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I swap my trunks with shorts and grab a clean change of clothes. I’ll shower at work after I get my board. I’m not spending any more time here than I have to, especially not while naked.

“He might want you,” Alden says. “Then what?”

“Then, I guess you call me, but you better be sure.” I open the door to find him blocking my exit.

Those pink splotches are on the verge of hives, a visual representation of how much I’m fucking up this conversation.

“I don’t want to do this, Alden.” A total fucking lie if you ask my body, but I refuse to be ruled by my body. “I’m leaving. I’m saying no. I don’t consent to this. I know you’ll take care of him, so let me go.”

He breathes out a sad exhale that takes the height out of him as his shoulders slump. He steps aside. “Okay.”

I don’t linger. I don’t make eye contact. I don’t give my best friend any reassurance that I’m okay or that we’re okay. I don’t fucking know, to be honest.

I leave through the second entrance, the one I installed in my room so I could avoid Niall.

Leaving them both feels wrong, excruciatingly wrong, but I put one foot in front of the other until I reach my car. Everything inside me says to go back inside. My brain screams at me that I’m abandoning my omega, that I have to go back and knot him and make him mine. That Alden is mine too.

My brain is fucking stupid. Fuck being an alpha. This is bullshit.

9 ALDEN

Last year

The living room is dark when I return from the grocery store. Dishes clang rhythmically in the dishwasher. Our dishwasher is so loud, Ty and I usually watch TV in another room so we can hear.

Light glows from the kitchen where Tyler stands before the sink, shirtless in gray sweatpants with his back to me, smelling delicious. Niall is out of view, but his scent is stronger there than in my room.

The tightness in Tyler’s shoulders projects his irritation. Tyler is grumpy at baseline, but I know when my best friend hates someone, and he hates Niall, no matter how much he tries to act otherwise. His scent is stronger, spicy in a way that promises he’s teetering on the precipice of a rut he’s long overdue for.

Maybe that’s why he’s been even more of an asshole lately, reclusive and aloof.

“Need any help?” Niall asks from somewhere unseen.

“No,” Tyler barks.

I should stop watching like a voyeur, but I can’t. Tyler is out of his room, and I know he’ll disappear when he sees me. I miss him.

“But I’m lonely,” Niall whines playfully.

Tyler’s shoulders rise with a fortifying breath. “And I wish I were alone, but here we are.” He attacks a pot with a scrub brush, clanging the metal against the sink.

Niall sighs melodramatically in that bratty way he does when he wants something. “I’m very good at taking direction. Just tell me what to do.”

“Fine. Go help Alden with the groceries.”

Tyler raises his gaze to meet mine in the mirror made by the light on the window over the sink, like he knew I was there all along.

Maybe he did. He knows my scent better than anyone else, knows me so well sometimes it’s like he’s reading my thoughts.

“An omega never lifts a finger during their heat,” Niall says as I round the corner into the kitchen.

“You asked for a chore and I gave you one.” Ty pumps more soap onto the brush and scrubs the pot with more vigor. “And you aren’t in heat.”

“Not yet.” Niall trails his hand down the counter, grazing Tyler’s arm on the way to me.

My hackles raise, and my chest pinches.

“Hey, babe.” He pecks me on the cheek. “Did they have my brownies this time?”