sketches I hadn’t seen in years, about the smell of oil paint, leaking out from under his office door–but it wasn’t mine to tell. I hadn’t even told Theo that I knew.
Instead I laughed, and asked, “And Elias?”
“No way.” She smiled back. It was watery, but it was there. “Elias is too soft for prison, are you kidding me?”
We rounded the last corner before our apartment building, and I couldn’t help myself. I reached out and grabbed her hand, squeezing it tightly in my own once before dropping it.
“Ava,” I said, “in all seriousness, please, tell me, if he ever tries anything with you. You know that we’re here for you. I’m here for you.”Even when you are gone,I didn’t say. I could barelythinkit. I would have to hope the flowers worked. I should gettenthousand. “Promise me,” I said.
She blinked rapidly, pursing her lips together. Her voice was quiet when she finally spoke. “I promise.”
CHAPTERFORTY-NINE
Ava
There wasChampagne back at the apartment, and a brunch spread that Elias and Theo had gotten delivered while we were at the lawyer’s as a surprise.
“What would have happened if it hadn’t worked out?” Michael scolded as we sat around enough croissants and quiches and crepes for ten alphas, Theo pouring tall flutes of bubbling golden wine. Elias just laughed.
“Then this would have been your consolation brunch, I guess,” he said. “But we all knew it would be fine. After all, you had Ava there, and remember? She’sperfect.” He raised his glass.
I smiled, and raised my own to clink the crystal flutes together, but inside, I could feel my heart peeling away from my ribcage, sinking into my stomach.
Ihadplayed my part perfectly, hadn’t I?
I thought back on the dinners out, the gallery opening and the conveniently-inconvenient start of my heat. How I’d moved into their penthouse apartment and gone out dressed in their gifts. How I’d burrowed into their chests in public, held tightly to their arms.
How I’d slept in their beds and covered myself with their scents, had spent my heat with these men and woken up exhausted but feeling more like myself than I had in years.
I’d done a flawless job of convincing everyone that I was the perfect omega for this pack, that they were the perfect pack for me.
The only problem was I had also convinced myself.
If I looked like I was totally gone for these alphas, it wasn’t because I was a good actress.
No. It was because Iwasgone for them.
Did I love them? I looked from Michael, to Elias, to Theo, the three of them chatting and smiling over coffee and Champagne. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to say love, but…
These alphas were special.
I had thought that Roman’s pack had been the way things had to be: a single alpha leading the pack, the others held existing in a strict hierarchy based on strength and power and some amount of fear, or at least, deference. But, as Michael toasted to his success and Theo poked him in his puffed-up chest, Elias slapping their leader on the shoulder so hard he spilled his Champagne, I now knew that wasn’t true. Not even close.
They had shown me a different way of being in a pack, a way that felt less about the intangible preciousness of an omega, and more about the very real, preciousness of…me. Of each of us as individuals, and all of us together.
And I… I wanted to be a part of something like that.
My wine turned sour in my mouth.