Telling Leo shouldn’t have been as ominous as Anders made it seem, but I couldn’t fight the tightness in my gut at the thought of telling him. I didn’t really understand why I owed him an explanation in the first place. He was nothing to me but another overbearing Alpha who didn’t know when to reel it in.
Anders studied me carefully, his piercing gaze raking over my face, peeling back every layer. The way he looked at me, made me feel like he could see right to my soul. I felt vulnerable, naked.
What did he see?
Before I could question him about it, the door to the cabin opened. My stomach dropped.
No, I wasn’t going to be nervous about this. I didn’t have any reason to be. It was just Anders’s words that are making me feel this way. I’m reacting because that’s what they expect me to do…right?
Leo was slightly wet, indicating he had taken a shower before coming inside. He seemed calmer than before, after our weird encounter. But as if he could sense the tension, he stared at us suspiciously.
“Did you have any trouble setting the traps?” I finally asked when the silence became too much.
Leo shook his head, still suspicious.
“We’ll do our rounds tomorrow afternoon,” Anders said. I was relieved that he didn’t force the other topic into conversation. But of course, that was short lived. “Micah.”
I rolled my eyes, before turning to Leo with a glare. “For some reason Anders seems to think I need to tell you that I’m unmated even though it’s none of your damn business.”
Leo’s eyes widened and nostrils flared. I froze, watching him cautiously. I really didn’t understand why this changed anything. They had their own suppressants; they should be in control. In no way should this affect anything. So why?
“You’re…unmated?” Leo finally asked, though the sound came out as more of a growl. Guttural and full of emotions that should not have been present. Emotions that didn’t make sense.
I nodded once, not trusting my own voice.
Leo tilted his head up, closing his eyes and pinching the skin at the bridge of his nose, ever the picture of distress.
“Why the hell does it even matter?” I protested, getting to my feet. I’d had enough of the fucking dramatics.
“How do you not sense it? I’ve been going crazy this whole time because I thought there was something wrongwith me, coveting you when had bonded with another. But–” Leo cut himself off with a roar of frustration, fist slamming into the rotting wood of the cabin wall, successfully putting a hole through it.
“Are you insane?” I screeched, about to make a move for him, but Anders was there, grabbing my arm and yanking me back with such force, I lost my footing and stumbled into him.
“Let’s all be calm about this,” Anders said with warning. “We need to think about this rationally.”
“Rationally? Are you kidding me? He just punched a fucking hole in the wall like a goddamn knothead!”
Leo’s nostrils flared at the insult. He made a step toward me, teeth bared. I faced him, ready to take him on, but then I realized it wasn’t me he was glaring at with such hostility I felt the heat of it from across the room. It was Anders’s hands on me.
“Leo, control yourself or you’ll bring him harm,” Anders said. Something in his tone, in those words, rang all the alarm bells in my head, but I didn’t know why. There was an unspoken conversation flowing between the two through looks alone.
After a few moments of awkward silence, Leo took a deep breath and came over to the table. He approached slowly enough that my instincts didn’t flare up. He didn’t sit, there weren’t enough chairs for that, instead, he leaned against the wall next to me, eyes never leaving me as Anders pulled out my chair and gestured for me to sit down.
I sat, despite not wanting to, and waited for some sort of explanation.
“Do you truly feel nothing? No pull? No instinctual gravitation?” Anders asked.
I frowned. “Am I supposed to?”
I mean I thought they were attractive because they were attractive. I didn’t think that there was anything special about that.
Anders sighed. “When an Alpha finds his soul partner, sometimes their baser instincts take control. I’m not excusing his behavior but providing context.”
I laughed, “I’m not your partner. I’m not anyone’s soul partner.”
Leo’s jaw clenched.
“Nevertheless, he believes you are. What I don’t understand is how this is possible.”
“What is?”
“All of it. How we were all assigned to a unit when we are all unmated. How you are unable to sense a pull to Leo…or to me. How we feel so strongly for you, and you are unfazed.”
We…
Anders too? Seriously?
“That’s not possible. There is only one Alpha for one Omega. Two Alphas would create an imbalance,” Leo finally said.
“All of that is irrelevant because I’m not your damned soul partner!”
Anders sat back in his seat, arms folded, a dangerous glint in his eyes. “I guess we’ll just have to see when your heat comes.”
“You’re not coming anywhere near me when my heat comes.”
Anders simply shrugged. “If you call for us. If you start a nest and need us both inside, that will tell us all we need to know.”
I snarled. Like that would happen. I wasn’t their soul partner, no matter what they claimed they felt.
“Do you…not find us attractive?” Leo asked suddenly. There was something in his voice, soft, almost like vulnerability.
I blinked at him.
“Th-that’s not it,” I muttered.
“So we do appeal to you,” Anders purred, suddenly inches from my face. I hadn’t seen him get up. Hadn’t heard him walk to me. Hadn’t sensed him cage me in.
Blush crept up my neck. “You know what you look like.”
“That’s not an answer. We want to know what you think,” Leo said, appearing at my side, lips nearly grazing my ear.
“Oi, knock it off!” I grunted, shoving away from them both. My body felt hot, flushed.
The two Alphas shared a long look before backing off. They gathered up the things we carved and put it on the makeshift kitchen counter.
“We need to get up early, so we should head to bed,” Anders announced, completely normal, as if whatever that was didn’t just happen two seconds ago. I could have argued, I could have forced some sort of acknowledgement that they were out of line, but I was still disoriented with the events that unfolded.
So, I watched them, wide eyed, as they shed their clothes and curled up in front of the fire on the small mattress, looking up at me, waiting.
“I’ll sleep in the room,” I announced, but it came out quiet…weak.
“You’ll get hypothermia,” Anders pointed out. Leo grunted in agreement.
They weren’t wrong, but somehow, crawling into bed with them, when my body and mind were still so scattered, felt dangerous. It felt like a step toward a cliff edge, close enough that a single breeze would push me off.
“We will not touch you…in any way that makes you uncomfortable,” Anders promised when he noticed the hesitation. “Right, Leo?”
The brown skinned Alpha only grunted in acknowledgment. So, we were back to nonverbals. Wonderful.
“Fine,” I whispered, peeling off my own clothes. I tried to ignore their blatant stares and willed my body not to react. Nor did I examine why I did so in front of them, slowly, as if putting on a show. Why I wanted them to look.
Was it so wrong to want to be desired? To enjoy the attention? It didn’t mean I wanted to bond with them or have any sort of permanent commitment. But…I liked their eyes on me.
Once naked, I crawled in between the two. They curled around me as they had the previous night, wrapping me in their arms and cocooning me in their warmth.
Even if I enjoyed this, it didn’t mean anything. With Leo’s breath on my neck and Anders’s face mere inches from mine, I felt comfortable. Safe.
And still, it meant nothing.
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