Page 80 of Slashed Bonds

“You’re okay sticking with these addictive bastards, Crowe? If they weird you out, I can make them hand you over to Greenie and his pack.”

She snickers.

And ignores, entirely, the way my arm tightens across the Omega’s collarbones.

I know how it looks. I’ve got a forearm across her throat like a man about to break a dove’s neck. Anyone with sense would read it as a threat, and anyone with more sense would read it as blackmail by strength.

Mori doesn’t read it as anything.

She’s leaning back into it. Her weight’s on my chest. Her hands are loose at her sides, and her scent is doing the thing it did after the scrimmage, jasmine coming up under the cherry, sweet, slow, impossible to hide.

She isn’t afraid. She’s never once been afraid of me. I’d like that engraved somewhere.

Call it obsession.

Call it OCD for an Omega I don’t have the right to claim.

I’ve already called it both, and hell, I’m still here.

“They’re good,” she says.

Dry. Level.

To Roz, not to me.

“I’d like the team to see daylight tomorrow instead of being six feet under. This feels like the safer option.”

“No shit.”

That’s one of Greenie’s pack mates. Tall, dark-haired, a cringe on his face as he looks at me over her head.

“Nik. You’ve got some dangerous obsession going with this Omega. She’s a joker card in our deck, sure, but you don’t have to be that serious about it.”

I grin.

Wide. Slow. The one that makes the second line find something to do on the other side of the room.

“She’s not a wildcard in our deck,” I correct him. “She’s my wildcard. Get that straight.”

“Obsession would be a kind word,” his brother says. I usually remember them as one unit. “For that level of addiction.”

Greenie laughs.

“It’s pretty hot. See, this is what we need. We need to be obsessed with an Omega like that.”

“Not a chance.”

Both of them. At once.

Same pitch, same timing, same flat dismissal.

And it clicks.

I’ve known these two since August. I’ve seen them on the ice, on the bench, in the kitchen at three in the morning eating cereal out of the box. And I’ve never once looked at them side by side and done the arithmetic.

“Wait.” I turn my head. “You’re twins?”

They smirk.