Chapter Ten
AVERY
Dean texted me on a Saturday morning.
I need to talk to you. Not about work. Can I come over?
I was on my second coffee and a deadline that was three days away but behaving like it was due in an hour, and the words not about work did something specific to my stomach.
When?
Now, if that's okay.
I made more coffee. Cleaned my kitchen. Told myself I wasn't cleaning my kitchen because I was nervous, and then acknowledged that I was cleaning my kitchen because I was nervous, and put the cleaning supplies away.
He arrived twenty minutes later with his hands in his jacket pockets and an expression I'd learned to read over the past several months — the one where he'd decided something and was going to say it even if it was uncomfortable.
"Come in," I said.
He came in. Sat at my kitchen table. Looked at me.
"I know who Micah Kent is," he said.
I sat down across from him very carefully.
"I need you to know that I found out by accident," he said. "He saw your photo. In my contact list. And I didn't know about the connection before that."
"What connection."
"He's Isaac's business partner."
I pressed my hands flat on the table. "Dean."
"I know."
"Micah Kent is Isaac Price's business partner."
"Yes."
"And Isaac Price is your scent-match."
"Yes."
I looked at the ceiling. Then at Dean. Then at the coffee I hadn't touched. "How long have you known?"
"Three days. I wanted to tell you immediately but I was trying to figure out how to tell you in a way that didn't feel like an ambush." He leaned forward. "Avery. He's been looking for you. Micah. He didn't know your name. He found out three days ago."
"Looking for me."
"Yes."
"Ethically," I said, because I needed to know.
"He refused to use invasive resources. His words, according to Isaac.
" Dean's voice was careful and honest and the same voice he always used, which was the thing about him — he didn't perform comfort, he just told you the truth in the kindest way he could.
"He found out through me because I had your photo in my contacts and he recognized you. That's it."
I thought about the folder. The Approved Partner Designations page.
"I saw something," I said. "The morning I left. A succession document."
"I know. He knows you saw it."
"Then he knows why I left."
"Yes." Dean held my gaze. "He also wants you to know that the document isn't the whole conversation."
I stood up and went to my kitchen window.
Outside was a normal Saturday morning — a woman walking a dog, two kids on bikes, the particular urban peace of a weekend when nobody expected anything from you.
I'd built this life out here, outside the alpha succession structures, and it was good. It was mine.
"They want to meet," Dean said. "Or just Micah. Or just Isaac. Or none of them, if that's what you want. That's entirely up to you."
"You said they."
"Because it's not separate anymore. It's not Micah on one side and Isaac's scent-match on the other. They're connected. And they know that you're connected to both of them. And the next move is yours."
I turned around.
He was watching me with that specific patient quality he had — not waiting for the answer he wanted, just waiting. Ready to be told to go away if that's what I said. Ready to accept whatever I decided, genuinely, in the way people said they would and usually didn't mean.
"Where?" I said.
"Wherever feels safe. You pick the location."
"Marin's office." My lawyer — the one who handled my professional contracts. The one who knew designation law. The one who did not like being outmaneuvered by alpha resources. "I want Marin there."
Dean nodded.
"And I'm setting the terms," I said. "All of them. Not just for the meeting — for whatever comes after. If anything comes after."
"Of course."
I sat back down. Looked at my coffee. "This is insane."
"A little," he agreed.
"You have a scent-match with one of the most powerful corporate alphas in the city, who is business partners with the alpha I had a one-night stand with, who has apparently been looking for me for two months, and I'm sitting in my apartment on a Saturday morning with a deadline due and this is my life. "
"That's an accurate summary."
I looked at him. "Are you okay? With all of this?"
He blinked. "I was about to ask you the same thing."
"I asked first."
"I'm—" He thought about it, which was what he did when he was going to answer honestly rather than reassuringly.
"I'm a lot of things. I'm scared and I'm hopeful and I'm a little angry at the situation, specifically the part where you've been carrying this alone, and I'm very aware that I'm an omega with an official scent-match asking a beta I — asking you to walk into a complicated situation that the law has specifically designed to be difficult for you. "
"What were you going to say?" I said. "Before you corrected yourself."
He met my eyes.
"I was going to say 'a beta I love,'" he said. "I corrected myself because I didn't want to be adding pressure to an already pressurized situation."
I sat with that for a moment.
"Marin's office," I said again. "Tuesday. You, me, and the two of them."
"Okay."
"And Dean." I made sure he was looking at me. "Me telling you where I'll meet them is not the same as me deciding anything. I'm not deciding anything. I'm just — taking one step."
"That's all I'm asking," he said.
It wasn't all he was asking, and we both knew it, but it was what he said, and I appreciated the grace of it.
One step.
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