I took a step backward so I could lean against the wall. “What do we do about this?” I said. “If she ran away from you—”

“I don’t think that was it,” he said. “I think she… I don’t know. It seemed like she spooked herself. Both times. And frankly, I don’t care if she’s jumpy. I’ve never had this kind of reaction to a scent before. Have any of you?”

It wasn’t even a question. We all knew we hadn’t.

“I can’t,” Ben hauled in a breath and shook his head. “I can’t walk away from that. If you’d been there, you’d feel the same. She’s fucking beautiful, and her scent feels like you’re inhaling fire in the best way. It lights you up under your skin. I want you all to meet her because I think she’s ours.”

My breath went short in my chest. It was a dream every pack had: to find their Omega and bond with them, creating the intangible bond you could always feel. Even Rylan could bond with an Omega if he was bitten. Right now we didn’t have that, and we’d talked more than once about wanting it.

“How do we do it?” Avery asked. “If she spooks easy, the five of us aren’t going to put her at ease.”

“First, I need to know if you guys are with me on this.” Ben looked around at each of us, and it was easy to say I’d never seen him like this. We’d all had flings at one time or another, but we’d never found an Omega who called to us, and my pack brother looked nearly haunted by the idea of losing this one.

“I want to meet her. Hell, I want to fucking bond her on scent alone.”

“Agreed.” Kade still held Ben’s shirt, staring at it as if it would transform into the woman in question.

Avery smiled and said “Of course,” at the same time Rylan was saying, “Hell yeah.”

“But wanting to meet her still doesn’t solve the problem of how,” Avery pointed out.

Ben was smiling now. “For that? I have an idea.”

Chapter 7

CHAPTER SEVEN

________

ESME

I chunked more of the destroyed make-up palette onto the white marble slab in front of me before reaching for the bottle of linseed oil out of sight of the camera. I was out of binder and didn’t feel like making more, so oil it was.