Page 30 of Torment Me Knot
“Don’t forget to turn,” Lex says.
I snap back to the present and make the turn I almost drove past. Our neighborhood is quiet, old-growth trees, big houses, the kind of street where you wave at your neighbors and none of you ever actually talk. The kind of street where pack families raise their children behind closed doors and everyone extends the courtesy of not asking questions.
The house sits at the end of the block exactly as it always has. Brick walls. Three floors. The porch stretching wide around the front. Familiar. Safe.
Except now I can’t look at it without imagining what it would feel like to walk inside believing there’s no way back out.
Home to us.
A whole life lived inside those walls with Lex and Ezra — shared meals, routines, years spent building something steady after we gave up expecting mates to ever find us.
I'm bringing my mates home. After a lifetime of telling myself this day would never come, after watching my friends pair off while I threw myself into work and pretended it didn't sting, after building a pack with Lex and Ezra, the three of us understanding quietly that some people just don't get the fairy tale, I'm bringing them home. Plus one terrified alpha we barely know.
It should feel triumphant. I should be over the goddamn moon. I'm not. I'm terrified. One wrong move and this shatters.
They're here, though. Maybe that's enough to start with.
I pull into the driveway and put the car in park, hands staying on the wheel.
“We need to get them inside.” Ezra, from the middle row. “They're cold.”
I know they are. I didn’t bring a blanket with me and part of me knows I’m failing already. My body just doesn't want to move. Moving means opening that door and facing whatever comes next, and I have no idea what comes next.
Lex's hand covers mine on the steering wheel. “One thing at a time, Kev.”
One thing at a time. Right. I nod once and open my door.
The house-scent hits me as soon as I step onto the driveway. Oakwood and bergamot and fresh linen, layered over years of meals cooked and evenings spent together. My scent and Lex's and Ezra's, soaked into the walls and the furniture and the very bones of the place. Maverick said it would help. Said pack-scent registers differently to an omega than stranger-scent, that the match changes something at the biology level, that eventually it would feel like safety instead of threat. I'm holding onto that. Right now it's the only thing I've got.
I circle to the back of the car and open the door. The Omegas blink up at me from their tangle of limbs. They look so small.Espie's violet eyes are huge in her thin face, and Aubrey's hazel-green gaze is focused, present in a way it hasn't been in months.
They don't move.
“We're home,” I say, and the words come out rougher than I intended. I clear my throat. “This is home. Our home. Your home, if you'll let it be.”
They stay wrapped around each other, watching me. Not blinking much. I've seen that in deposition rooms — witnesses who've already decided that whatever happens next, they're not going to be separated. The afternoon light catches them through the car window, and I see them. Really see them. Their clothing is far too thin for this. Their arms are marked from where the lines were. Their wrists. I can't look at their wrists.
Something tightens hard in my chest and I shove it aside immediately. There's a version of this where I stand here processing it and a version where I get them inside before they collapse.
I want to wrap them in blankets. Feed them until they stop shaking. I want to fix this. Fix them, but they watch me like I'm the thing they need protecting from.
Sera appears beside me. Her scent mingles with mine in the small space near the car door, and I fight the urge to growl. She's just standing there. Someone familiar to them, maybe. Someone who isn't me.
I wait. Count heartbeats. Five. Ten. Fifteen.
“Whenever you're ready,” I say, the voice I use with spooked witnesses on the stand. “We're not going anywhere. It’s safe inside.”
Espie's eyes flick to the house, then back to me, then to Aubrey. Her fingers curl in his hair. He makes a small sound, not quite a word, and presses closer to her.
From the front door, quiet enough that it might not have been meant for me: “They don't know that yet.” Lex. His voice is even. Careful.
I know. God, I know.
Ezra's scent goes deliberately flat. He's muting himself, tamping down the fresh-linen alpha notes that might read as threat. Lex moves to the front door and holds it open, letting them see the interior before they have to commit to entering it. Lex, who understands that every choice needs to look like a choice.
Sera steps past me, and crouches beside the open car door. “Sweetheart.” Her voice goes somewhere I didn't expect it to go. Soft in a way that makes me feel like I've walked in on something private. “I’ll help you. Take my hand.”
She holds it out. Palm up. Waiting.
