Page 110 of Torment Me Knot
Nobody speaks getting out of the car. My legs carry me toward the door and I'm not entirely sure how. The sky is too wide. Espie has my hand and she doesn't look back, just pulls, and I follow.
She takes us straight through to the patio. The chair. She doesn't ask, just tugs us toward it and we go, alphas included. Espie drops into the blankets and pulls me with her. Cedar and linen and oakwood and Earl Grey, all of it pressed into the fabric around us. I push Kev to the left. Espie nudges Lex to the right and tips her head at Ezra until he moves in behind her. None of them say a word. They just go where we put them.
It doesn't make sense. Our omega sides don't care.
Kev's shoulder rests against mine. Lex's legs tangle with mine. Ezra's purr starts low at Espie's back and works through all of us. I bury my face in Espie’s hair and drag in a breath. Gardenia. Still there. Still ours. Still real.
For a moment nobody asks anything of anyone. The purr moves through us all and I close my eyes.
Espie pulls her knees to her chest. “How did they find us?” Her voice is steady. Just. “How did they know we'd be there?”
Kev scrubs a hand over his eyes before pulling out his phone. “Ronan. I need a protection detail. Full perimeter guard at the very least.”
A pause.
“We encountered two hostiles at the nursery on Ferris.”
Another pause.
“And I need a flag.”
His voice drops. We all hear it anyway.
“Seraphine Vidal. Whereabouts unknown. Possibly compromised.”
Silence lands heavy over the patio.
“They weren’t trying to take us,” I say quietly.
Everyone looks at me.
“They were confirming we were there.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Espie
Ihaven't slept. A hundred fucking years would be too soon if I ever saw one ofthemagain. I pull Kev's flannel off the back of a kitchen chair and press it to my face. The fabric is soft, cold, holds nothing but oakwood and dry whiskey, muted like he's been wrung out. I grip it tight and keep walking.
“Grab Lex's scarf,” I call to Aubrey. “The one by the door.”
Aubrey holds it to his chest as though it holds the answer to everything. “I've got it. What about Ezra's sweater?”
I indicate the heap of crumpled navy. Clothing won't bring back our missing alpha. I know this, but it doesn't make any difference. “It's on the couch.”
We move through the living room, gathering. Needing. Acting on a crazy impulse embedded in my genes, Aubrey at my side unable to deny the same ridiculous urges.
Our arms are full when I stop outside Sera's bedroom. Aubrey stops beside me. Her scent comes beneath the door. I push the door open. Her scent hits me, concentrated and full. Aubrey makes a low sound beside me.
Her room is neat. A duffel sits in the corner. The bed is barely disturbed, and her sweatshirt is draped over the chair by the window. Grey. Oversized. She wore it the morning she made breakfast and pretended she wasn't watching us eat.
I cross the room, lift it off the chair and push my face into it.
Basil and blood orange and cedar, concentrated, nothing between me and her scent now, just her, just Sera, right there in the fabric. The breath that comes out of me shakes all the way up from somewhere I can't name. I press the sweatshirt harder against my face and stand there in the middle of her room with my arms full and my eyes burning and something sits in my throat that won't go down.
I don't cry. I won't cry. I press my eyes shut and breathe her in instead.
Aubrey wraps around me from behind, his chin dropping to my shoulder, his own breath gone ragged.
