Page 52 of The Rust in Her Hair

I grab his wrist.

"I’m good," I say, my voice rough.

Nico pulls back and stares at me like I've lost my mind. His dark eyes drop to where I'm tenting my shorts like a teenager, then come back up. "Are you kidding me, Mack? You're hard as a damn rock."

I grin, then reach down and adjust myself in my shorts. "This was about you. You've had a day." I roll my sore jaw, working the ache out of the hinge. "Besides, a little edging never killed anybody. Builds character." I catch him still frowning at me and shoot him a wink. "You'll thank me when I'm insufferable about it later."

A smile spreads across Nico’s face, then he grabs the back of my neck and kisses me hard. All the leftover tension pours into it, teeth and tongue and not much finesse.

I’m sure he can taste himself and he doesn't care. He kisses me deeper, one hand fisted in my hair like he's holding onto something in a current. I let him have it.

When he finally pulls back, we're both breathing rough, foreheads together in the shitty yellow light of the gym.

Then he sighs. Long and heavy, the kind that comes up from a man's boots. Then he shifts, pulling up his shorts and stuffing his semi-hard cock away.

"I gotta figure out what to do about this whole Lyra thing," he says to the floor more than to me.

"There’s no need to figure it out tonight." I thumb the crease between his eyebrows, the one that's been carved there since this whole mess started. "The girl's been asleep all day. It can wait until tomorrow. Then we’ll talk to her, figure out what we can do to help and go from there."

Nico drags a hand down his face. "It’s not that easy."

"Why not?" I lean against the weight rack and cross my arms. "'Cause from where I'm standing, we took in a friend of Owen's who got roughed up. Tomorrow, we find out who did it, track him down, and teach him that it’s not good to treat omegas like that. It ain't exactly rocket surgery."

Nico looks at me, unimpressed, the way he does when one of the crew suggests something that's gonna get somebody's hand caught in a saw. "She's a Van Houten," he finally says.

"Yeah, I know." I shrug. "We've got a rich girl in the house. Sounds like an upgrade."

He doesn't laugh. That's how I know it's bad, because Nico always throws me at least a courtesy snort.

"Her father is Aldric Van Houten." He watches me while he says it, like he's waiting for it to land.

"Yeah, I know who her daddy is." I sit down on the weight bench. "I was sitting right there when Renata went off about him. The Alliance, the news, ‘packs are the downfall of civilization’, all of it." I blow out a breath. "Believe me, I heard the whole sermon."

"And I keep thinking about what her father will do when he finds his daughter hiding in a house with four men."

"First off, nobody knows we're a pack." I hold up a finger. "Not really. Not anybody who'd tell. Far as the world knows, this house holds a married couple, putting up with a few roommates, while a friend crashes on the couch." I hold up a second finger. "And second, she's what, twenty-two? Twenty-three? She's a grown woman. Last I checked, grown women get to sleep where they damn well please. Her daddy doesn't get a vote on that just 'cause he doesn't like it."

Nico pulls in a slow breath and holds it a second. He does this when he has to explain a hard truth to somebody who isn't going to like it.

I brace myself.

"I get that you didn't grow up around omegas," he says in an overly kind way, like he’s worried he’ll offend me, "but that's not the way the world works when it comes to them."

His voice drops as he steps closer. "An unmated omega living under her father's roof isn't a person, Mack. She's property. His property. Same as his car and his house and his money." His hands flex. "She ran, and Owen brought her here, and the second Aldric figures out where she went, this stops being about a scared girl on our couch. In his eyes, and in the eyes of every court in this state, we didn't take in a friend. We stole from him."

My pack alpha’s words sit in the rubbery, sweaty air.

I open my mouth, but nothing good comes out, so I close it again.

This is the part I'm no use for.

I’m not good with serious shit. I’m better at parties or poker games.

Things like this make me uncomfortable, but I can’t do anything to fix it. So for once I keep my mouth shut and let it be as bad as it is.

"So." I finally say, all humor bled out of my voice. "Are you gonna kick her out?"

Nico’s head snaps up. "No," he practically snaps at me. "God, no. I told her she could stay, and I meant it. I'm not putting a hurt girl back out on the street because she’s got a shitty last name."