Page 58 of Knotted their Beauty

“How long has this been going on?” Ves asks.

“I’ve always had good days and bad ones. As long as I keep a decent diet, exercise, and sleep enough, I’m typically alright. Sometimes, when I start to feel as if no one wants me around and I’m lonely, I go see my mom. She’ll shower me in love, food, and the threat of poisoning me if I step out of line.

“Then I head back onto the road. Others, like now, I disappear and wallow. I was going to hang out in a hotel and then rent a cabin somewhere when I got tired of that. My family knows I need space sometimes. As long as I check in within the two week mark and show up to work, they leave me be.”

“Do you have a trigger for it?” Arlo asks. “I have anxiety that makes me want to claw my skin off. I’m convinced everyone hates me and I can’t do anything right.”

“Your anxiety is a lying hoe,” I say bluntly. “You’re adorable and everyone loves you. Calista thinks you walk on the damn moon.”

“How can you do that for Arlo and not yourself?” Ves asks.

“It’s different,” Baron and I say at the same time, and our omega looks between us.

“It is,” Baron shrugs. “I take my meds and it evens me out.”

“I don’t like them,” I mutter. “It affects my creativity and I feel like a robot. One week of depression here and there isn’t a big deal.”

“It is for us,” Ves says. “It could be for Cali. Lennox, you need to tell us when you’re feeling like this. This is all so new, we need to be willing to talk to each other or this might not work.”

“Are you going to take your own advice?” I ask knowingly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Oh man, this should be good.

VES

This probably isn’t the time to get defensive.

Not that my instincts know that.

It’s taking everything I have not to turn into a complete raging dickhead and start barking orders like I’m some big alpha, but I’m hanging on.

By a fucking thread.

That’s not how I should handle Lennox, or any of these men, though, and I do know that.

Which is why I should probably answer his question and elaborate on why I’m going to be insufferable at times.

I blow out a breath and push my fingers back through my hair. “I’m going to try.”

“Convincing,” Lennox grunts, and I clench my jaw and ignore that comment.

“Considering the way you two tracked us down, I’m sure you’ve done your homework on Cali and I, but I’m going to give you the run down, anyway.”

“Oh, goodie.”

“Hey,” I snap. “If you want me to practice what I preach, I expect everyone to listen if I decide to share. It’s hard enough after everything we’ve been through, I don’t need this kind of shit from…” I close my eyes and take a deep breath, trying to calm down because Lennox doesn’t deserve this right now. None of them do. “This is not easy for me to talk about, I’d be content never bringing it up again, but since I plan on having the three of you around until I am senile and forget who you are⁠—”

“So, like, next year?” Baron mumbles with a smirk, quickly raising his hands in surrender when I growl. “Just trying to lighten the mood while our resident golden retriever is channeling his inner pitbull.”

I roll my eyes but can’t help the smile that tugs at my lips when Arlo snuggles a little closer and rests his hand over my heart. “I met Cali’s incubator at a bar. I was working a case in Virginia, a serial we didn’t think we’d ever solve, and I needed to let off some steam. I was just planning on having a few drinks before I went home but this good-looking blond was chatting me up so I stayed a little longer than intended.” The collective growl that echoes through the hotel room is comical, and I can’t quite tell if it’s jealousy or possessiveness, or both, but I’m not mad about it. “To make a long story a little shorter, she put something in my drink, got me to take her back to my place. I have no memory of that night, but I woke up with a killer hangover and a bond bite I didn’t ask for, and a psycho trying to move in with me. I managed to shake her until she showed up seven months later extremely pregnant. I ran DNA then tried to make a relationship work but she was unstable at best.”

“At worst?” Arlo asks as he tilts his head back to look up at me.

“Two months postpartum, she tried drowning Cali in the bath, knocking me out with a baseball bat when I stopped her, then attempted to kidnap my daughter while running me over with her car.”

“Jesus,” Baron grunts as Lennox growls, “Holy shit.”