by Kole, Lana
“There’s something I need to tell you,” she began.
Which was the worst way in history to start any conversation. Adra’s shoulders tensed, the reluctance in her body language putting him on edge.
“I’ve been thinking…”
Adra’s heart dropped as she wrung her hands together. “I want to be honest with you guys,” she began again.
Beside him, Emerson’s hands flexed into his thighs, and Adra had to resist the urge to slap a hand over his mouth to keep the big lump from telling her to spit it out. He could practically sense the words boiling up.
The morning had been usual, minus Nohen’s extended stay in her nest. It hadn’t escaped their notice when he’d checked his phone the night before, choked on the sip of water he’d taken, and then grinned at the screen like he’d won the lottery.
“Why do you look like someone whose sugar daddy passed and left you the inheritance?” Desi had asked.
Nohen had rolled his eyes and turned the phone toward her, and a second later, her eyes softened.
“You’re all welcome.”
“For what?” Adra asked, curiosity getting the better of him.
“For being awesome at giving relationship advice,” Desi announced. “Now get back there like she asked,” she demanded, her finger pointed toward Lyric’s nest.
Was whatever Lyric was about to share with them because of Desi? Was whatever had been on her mind… good?
It didn’t seem like it.
Tension filled the room, settling in the shoulders of Emerson, Henry, Nohen, and Adra. Even Javier was tiptoeing around as he set breakfast plates down.
“Javi, you too. Sit.”
She waited for the alpha to sit obediently before she continued.
“I’m an unmated omega who lives alone, and who avoids alphas… usually.” She tacked on the last with a nervous laugh and a matching glance at her audience. “There are a couple reasons for that, and it’s not all due to my mom’s influence.” Lyric huffed out a dry laugh and tucked her hair behind her ear before stopping and leaning against the far wall. “I’m sure you saw my apartment, how secure it is.”
“Uh-huh,” Emerson hummed and crossed his arms, brows furrowing as she talked.
Dread curled in Adra’s stomach.
“After my mom died, it took me a bit to move out because I was dealing with the funeral arrangements and everything. It was a lot, and it just took time. But while I was staying there… someone broke in.”
His heart stopped. Adra growled before he could catch it in time, the dangerous sound curling through the air. Lyric’s gaze jumped to him, and he choked the sound back, offering a comforting smile. He wasn’t the only one affected. Even Javier’s fists were clenched where they rested on his knees.
“I wasn’t home,” she continued, and he released the breath he hadn’t been aware he’d been holding.
“So I wasn’t hurt and didn’t even see who it was, but the place was… trashed. I had to start over from scratch because he’d completely destroyed my room. They never found him, but I knew it was an alpha from his scent. It permeated everything.” She shuddered, and Adra fisted his hands, digging his nails into his palms to keep himself from crossing the room to comfort her. “I left all my stuff behind, and when I found my own place, I had it decked out with extra security measures.”
He wanted to hunt the asshole down, but that wasn’t practical, nor possible at this point. It was all instinct. Protection.
“Lyric, that’s awful,” Nohen murmured. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”
She waved a hand through the air as she laughed nervously. “It’s not that big of a deal. I moved on, but I think that contributed toward my dislike of alphas. I mean, it goes… deeper. I’m aware, and there are a lot of things that I need to work through. But what I’m saying is that—” She paused, her cheeks burning brightly as her gaze jumped between them all. “I want to work through them. I’m saying I’m open to this” —she motioned her hand between herself and the rest of the bus as she spoke— “but I think I need to take it slow. If that’s okay? Like, turtle slow. No! Snail slow.”
Warmth flashed through him as her blue-green eyes met his own. It burned away the dread, and in its ashes something dangerously close to hope sprouted.
Lyric might have sounded nervous, might have been fidgeting, but her gaze was filled with all the emotion she wasn’t putting into words.
Odd’s heart fluttered with an odd kind of anticipation. At first, he hadn’t even dared hope for something—someone—so good as Lyric. Carefree but guarded, smart, passionate, ambitious, and talented. But as the weeks had gone by, and he’d watched her slowly open up to them, to trust them with tiny pieces of her, he’d cherished and collected each one.
After his last pack’s omega had cast him aside, he’d been cautious, content with only the pieces she’d given them glimpses of, too afraid to let himself want more.
But now, as she stood there sharing yet another piece of herself with them, telling them she was willing to try…
All his reservations went out the window. Because if Lyric, with her past experiences and present fears, could promise to try… so would he.
“Hey, man, you okay?” Emerson asked, nudging an elbow into his side.
Adra blinked, the ground coming into view, and he lifted his head to glance at Emerson, reading the concerned expression on his face.
The room was quiet, and he turned his attention outward to find everyone’s gazes on him. Henry, Nohen, Emerson, Javier, Desi… and Lyric.
“I’m fine,” he said, and held Lyric’s gaze. Noted the worry in her eyes and wanted to ease it. “I don’t think any of us expected this when we walked on this bus,” he admitted. “I know I didn’t. But I want you to know I’m more than willing to give you all the time you need to make whatever decision you need to. Just make sure it’s a decision for you,” he amended, “not for us, not out of guilt or a sense of duty you think you owe us for the time we’ve spent together. If we do part ways at the end of tour—” She flinched when he said it, the action microscopic as she dropped her gaze, and the couch hissed as he stood. He found himself crossing the room and gently tipping her head up to meet his. “If that is your decision, know I’m lucky to even have spent a few weeks of my life with you.”
Her eyes watered, and she dashed the tears away with a groan from deep within her chest. A frown tugged his lips down, but she lifted them right back up as she launched herself at his chest.
He caught her with an oof and wrapped his arms around her back to hold her up.
“You can’t say stuff like that,” she grumbled into his shoulder, where her head was buried.
He couldn’t help the twitch of his lips, the laugh that threatened to break free. “Why not?”
“You make it too easy to keep breaking my rule.”
“Yeah, man, give the rest of us a chance. How are we supposed to follow that speech, huh?” Emerson asked with a grumble.
Adra let his laugh break free, and Lyric popped her head up to stare at him, arms wrapped around his neck. “I can’t say I’m sorry. If you thought we were sweet on you before, just wait until you spend the next two weeks so pampered you can’t see straight.”
She narrowed her gaze. “You can’t bribe me.”
He laughed again, chest shaking with humor. “Not bribing. Courting. Or something like that, yeah?” he questioned, glancing to the one most likely to know—Henry.
The alpha shrugged. “Yeah, I’d call it courting. We won’t exactly have time to take her on off-site dates, but we can make it work.”
“That’s fine,” Nohen agreed. “I don’t peg Lyric as the type to desire fancy dates. I think we have all we need right here.”
“Speaking of ‘right here,’ me. Present,” Lyric drawled, settling her elbow on his shoulder and pointing at herself. “In the room.”
Adra chuckled again and turned to Nohen, shifting Lyric with him as if she weighed nothing
. “What do you think? You’re the only one she lets buy things for her.”
Nohen grinned at that, pride gleaming out of his eyes. “Yeah, I think we can come up with something to make her happy.”
“Sex makes her happy,” Emerson stated proudly. “I can do sex.”
“I am right here!” Lyric groaned before nuzzling back into his neck. “You’re all insufferable.”
“You enjoy it,” he murmured just for her.
“That’s not the point,” she responded. She nibbled on her bottom lip, her gaze turning to the only alpha that remained silent. “What about you Javier?”
Adra’s glance slid to the last alpha, whose eyes widened at Lyric’s question.
His cheeks flushed, and Adra couldn’t help but smile as the alpha floundered for an answer.
“Ahh… I can cook? Pajarita…” Javier’s question made Lyric giggle at first, but then she saw the emotion on his face. Lyric crossed the room to wrap her arms around him.
“Did you think I was going to leave you out?” she questioned.
Javier murmured something only she could hear, and wrapped his arms around her.
Adra’s lips twitched as he glanced around at their… pack. They were like an unfinished painting, one that Lyric kept adding to as she found new colors that caught her attention. As odd of a pack as they appeared to be, they were still a pack, regardless of how they came together
Yeah. This was a pack, and for the first time in years, the thought didn’t make his chest hurt. After his last pack had rejected him, Adra never thought he’d find himself allowing someone else to have that power over him. And yet, here was Lyric, building herself a pack whether she knew that was what she was doing or not, and including him.
Maybe by the end of it, Lyric might even agree to keep them around.
That was what he allowed himself to hope for, because truth be told, no matter what he said to alleviate her worries, if she left them at the end, Adra didn’t think he’d recover.
“So you’ve had quite a chaotic week, yes?” the interviewer asked her.
Lyric laughed softly, stalling her response as sleepy morning kisses and the memory of a messy hand job played through her mind.
“Yeah, you could definitely say that. We had a tire blow a few days ago, and unfortunately we were forced to miss one of our shows.”
Plus she wasn’t taking suppressants anymore…
“I’m sure that was stressful,” the interviewer continued. He was polite… but that was about as far as Lyric would go. Dressed in jeans, a plain shirt, and a beanie paired with the stupid smirk on his face and the half interested questions, he didn’t impress Lyric.
But like the good little artist she was, she pasted a smile on her face and continued. “Oh yeah. But we got the bus fixed, and we made up for it with the next few shows.”
“Mm-hmm. Tour is full of surprises. And this is your first, right?” He asked the question without looking up from shuffling his papers.
“That’s right. I’m so excited to finally get to share my music from the stage.” Her response was the truth, but it sounded fake even to her own ears.
“And what do you think of the experience so far?”
Lyric ground her teeth together. He might as well have just asked her to recite the fifty-second page of a dictionary.
“It’s been... different than I imagined, but not necessarily in a bad way. A little more chaotic, but that makes it all the more fun.”
Actually, it was a lot different than she imagined. Her gaze trailed to Emerson and Adra on the other side of the room, Henry and Nohen. Desi was glaring at the interviewer, and Lyric quickly turned her attention back to him before she started laughing. Javier was absent, probably working on something delicious back on his bus.
Yeah, tour had shaped up to be a whole hell of a lot more than she’d ever bargained for.
Four weeks ago, if someone had told her she’d be hooking up with almost her entire band, plus the manager? Lyric would have laughed in their face. And yet, she couldn’t wait for the interviewer to dismiss her so she could return to the bus and curl up between them on the couch while everyone relaxed for the ride to the next state line.
“It was quite a big event, the auditions for your tour. How did you narrow it down between so many applicants?”
Lyric puffed out a breath, blowing a piece of hair from her face and then tucking it behind her ear. “That was more stressful than anything that’s happened on tour. Over a hundred musicians applied, and each one of them was so talented, at first I had no idea how I was going to decide. But of course, everyone had to go through extensive background checks. The red tape actually did most of the eliminating. And from there...”
How did she professionally say she picked the artists with the best vibe?
“From there, I had to make a decision between the most talented musicians I’d met, and it wasn’t easy. Ultimately there were more factors to consider than just who was talented. I’m extremely grateful for Emerson, Adra, Nohen, and Desi for accepting the offer and giving a hundred and ten percent to the crowd, and to me, night after night.”
You got two hundred and twenty percent the other night.
She sailed a bright smile in their direction, hoping her cheeks didn’t flush and announce her gutter brained thoughts to the room.
“So everyone gets along then?” the host asked.
Lyric nodded, trying to douse the heat rushing to her cheeks.
You could say that...
“Of course. At least until it comes to video games,” she admitted and chuckled.
She thought Emerson and Nohen would come to blows the night before. The word ‘cheating’ had been thrown around, followed by threats and possibly punches if Henry hadn’t finally put his foot down.
“Oh, that’s right,” the host said, snapping his fingers. “Nohen Lyle is the lead guitarist. I bet he’s not an easy opponent to play with.”
A wave of confusion descended over Lyric, and she cocked her head to the side. “What do you mean?”
“From his stint in professional gaming. Were you not aware?”
Lyric masked her features behind a smile. Yes, she was aware, but the others probably weren’t. She forced her gaze to remain on the host. Plucking her lips into a smile, she waved her hand through the air. “Oh, that. Of course. Sometimes I just forget because I only know him as the guitarist, not the gamer.”
When she glanced across the room a few moments later, Nohen was pale, arms crossed, and staring sheepishly up at Emerson. Even from the distance between them, she thought she saw Emerson’s eye twitch.
“Alright, let’s have some fun,” the host said, though his tone implied anything but. “Rapid-fire questions.”
Lyric took a deep breath and nodded as the host glanced down at his paper.
“Beach or mountains?”
“Beach.”
“Sour or sweet?”
Her mind turned to Emerson and Adra. “Both.”
“Would you rather tour without a nest, or without a wardrobe?”
Lyric’s smile threatened to slip, but she pinned it in place with the same practice she’d gotten all those years of dealing with her mother.
Are those the things he thought she considered most important in her life? A pretty nest and clothes?
Lyric was done with this interview.
Her response was sour on her tongue and it came out in the form of a saccharine sweet smile. The words that followed were so sharp she was surprised they didn’t leave slices on her tongue and lips as they left her throat.
“What an original question. One I’m not going to answer. I listened to the interview before this one, with the artist who was an alpha. I didn’t hear you pose such a shallow ultimatum.”
The host’s smile froze, the fake curl of his lips slipping from his face as she continued.
“In fact, the questions posed to me during this interview could all be seen as shallow. Sure, dealing with the blown tire
was stressful. So was choosing between over a hundred applicants to tour with me, but my poor little omega brain managed. Why don’t you ask me about how my very first performance was enough to catch the attention of a label, leading to a contract. Or how my first tour is sold out even though I’m considered a new artist?”
Henry’s presence loomed closer, and she held up a hand to ward him off.
The host sputtered, and she shook her head. “I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished this far, and I’m not going to let you lessen that with a comparison between a nest and a damned wardrobe.”
Lyric stood, unclipped the mic from her shirt, the battery pack from her waistband, and dropped them on the couch. “Interview’s over. If you ever decide you’d like to take me seriously as a musician and not just a pretty face, then you can contact my agent and see if she’ll give you the time of day.”
Her back was stick straight, and her shoulders were high as she walked away. Henry angled to the side to let her pass him, an amused smile on his lips, pride gleaming in his pretty hazel eyes. He opened his mouth once, glanced to the host, and shook his head. “I was going to add something, but I think she covered it all. Have a good night.”
Heat was blasting her cheeks, and her neck felt hot and her hands were shaking slightly, but she tucked them into her pockets and continued forward. Nohen and Emerson and Adra and Desi fell in line, following after her.
It wasn’t until they were on the bus, in the safety of privacy, that Lyric released a breath and let her shoulders slump.
“That was badass,” Henry commented. “I rolled my eyes when he asked that question, but you really handed him his ass on a platter.”
Lyric wanted to smile, but caught the curl of her lips between her teeth. “Am I going to get in trouble?”
Henry shrugged. “What are they gonna do? Fire you? Pfft.”
The heat, blood, and color left her cheeks as his words registered, and Henry held out a hand.
“No, no, I was just kidding! You’re the one who listed your own stats back there, do you think the label would let someone as talented as you go?”
In that moment, she wasn’t exactly sure what she expected the label to do. So much had gone wrong already. The bus, missing that show, hiring a caterer—which she was sure wasn’t cheap, and most certainly was a luxury, not a necessity—and now she was telling off interviewers.