Amber lay stretched along a white chaise in the backyard, one leg crossed neatly over the other, the late Georgia sun warming her skin through linen and patience. A paperback rested open against her stomach, unread for the last ten minutes. A glass of wine sweated onto the side table, condensation sliding down like it had somewhere better to be. The house behind her was quiet in a way it rarely was. Jesse was halfway across the world with Kelvin and Eli, baptizing strangers in warm water and calling it ministry. Gideon was still gone. Pontius and Abraham were at school. For once, Amber had the space to breathe.

People would have said this was when temptation crept in. Idle hands. An absent husband. Too much quiet. Amber thought that was a lazy way to describe instinct. She’d been an alpha long before she learned to soften herself into something palatable. Long before she married a beta with a loud mouth and a need to be held at night. She didn’t hide it. No one ever asked. They looked at her and saw pressed dresses, polite smiles, three sons who behaved just well enough. They assumed.

The sound of the pool skimmer broke the stillness, a steady sweep through water that caught the light just right. Amber’s eyes lifted, slow and deliberate. The Gemstones’ pool boy moved along the far edge, shirt clinging to their back, sunburn just beginning to bloom at the nape of their neck. An adult, young but not foolish, presence contained and careful. Beta. She smelled it faintly on the air, clean and unassuming, threaded with chlorine and effort. Her jaw set without her meaning it to.

“You can take a break if you need to,” Amber called, voice even, pleasant. It carried authority without sharpness, the way it always did. Jesse said it was her nicest quality. He never noticed why people listened.

The pool boy glanced over, startled for half a second before nodding. They moved toward the shallow end, resting the skimmer against the tile. Amber watched the way they kept their distance, respectful to a fault. Betas were like that around assumed betas. Around alphas, they tended to orbit whether they meant to or not.

“Jesse’s out of town,” she added, flipping a page she still didn’t read. “Won’t be back for another week.” It wasn’t an invitation. It was a fact. She let it sit between them, heavy and unadorned.

They responded with something polite, something deferential. Amber didn’t catch the words so much as the tone. Her mouth curved, just barely. She took a sip of wine, eyes returning to the pool boy with open appraisal this time. The quiet pressed in again, but it was different now. Charged. A familiar hum she hadn’t felt in years.

She thought of Jesse curled into her side, of the boys clambering over her like she was something solid and safe. She thought of the church, of women who smiled too much and never once wondered why Amber Gemstone never seemed rattled. Control wasn’t about denial. It was about choice.

“You do good work,” Amber said after a moment. Praise landed differently coming from an alpha, even when it was wrapped in a housewife’s tone. She closed the book at last, attention fully engaged, eyes steady and unflinching.

The pool water lapped softly at the tile. Somewhere inside the house, a clock ticked. Amber leaned back into the sun, instincts awake and unashamed, and let herself notice exactly how close the pool boy stood now. She didn’t move. She didn’t have to. The afternoon stretched on, full of possibility, and Amber had always known how to take her time.