37. Caroline
Rune of Breaking:
Chalk on stone. Chains fall when true will burns.
Morning comes through the curtains in pale gold slants, and for a long moment I don’t move.
I just lie there, wedged between Griffin’s chest and Damon’s back, with Silas’s arm draped over my waist, and I think about how strange it is that four people can fit in a full-size bed if they try hard enough.
Thistle is at the foot of the bed, curled in the small space between Damon’s feet and the wall. He lifts his head when I stir, blinks once, and goes back to sleep.
I slide out of bed carefully, testing each movement, and somehow manage to extract myself without waking anyone. The floor is cold, and I grab the nearest shirt—Damon’s flannel, again—and pull it on as I head to the kitchen.
I call June from the hallway, my voice low.
“Foxglove and Finch, this is June.”
“It’s Caroline.”
“Caroline. How are you feeling?”
“Better. I called to check on my shifts.”
“Take the week. I’ve already got you covered. Tessa’s in heat too—third one this year, poor thing—so she’s off as well. It’s just August and me holding down the fort.”
I lean against the wall. “June, I’m sorry about all this. I know it’s been—”
“Stop apologizing. You didn’t ask for your cycle to go haywire.
Half the Omegas in town are in the same boat.
I’ve sold more aftercare supplies in the past week than I did in the entire month before.
Something’s wrong, and we all know it, but that’s not your problem to solve right now.
Rest. Recover. That’s an order from your boss. ”
I smile despite myself. “Thanks, June.”
“Don’t thank me. Thank whoever’s taking care of you. You sound better than you have in months.”
I hang up and stand in the hallway for a moment, my phone warm in my hand. Then I head to the kitchen to make coffee.
One by one, they filter in. Griffin first, shirtless, hair sticking up in six directions, blinking like he’s not sure what decade it is.
Then Damon, who makes a beeline for the coffee pot without saying a word.
Silas last, already more put-together than the rest of us combined, his Henley smooth and his hair combed.
We end up around the small kitchen table, mugs in hand, Thistle weaving between our ankles. It should feel crowded. It doesn’t. It feels like exactly the right number of people.
“I called June,” I say. “I’ve got the week off.”
“Good,” Damon says. “You need it.”
“I want to talk about something.” I set my mug down and look at each of them in turn. “I want to date you. All of you. Separately. Amara said—”
“Amara,” Griffin says, and there’s a note in his voice I can’t quite read.
“Amara pointed out that everything that happened over the last four days happened during a heat. The feelings, the connection, all of it—it was real, but it was amplified. She said I should get to know you outside of that context before I make any decisions about what this is.”
Silas nods slowly. “She’s not wrong.”
“So I want to take each of you on a date. A real one. Dinner somewhere. No sex. Just… talking.”
Griffin’s mouth twitches. “You already asked me.”
“I know. I’m telling the other two.”
Damon looks at me over his coffee mug. “You’re serious.”
“Completely.”
He sets the mug down. “Caroline. There’s something you need to know.”
The shift in his tone makes my stomach tighten. “What?”
He glances at Silas, then at Griffin. Some silent communication passes between them—the kind I’ve only started to recognize, a look or a small gesture that carries weight.
“We found something,” Damon says. “At the tavern last night. In Gideon Ash’s father’s old boxes.”
“Gideon’s father? Victor Ash?”
“Victor Ash built a secondary ward structure around the quarry. Hidden underneath the legitimate wards. Those secondary wards have been funneling energy into the Rift instead of containing it. For at least fifteen years. Maybe longer.”
I stare at him. “What?”
“There’s more. The Ash family records in Aunt Etta’s library have been sealed by the Council. Classified. And there are bonding failure reports from the nineties that were filed directly with a regional representative named V. Ash.”
“Who else has access to the library?” Who the hell did this?
“Everyone. I would need to ask Aunt Etta about this.”
“And Victor Ash was a regional representative?”
“Apparently.”
I set my mug down because my hands are shaking. “So someone has been deliberately destabilizing the Rift. For years.”
“That’s what it looks like.”
“And the Omegas going into heat early, the bonds not taking—”
“All connected. If the Rift is being manipulated, everything that flows from it is affected. Every flare, every disrupted cycle, every bond that fails.”
The kitchen feels smaller. The morning light that seemed so warm a minute ago now feels harsh, exposing.
“There’s something else,” Silas says. “No pack bond has successfully formed in this town in ten years. Not one. If the Rift manipulation is preventing bonds from taking, then that affects us, too. Whatever this is between the four of us—whatever we might want it to become—there could be a barrier we can’t cross. ”
The words land hard. I feel them in my chest, a cold weight settling in where the warmth was a moment ago.
“So what do we do?” I ask.
Silas is quiet for a moment. “I have to go back to Chicago. Talk to my sister. Find out what the Council knows about Victor Ash, about the sealed records, about why bonding failures were being filed with a regional representative who was also building hidden wards around a Rift.”
“Now?”
“Not right now. But soon. There are things in the Council archives that I need to see—things I might not have had access to before, but that I can demand now that I have evidence of tampering.”
I look at the table, at my coffee going cold, at Thistle who has given up on ankles and is now sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor cleaning his paw.
“The festivals are starting,” I say quietly.
“The Elmwood Fairgrounds. The seasonal market, the pie competition, all of it. There hasn’t been a flare in two days.
The wards are holding. Can we just… have a normal day?
Before any of that? Before Chicago and Council records and whatever Victor Ash was doing? ”
No one answers right away.
“What do you want to do?” Damon asks.
“I want to go to the fairgrounds. Walk around. Eat too much fried food. Watch Griffin try to win a stuffed animal at one of those rigged carnival games.” I look at Griffin, and he rolls his eyes but doesn’t argue. “I want to be normal for a few hours. Is that okay?”
Damon looks at Silas. Silas looks at Griffin. Griffin looks at me.
“Yeah,” Damon says. “That’s okay.”
We leave after lunch. I change into jeans and a sweater, and the three of them put on clothes that don’t smell like my bedroom. Griffin drives because his truck is the biggest, and the fairgrounds are on the other side of town.
The seasonal market is already in full swing when we arrive.
String lights crisscross between the stalls, even though it’s the middle of the day.
The smell of caramel corn and fried dough hangs in the air.
Someone is playing fiddle near the entrance, the notes bright and fast, and kids are running between the stalls with cotton candy staining their fingers.
It’s chaos. It’s wonderful.
We walk through the market in a loose group—no one holding hands, no one claiming territory. Just four people moving through a crowd, stopping when something catches our eye.
Damon pauses at a booth selling handmade candles and ends up buying three because the vendor reminds him of his aunt.
Griffin drags me to a game where you throw darts at balloons and spends ten dollars failing to pop a single one.
I win a small purple stuffed cat on my second try and give it to him, and he carries it around for the rest of the afternoon without a trace of embarrassment.
Silas is quieter. He hangs back sometimes, watching, his hands in his pockets. But when we pass a booth selling rune-inscribed pendants, he stops and studies them for a long time, pointing out the construction flaws to the vendor with a seriousness that makes the poor man nervous.
We eat fried dough on a bench near the fiddle player. I sit between Damon and Griffin, with Silas on the end, and I watch the crowd flow past—families with strollers, teenagers in groups, old couples walking slow. Normal people doing normal things.
“I want one of those apple things,” I say, pointing at a vendor across the way.
“I’ll get it,” Griffin says, already standing.
“I’ll come with.” Damon pushes off the bench. “You want anything, Silas?”
“Coffee, if they have it.”
They walk off together, and for the first time all day, it’s just me and Silas on the bench.
“You’re thinking loud,” he says.
“I’m not thinking anything.”
“Your face says otherwise.”
I watch Damon and Griffin at the apple vendor, their heads bent together over the menu. They’re talking about something—not arguing, just discussing. Easy. Like they’ve known each other for years instead of days.
“What if it doesn’t work?” I ask. “The bond thing. What if we can’t?”
Silas is quiet for a moment. “Then we find another way.”
“There isn’t another way. Bonds are how packs form. Without that—”
“Caroline.” He turns to face me. “Packs are a social construct. Bonds are a biological one. They overlap, but they’re not the same thing. The bond makes it easier, sure. But people have been building lives together without bonds since long before the Council decided to regulate it.”
“That’s not how the world works.”
“It’s how this town works. Or it used to be, before the Council started treating every unbonded Omega like a problem to be solved.” He pauses. “I’ve spent my whole career enforcing rules I didn’t question. I’m done with that. If the bond won’t take, we figure out what comes next. Together.”
Before I can respond, Griffin returns with two caramel apples, and Damon follows with coffee for Silas and something pink and frozen for me.
“Don’t ask what’s in it,” Damon says, handing me the cup. “The vendor called it a cloud burst.”
“It tastes like strawberries and bleach,” I say after the first sip.
“Finish it anyway. You wanted the full experience.”
The afternoon stretches on. We walk the entire fairgrounds, from the craft stalls to the food trucks to the petting zoo where Griffin spends twenty minutes petting a goat that keeps trying to eat his shirt.
The sun starts to drop toward the tree line, and the string lights come on, casting everything in warm gold.
We end up at the pie competition tent. The entries are displayed on long tables, each one labeled with the baker’s name and the pie variety. June’s booth is near the front—she’s not competing this year, but August entered a blackberry lattice that looks like it belongs in a magazine.
“Can we eat these?” Griffin asks.
“You have to buy a tasting ticket,” I say. “Three dollars for six samples.”
“I’ll buy ten tickets,” Damon says, already pulling out his wallet.
We stand around a high-top table with a stack of small paper plates and forks, tasting pies and arguing about which one is best. Damon prefers a traditional apple.
Griffin is loyal to a cherry lattice from one of the Hartwell cousins.
Silas surprises everyone by choosing a savory herb-and-goat-cheese pie.
“I didn’t know you liked goat cheese,” I say.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”
“I’m aware.”
He looks at me, and there’s something in his expression I can’t name—not soft, exactly, but open. Unguarded.
“I’m going to figure this out,” he says. “The bonding problem, the Rift, all of it. I’m going to find the answer.”
“I know.”
“I just wanted you to hear me say it.”
I hold his gaze for a moment, then nod.
The sun sets. The lights glow. Griffin wins another stuffed animal—a frog this time—and adds it to the purple cat he’s been carrying. Damon calls Gallagher to check in and spends two minutes assuring his deputy that yes, he’s fine, no, he doesn’t need to come in, yes, the town is still standing.
We walk back to the truck in the dusk, the fairgrounds quieting behind us, the music fading to something slow and distant. I’m between Damon and Griffin, with Silas on Griffin’s other side, and our shoulders bump as we walk.
This is really it, I think. Not the grand declaration. Not the dramatic moment. Just this—four people walking through a parking lot at sunset, carrying stuffed animals and ticket stubs, tired and full and content.
Maybe this could be my future. Not a traditional pack, not a bonded unit with all the proper paperwork and Council approval. Something else. Something messier and stranger and more real.
My pack.
I don’t say it out loud. But I feel it settle into my chest like a seed taking root, and for the first time in days, the hollowness is gone.