Page 112 of Torment Me Knot
Aubrey starts sorting. I start layering. I already know what goes where, cedar next to linen next to oakwood, the scents building in an order that makes something in my hindbrain go quiet and focused. Time slips sideways. The kitchen sounds recede. The cold air on the patio doesn't register. There is only the nest and getting it right. It has to be perfect. Nothing else is good enough.
Aubrey smooths down a wrinkle. I tug Kev’s flannel into a better position, thicker fabric shielding the outer edge. Together we build the nest; arranging, tucking, pressing everything into shape.
Finally, Aubrey lays Sera’s gray sweatshirt at the centre, exactly where we’ll sleep wrapped around it. The deep, restless tension inside me finally goes quiet when we finally crawl over the lip of our creation and curl in the pillowed middle.
The blankets settle around us. I pull Sera’s sweatshirt against my face and breathe her in while Aubrey curls into my side.
Then I notice the alphas. They’ve stopped at the edge of the patio instead of coming closer.
Kev stands to the left, shoulders jammed straight. Lex holds himself still with his hands in his pockets, eyes fixed on us like he’s waiting for permission to breathe. Ezra stands nearest the door with his arms folded low across his stomach, his scent edged with fear and exhausted relief.
None of them move toward the nest.
They’re waiting for us to decide if they belong in it.
Mine.Not a decision. Just truth.Mine.These three men who have not once, not in any moment I can name, taken anything I did not offer. Who built a greenhouse and bought heritage tomatoes and held me while I cried and saidneeding is allowed here.
Mine. Ours. The knowing is absolute. It is the deepest thing in me, sitting below fear, below conditioning. It is simply there, immovable, the same as my own heartbeat.
Aubrey tenses around me, his knowing pressing against mine. The two of us are certain together. I reach out from the nest and open my hand.
“Alpha,” I say. “Please.”
Aubrey lifts his head from my hair. He studies Kev across the nest, and his want is in the air between them, clear as anything he could have spoken.
Kev crosses the patio in four steps, all that careful restraint disappearing at once. Lex is already coming from the other side, and Ezra has dropped his arms and is moving with the same unhurried speed, all three of them converging.
Kev settles on Aubrey's side, drawing Aubrey in against his chest in one motion, his big arms wrapping full around him, dropping his chin to Aubrey's head. His oakwood opens, thewhiskey note warming, and Aubrey makes a relieved sound against his collarbone. Lex slides one arm around my shoulders, his sandalwood and Earl Grey settling around us both. He brings his other hand up and presses it to the back of my head, and the pressure unlocks the tension between my shoulder blades. “Omega,” he murmurs against my hair. Ezra comes in behind me, curling around my back, his purr starting low in his chest before he's even fully settled.
“We've got you. Both of you. Right here,” Kev says.
The purr moves through the nest and into my bones. Lex’s chest vibrates against mine and Kev’s deeper rumble joins it a second later, filling the patio with sound until my whole body starts to unclench.
Ezra holds me steady from behind. Lex is warm against my front, heartbeat slow under my hand. Kev stretches across the blankets beside Aubrey, broad and solid and real.
The nest smells like pack. Like cedar and sandalwood and linen and oakwood and Aubrey's chamomile and my gardenia and underneath it all, wound through the very center, blood orange and crushed basil and warm cedar. Sera, still here, held in the fabric we built around her.
“She should be here,” Aubrey says. Quiet. Not asking for an answer.
“She will be.” Ezra's voice, steady at my back. “There’s no option where she isn’t.”
I tip toward the sound of their purring and the heat of their bodies. My thoughts don't disappear. They just soften enough to breathe through. The panic loosens its grip inch by inch.
Heat moves low under my skin, making everything feel sharper and too close to the surface. Aubrey’s scent deepens beside me, cedar richening into something warmer, and I feel the same slow ache building in him too.
Kev's phone buzzes. He reaches for the phone without letting go of Aubrey. One arm stays wrapped around him while the other stretches for the screen.
The second Kev looks down, something in his face gives.
Not all the way.
Enough.
Lex goes still beside me. Ezra's purr catches once before starting again.
Kev lifts his head and finds my eyes first.
“That was Ronan.”
