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Or, I could drive to South Loop and see Dante. Really, there's only one right answer.
Chapter 19
Iggy
The front door crashing open echoes through the house. Cass and I glance at each other, then back to the empty room at hand, considering the unthinkable: an omega's nest in our warehouse. I sit on my ass, back against the wall, forearms draped over my knees, staring at the product of my insomnia.
So far, it’s not much. An empty room that smells musty, with a shitty old blue carpet, a ceiling fan that clicks as it spins, and a half window that we should have been replaced when we renovated the rest of the house, but none of us realized it didn’t have a lock and didn’t close right.
"I’ve said it before… this isn’t going to be enough."
I grunt in response. Imogen won't care that it’s not the fanciest nest in town. If she cared about shit like that, she wouldn’t have shared her heat with us. She wouldn’t have come home with Cass, she wouldn’t be dancing at our club.
She wouldn’t feel like she could be ours, like we fit together, like she's pack.
They don’t give her enough credit.
I haven’t slept more than a few hours since she left us. At first, when I found out she was engaged, I was pissed, and, honestly, hurt. But then I got my head out of my ass and realized, if that was it, if we were just going to give up on her that easily, then we must not have wanted her that badly—and we didn’t deserve her.
We’ve never wanted an omega. I’ve never wanted an omega. I watched my fathers use and abuse my mother in our shitty backwoods pack my entire childhood. I watched on as she listened to the shit they spewed her way, took the beatings and random demands for sex, accepted her lot in life as a submissive omega surrounded by domineering, violent alphas. When I was finally old and strong enough to help her fight back, she refused it.
I never understood why. Even when she insisted it was just the way packs worked, that I didn’t respect the dynamics of our designations, that as an omega, she knew she’d always have to bow down, I couldn't understand why she wouldn't just fight back.
When I met my brothers, we opened a safe haven under the guise of a strip club, and I met other omegas, I figured my mother was wrong. My parents were all wrong. They were rotten, and they bred that rot into me, because I felt the inexplicable urge to fight and fuck, too, just like my fathers did. But I rose above them, I did what my mother couldn't. I rose above my designation.
We, my family, were the bad ones. Other omegas had drive, they had the will to carve out their own lot in life. Submission wasn’t about letting someone bigger or stronger step on your neck—it was about redefining our roles, letting someone bigger or stronger support you when you needed it, to trust that an alpha could provide.
I’ve learned these things over the years, but I’ve been terrified of fucking up, and becoming like my fathers, letting that rot inside me manifest and destroy.
But Imogen showed me I’m not like them. I’m dominant. I’m an alpha. But I can be more than my designation, more than my gene pool, and I can be right for her. We just need her to give us a chance.
And if we don’t do something drastic, like build her a fucking nest, how could she ever think we aren’t serious about her?
Cass sighs, pacing the room, his long hair blowing back from his face, the ceiling fan stuck on high. I hoped it would help air out the dank room. It hasn’t.
"There’s not even a bathroom." He continues to add unhelpful shit like we're not already lost in a pile of it. Not the least of our problems being, we haven’t even asked her, which means she definitely hasn’t agreed to let us court her, or whatever it is real packs do. I'm usually a steel wall, but even Cass's insecurities are getting to me.
He’s right. It's not enough. It’s the largest room in the whole warehouse besides our common space downstairs, but there’s no attached bathroom, so none of us took it as our bedroom and we used it for storage instead.
"We could knock down a wall," I mutter. My and Red's rooms are on opposite sides. We’d lose a bedroom, but if we were really doing this…
Maybe we are all fucked in the head, thinking we can change her mind, to not marry those rich pricks from the Hills. Maybe this is useless, and we're delusional, assuming one heat changes everything.
I'd forgotten Red was here when he storms into the room looking wild, pieces of his straight black hair going off in different directions, crazy energy radiating off him like a tsunami. I don’t need to be in his pack to know he’s had a day.
"You find her?" Cass asks hopefully.
Red nods, opening and closing his mouth like he can't decide which words to share. We've been waiting for a status update since he insisted on talking to Imogen alone. Apparently, Cass and I were a liability or some shit.
I definitely was. Cass has been lookin’ a little shady these last few days, too. We might have tried to kidnap her or convince her to fuck in the backseat of the truck or something, then we’d be off track, not showing her we're serious about courting, and that it wasn't just about great sex. Scratch that—phenomenal sex. Life-changing, brain-altering sex.
I rub my chest, fingertips ghosting over the scratch marks from her long, sharp, red-painted fingernails digging into me while I knotted her, only now healing. They were all over me, red and bloody and needy. I've been thinking about getting a tattoo on their outline before they fade completely. The memory of her taking it so deep and hard and fast, loving every second, her demands matching my own. Rough. Raw. On the edge of too much, yet still not enough. I don't know if it's like that with every omega or if our chemistry was just that fucking raw, but I think it was us, her and me, Imogen and Dante.
"And? Where was she? Is she okay?" Cass panics, crowding Red so hard he nearly backs out of the room. Instead, Red holds his ground, lips curling up into a devious fucking smile. He pulls a thin scrap of fabric, like a ribbon, out of his pocket. "I found her. She was on a date with Stevens Pack."
Cass’s shoulders drop dejectedly, so I prod, "And that’s good news?" Since he's smiling and all.
He stands in front of me, dropping the blue ribbon into my hands. His grin doesn’t waver. I take the material, getting irritated with my brother for not answering a straight fucking question when a hint of cherries hits my nose.
