Her Knotty List (MVP: Most Valuable Pack Book 4)

The first glimmers of dawn find the five of us, freshly showered, making our way downstairs for the first time in nearly a week.

My heart leaps when I’m greeted by a happy bark. McKinley bolts up from his dog bed and comes right to Knox. He drops to his knees to pet him, and I follow suit, giggling when I get a big lick across the cheek.

Micah thumbs at his phone, smiling. “I texted Patrick to let him know that your heat was over just after you fell asleep. He must have been awake and brought the dog back for us.”

Sheesh. I owe Micah’s brother, like, a zillion favors. Or maybe a zillion and five, considering the small stack of beautifully wrapped parcels stacked on the coffee table.

With a happy bounce, I turn to guys and squeal, “Your presents made it!” Micah grins, wrapping his arms around my waist while Gunnar kisses my forehead and Zane drapes himself over the hockey star’s back, grinning. I look down at Knox, giving him the same puppy-dog eyes as McKinley.

“Can we open presents?”

His smile is as fond as the thump of love he sends into the bond. “Of course, baby girl. Breakfast first, okay?”

With an enthusiastic nod, I start to gallop toward the kitchen, already thinking up the quickest breakfast I can⁠—

“No!”

All four of them shout the word in unison. It’s happened once before, but this time, when I whirl, I find their expressions match the chagrin squirming in our bond.

Oh. They don’t want me to cook?

“It’s not that,” Micah rushes out, having heard my thoughts.

“Only…” Gunnar grimaces. “Um…”

Knox sighs, rubbing at his thicker beard. “Baby girl, maybe Zane could teach you some of his⁠—”

My shoulders drop as I shake my head, giggling some more. “Thank the Lord,” I burst. “I hate cooking!”

Zane comes to me first, his deep laugh chiming as he swings me into his arms. “Then consider me your personal chef. I made a breakfast casserole last week anyway. It’s in the freezer.”

“On it,” Micah chips, slapping his shoulder as he passes. “Coffee?”

“Hot chocolate?” I reply.

Gunnar grins and nods his agreement. “I’m with the squirt.”

Knox gives in easily, shrugging before stomping to the back door to let McKinley out. He lights the Christmas tree and the logs in the fireplace while Gunnar and Zane settle me into their laps, sitting close enough for me to hook one leg between each of theirs.

Zane eyes the gifts on the table and then shoots me some accusatory side-eye. “Which one of us got two gifts, gorgeous?”

I frown, noticing his point. The long, flat parcel is Knox’s. Gunnar’s is the small tube. Micah gets the medium-sized box, and Zane’s is probably the red bag trimmed in gold ribbon.

So, what is the large silver box in the center?

“This one isn’t mine,” I tell them, dragging it closer.

Gunnar reads over my shoulder. His brows pull down. “It says it’s from ‘the worst friends ever.’”

Micah rejoins us, sitting in the space between my dangling feet and the coffee table. Knox shoves the rest of the presents to the side and settles on the edge of the low table, leaning over his knees to examine our mystery gift.

A lump rises in my throat when I recognize the handwriting: Meg’s.

“I think that’s for me,” I mumble.

Zane steadies the box, a pretty silver one, tied together with a glittering red ribbon and a pair of jingle bells. Now that I’m really looking, I recognize Remi’s handiwork—she’s always been the most fantastic gift wrapper.

Hurt curls in my middle as I stare at it, remembering how terribly alone I felt just a few weeks ago. And how none of my friends were there for me.

Gunnar’s gentle melancholy meets mine along our bridge. He’s a little sad, too—missing his mom. Wishing he could call her and tell her about me.

Somehow, knowing I’m not the only one with mixed emotions helps me exhale. With a couple of tugs, I pull the bow apart and unseal the lid. The first thing I see makes no sense.

It’s… a flannel pajama set? With Christmas trees all over it.

Except the tag tells me it’s a men’s extra-large. There’s also a small wooden ornament pinned to the lapel with Knox’s name on it.

Frowning, I dig deeper into the tissue, unearthing a second set of pajamas. This time, covered in… nutcrackers? With Gunnar’s name⁠—

Oh.

Oh. Em. Gee.

I laugh for real that time, tipping my head back. A flurry of joy answers my own, along with a lot of curiosity. Flashing a wicked smile, I start handing out pajamas, plopping a pair in each alpha’s lap.

“Oh no,” Gunnar groans, his wistfulness fading into horror.

“Oh yes!” I chime, handing Zane the ones covered in gingerbread men.

He sputters in outrage. “I can’t wear this, shona! I have a reputation to uphold!”

I shrug. “Take it up with the girls. This is what they sent, and since we don’t have any other Christmas pajamas…”

Micah accepts his set with a slight grimace. “Candy canes?”

I bend to kiss his forehead. “Well, you do smell like peppermint.”

My set is the last one in the box, of course. The same fabric, cut a little curvier, and patterned with all four of theirs. Nutcrackers, cookies, candy canes, and Christmas trees, all swirled into colorful chaos.

As soon as they see me pull them out, I feel their annoyance fall away. With grumbles and sighs, they all start to change. I grin to myself, standing to let Gunnar and Zane shimmy their flannel bottoms over their underwear⁠—

And there, at the bottom of the box, I see a pair of mint-green heart-shaped sunglasses. Along with one more note.

An apology. From Meg.

I scan her note and smile. I’ll have time to delve into it later. I already feel better though, knowing she was trying so hard to earn my forgiveness for something she did by accident.

The others exchange quizzical looks when I set the plastic frames on top of my head. But I just shrug and offer them a goofy grin. “It’s a long story.”

Zane’s casserole has put us into a food coma by the time the sun finally fills the horizon. We sit in a cluster on the leather couch, quietly content while we watch the dawn break.

Well, they watch the dawn break. I’m admiring our Christmas tree.

It’s like you guys, I think, showing them my mental picture.

Knox is the trunk, sturdy and unyielding.

Micah as the branches, stretching in all directions, holding us up.

Zane would be the ornaments, of course. All colorful and glittering.

Which makes Gunnar the tinsel—strewn in clumps, filling in the dark, empty spaces. Completing the whole thing.

Knox’s approval warms my belly. He takes in my analogy and sends back a simple picture of his own—that same imagined tree, made up of them all, flickering to life.

You’d be the lights.

All three of his packmates agree, scent-marking me sweetly and sending me waves of affection.

Knox watches over us, his pride ablaze. Which reminds me…

“Open your present, Alpha,” I say, pulling the long, flat package over to him.

The tissue tears under his calloused fingers, revealing the rustic wood sign engraved with three words:

The Beckett Pack.

Shock echoes through him. Thick silence fills the room while he blinks at his name, throat visibly working while his mind stumbles over the logistics of his gift.

“Honey… when did you have time to get this made? We only asked you to be our omega and form a pack as your heat was starting. You didn’t make any calls…”

Of course he noticed that. Knox notices everything. It’s why he’s such a good alpha—his attention, his insight. All the things that made me so certain, from the moment we met, that he would need this sign one day.

Feeling a little shy, I show him a memory of calling the local woodshop and commissioning his gift, a week before any of them asked me to be theirs. Days before he decorated the cabin and called it my home.

I watch understanding bloom across his features. They’re still somber, but undeniably soft, too. “Baby girl, you had this made for me two weeks ago?”

Nodding, I crawl into his lap and tuck myself under his chin. His free hand wastes no time coming up to hold my face against his chest.

“Even if it hadn’t been me,” I whisper, “Or us… you deserved a pack of your own, Knox. I always believed that.”

A rush of emotion flows between us, his gruff with embarrassment. I understand why when he swipes at his left eye a second later, forcing down his feelings before they spill out. I plant a kiss at the edge of his brow, scent-marking him there. “You like it, Daddy?”

“I love it,” he replies, low. His free hand molds to my cheek as his blue gaze delves into mine. “Best gift I’ve ever gotten.”

He’s talking about me. All of us. Our pack and our new bond.

Speaking of⁠—

Gunnar hears his name in my thoughts, and I point to his envelope. “That one’s yours, Hot Shot.”

It took some doing, getting ahold of Remi’s alpha, Smith, and asking him for this special favor. But it’s all worth it when Gunnar unfolds the paperwork and four season tickets for the Timberwolves fall into his nutcracker-covered lap.

Light gilds his gray eyes as he lifts his head. “You’re coming to one of my games?”

I grin. “Not one of them—all of them! I got season tickets for every home game, and Smith said we could use one of their pack boxes. He’s already put our name on it!”

Gunnar holds up the paper to show them the grainy picture I printed on Knox’s ancient fax machine. One of the Timberwolves’ boxes, with a paper taped to the open door.

Gunnar Sinclair—the Beckett Pack.

Nearly tripping over Micah, Gunnar lurches and snags me from Knox, placing me on his own thighs and crushing me close. Zane watches us, smiling.

When our eyes meet, his brow quirks. “My turn?”

I nod, and he grins wider, knocking Gunnar’s shoulder before he picks up his gift bag.

After some fishing, he pulls out the leather-bound book I had embossed with his name and our pack’s. “What’s this, shona?”

I can tell from the sheen in his dark eyes that he already knows. I sit up and lean over his legs, excitedly flipping the leather cover open to reveal the title page. “It’s our family cookbook! For you to fill in with all your recipes!”

But the book ends up on the sofa beside him as he tackles me onto Gunnar. Kissing and scent-marking my face while pure joy sparkles inside of us.

“God, I love you, gorgeous,” he breathes, reaching back and grasping the recipe book. “I’ll start adding to it tomorrow.”

Micah’s curiosity adds to the happy chaos blurring between us. With one final brush of his lips, Zane hands me to the alpha at his feet. I reach for the last box on the table, offering it to my handsome fireman with a shy smirk.

“Here.”

A moment later, he has the custom snow globe in his hand, tipping it to the side and watching the white sparkles float through the water inside. “It’s beautiful,” he murmurs, bemusement prodding at our bond.

I point to the bottom. “Wind it up.”

His long fingers twist the silver bar at the base of the stand. I feel all his muscles tense when the song starts up. Everything in him goes still while he listens, his mother’s favorite song tinkling into the hush that’s fallen over us.

“I tried to have her jewelry box fixed,” I explain. “But the winding mechanism was broken. They saved the box just in case you still wanted it, but the repairman was able to fix the sound mechanism and put it in something else. I thought a snow globe since…”

“We were snowed in,” he finishes, swallowing hard as he stares at the little cabin in the glass dome. “Wait, is that⁠—”

I nod. “Yeah! The cabin!”

“Emma.” His feelings are a muddle, all so strong I can’t even begin to parse them. But he buries his face into my neck, where I feel his tears as much as I sense them in our bond.

He only lets a couple loose as he breathes heavily against my shoulder. I sense his bewilderment as he murmurs, “This is the most beautiful thing anyone’s ever given me.” A second later, his heart catches, and his exhale shakes. “Well, the second-most beautiful.”

Micah leans back, sinking his hazel eyes into mine, making his meaning clear without words. Even before he says them through our tether. Nothing will ever be more beautiful or precious to me than you.

Above us, Gunnar sniffles, groaning, “Fuck. How do I turn it off?”

Zane hugs him from the side, laughing. “You don’t, babe. Just let it happen.”

Micah smiles at them, then at me. A spark lights his face. “I know we told you we didn’t have time to get a gift for you, but we thought of one while we were all in the nest. Zane managed to get it together during one of his trips to the kitchen for food. We hid it under the back of the⁠—”

He doesn’t even get to finish before I’m clamoring over to the tree. They all follow, leaving their gifts on the table and coming to surround me beside our tree while I pull the last package from the back and rip the paper right off, revealing a gold eight-by-ten frame…

And my list.

Or, as Zane’s handwriting states from the top of the purple paper: Emma’s Knotty List.

“We thought we should keep it,” Gunnar mumbles.

“Or, you know,” Zane winks. “Use it. Over and over and over⁠—”

Knox rolls his eyes before meeting my gaze. “This is a placeholder, little miss. Your real gift won’t be ready for a few weeks. Can you wait and be surprised?”

I note the way they all instant drop their internal curtains. Watching them scramble makes me giggle. Giddy, I bounce in place with a nod. “Of course, Daddy.”

He kisses my forehead. “That’s my good girl.”

Micah hums his agreement, petting my hair back. “What do you want to do today, sweet girl? Do you need more food? Or maybe a nap?”

I shake my head, sending them a mental image of exactly what I want to spend the rest of the morning doing…

They all freeze, turning to Knox for approval. With an indulgent smirk, he sighs. “All right, all right. But everyone needs their boots. And coats.”

We all obey happily; each of my alphas helping to bundle me into a coat, boots, a scarf, and a hat.

The backyard gleams under a beautiful layer of white, prime for the taking. I wait until they’re all distracted to bolt, laughing as I run for the cover of a distant bush.

Knox curses and Micah immediately gives chase. Zane snickers, nearly drowning out Gunnar’s groan.

A flurry touches my temple just as another tickles my nose. I pause and spin, gazing up at the falling snow with wonder in my heart.

Because I did it.

I found my mates and brought them together. I ignored all the ways this seemed impossible; and I bonded them.

But more than that?

I believed.

In them, yeah… but I’d also believed in myself.

And I got everything I ever wanted.