Page 84 of A Pack for the Wedding
"Luna's always fast," Harper points out. "Remember Tyler? She went on one date with that guy, and by the end of the week, he was picking her up from work."
"Tyler didn't get weird when she wanted a night to herself," Maren counters. "That's the part that bugs me. Luna canceled brunch with me two weeks ago because Derek was upset she'd been 'unavailable' all Saturday. She went to thefarmer's market, Harp. For two hours."
"He said that?Unavailable?"
"That's the word Luna used. And she said it like it was a perfectly reasonable complaint. Like she was the one who needed to explain herself." Maren takes the prosecco back, drinks, and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. "I don't know. Do you guys think I'm reading too much into it?"
I think about the last time I saw Luna, pacing the tree line back at the campfire with her phone pressed to her ear, looking stressed. Between that and the possessive undercurrents in the stories she’s been telling us lately, I’m definitely starting to get a weird vibe from this guy too.
"Some alphas are just like that," Harper says. She shifts in the jacuzzi, one arm resting along the edge. "Possessive doesn't always mean controlling. Ben got a little intense early on too, before we figured out how to communicate about it."
"Ben got intense aboutplanning your dates," Maren corrects. "Not about you having waffles without him. There's a difference."
Harper concedes this with a tilt of her head.
"I just hope she's paying attention to the pattern," Maren says, quieter now. "Because from the outside, it looks like every time she tries to take a breath, he just wraps around her and squeezes a little tighter."
We sit with that for a second. The jets churn. A moth spirals around the deck light above us, tapping erratically against the glass.
"We should talk to her face to face," I say. "Not an intervention, just—"
"Just making sure she knows how we see it," Harper finishes.
"Exactly."
Maren nods. Then her gaze drifts over to me. The heavy concern on her face slowly dissolves into a knowing, entirely too smug little smirk.
"Speaking of alphas," Maren says.
I groan and sink an inch lower into the bubbles. "Oh, I know exactly where this is going."
"I mean, it is kind of the elephant in the hot tub," Maren says innocently.
"Agreed," Harper says. "They're your scent matches, which is basically the universe sending you a certified letter sayingthese ones, right here. So... what's up with that?"
I blow a long breath through my lips and sink lower until the water hits my chin. "I mean, my mom was a perfect scent match with my dad."
"You never told me that," Maren says, her smirk dropping instantly.
"They were perfect on paper. Perfect chemistry. The whole biological fairy tale. She used to tell me about it when I was little.How she walked into a room and justknew. How everything clicked into place. The absolute certainty of it." I pause, the memory tasting bitter. "They were divorced by the time I was like six."
A heavy silence settles over the hot tub, broken only by the churning water.
"A scent match tells you there's a biological pull," I say. "It doesn't tell you that you actually want the same things in life. It doesn't magically sort out whether your goals line up, or whether you agree on what a future is supposed to look like. It just means your body saysyes. And my mom's body saidyes, she built a whole life around that, and then she ended up a single mom struggling to pay rent on a tiny two-bedroom apartment."
"So yeah," I add. "The pull with the guys is definitely there. But I'm not going to mistake chemistry for true compatibility. I already watched someone do that."
"Well, I guess your stress haze is actually doing you a favor, then," Maren points out softly. "Not being able to fully smell them must make it a lot easier to keep your head clear."
"Totally," I concede. I guess the muted scents help a lot in keeping me from losing my mind in that apartment. "But my point still stands."
Nobody says anything for a few beats. The jacuzzi hums. The air smells like pine sap, chlorine, and the mineral scent of the lake.
"That's fair," Maren says finally.
But Harper tilts her head, studying me. "I don't think we're saying the scent match is the whole answer, though, Beth. What I'm saying is, you actuallylikethem. Outside of the biology."
"Of course I like them. They're good people."
