Page 46 of Knot Your Pawn

But that’s for another day, not today.

Today, we’ve got more serious things to worry about. Like how we’re going to get everyone into the nest in the quickest and safest way possible.

We’ll have to purposefully spread our pheromones in the nest and our bedroom when we get there, since none will be left after the cleanup, but that’s still better than accidentally finding pheromones from other people and setting off Vera and Mathew’s issues.

We’ve got most of the blankets, and some of the pillows, from the nest here, so they smell only of us. Anything that was still left in the nest is currently being washed, so we can grab that from the dryer or the lines whenever we need them.

Once Vera and Mathew’s situation became clear last night —that they couldn’t be around anyone else’s pheromones— Derrick or Timothy opened all the windows and doors to the outside in Mathew’s office and locked the door to the rest of the house. That way, the room could naturally air out overnight.

Which was good thinking of them. Because it meant that we were able to spend most of the day in the office and weren’t stuck outside the whole time.

There were a few moments where pheromones from other people drifted from random places, but we mostly resolved that by simply flooding the space with our own pheromones over and over.

And a nest in the corner of the office, with the couches and desk to keep up a large blanket, like a pillow fort of sorts, to shelter us from the world, was a pretty decent temporary solution. But very clearly only temporary.

I look around the makeshift nest, at every member of the pack.

Luca is sitting near the entrance, that way he can slip out to get some fresh air when things get too much for him, but he’s been staying in here, close to our Omegas, as much as possible. He’s strong. He might not see himself that way, but he is. And I’m glad he’s here.

I’m sure he’ll make a good addition to our pack.

Vera and Mathew are close together, watching something on a tablet, constantly touching each other, even though I don’t think they even notice it. They seem calmer than when we woke up, but I know that pheromone withdrawal symptoms come and go in irregular waves. This might just be a good stretch.

Riley has taken it upon herself to take charge of the new identities for Luca’s family. It’s sweet to watch and I’m sure that it makes the stress of everything going on easier to deal with.

Jorge has gotten himself involved with looking after the kids, even from a distance. Using his connections to find out who of the kids still have living family members who might be able to take them in and looking through Erika’s system to try to find good matches to take in the other kids.

His emotions have been a total roller coaster, up when he manages to find family members, down when there’s nobody for a kid to return to.

I know that technically, the advise is for ‘total rest’ for the Omegas and the rest of the pack, when dealing with pheromone withdrawal, but I guess we can start with that once we get to the nest.

Who am I kidding?

Even in the nest, they’re not going to stop working, they’ll just ‘take things easy’, by which they mean not working for twenty hours straight and not going out on missions, but that’s about it.

My pack is not good at sitting still, at all.

But that’s what makes them so precious too, even while I’ll be cursing them for it later.

Ah, well. At least it’s not boring.

At all.

Ever…

5

Vera

Our nest looks the way it always does, the warm light from outside, the painted walls in soothing colours with the sky at the top and the field with flowers on the lower half, all of it. But it doesn’t smell like it normally does.

It smells empty, which is starting to irritate me, starting to make me itch in my skin.

Even the pillows and blankets we took up with us, which are drenched in our pheromones, don’t manage to take away the empty experience.

I knew that there wouldn’t be any scents left after the place was cleaned, but I never realised how many slivers of scent linger everywhere, even if you don’t think you notice them. I’m now very aware of how many hidden scents there are in our lives, because a total lack of scents is weird, uncanny.

It makes this room feel not right.