Chapter 10 #2
It comes from somewhere deep. Not a pretty cry.
The real kind; the kind that comes when something you've been holding up for too long finally gets to put itself down.
I cry into this stranger's chest and he doesn't flinch or pull back or make it about him.
His arms come around me. One hand guides my face toward his neck, toward his scent gland, so that I'm breathing him in directly, and the crying intensifies for a second and then starts to ease.
His purr starts.
It's not like Malcolm's. Or Alex’s. It’s not smooth and steady and easy.
This one is ragged. It stutters and catches.
Like something inside is damaged, like the mechanism doesn't work quite right anymore.
But it's deep and low and resonant and it goes straight to every broken part of me and says something without words.
You're okay. You're here. I've got you.
I don't know how long I cry.
Long enough that Arden apparently finds a place to sit because when I finally surface, he's on the couch with his legs crossed and his expression doing that careful professional warmth thing.
I pull back from Rhys's chest slowly.
Look up at his face.
He's watching me with those warm brown eyes and the remains of the smile he was fighting earlier. I can see it more clearly now. What his face might have looked like before. What it still looks like underneath, if you know where to find it.
I say his name.
Just to say it. Just to hear how it sounds.
"Rhys."
He smiles.
It stretches the scars around his mouth. Pulls the skin in ways that look like they should hurt but he doesn't seem to notice. The smile is a little crooked and entirely genuine and it is one of the most unexpectedly beautiful things I have seen in a long time.
I smile back. I can't help it.
"Vee," Arden says from the couch. "How do you feel?"
I take stock. The residue of crying. The warmth still seeping in from where Rhys's arm is still loosely around me. The quiet where the anxiety used to be.
"Better," I admit.
Arden nods like this confirms something.
Rhys doesn't talk like most people talk. He considers before he speaks. When he does speak the words are chosen carefully and there aren't many of them but they go exactly where they're supposed to. “Hi Vee.”
I like it.
"Are you in Arden's pack?" I ask him.
He shakes his head.
I frown. Think about it. Turn it over.
And then a memory surfaces. One of those things that sat slightly wrong when it happened and got filed away under things to think about later.
Finn's voice. Casual, but with an edge underneath it like he knew he'd misspoken the second the words were out.
This isn't normal. You're not supposed to be able to sit between three alphas and a beta and not smell like anything.
Three alphas and a beta.
There were only two alphas in that room.
I'd noticed. Of course I'd noticed. But I pushed it away, too numb to really wonder about it.
"Finn," I say.
Rhys's expression shifts. The look of a man who loves someone and has been the reason for their panic more than once.
"He called me that night," Rhys says, low and a little rough. Like speaking isn’t something he does often.
"Panicking. Said you'd gone quiet in a way that meant you were thinking.
That he'd felt you notice what he said the second it came out.
" He pauses. "He was convinced you were going to pull on that thread until the whole thing unraveled and Ragon would find out and then everything would fall apart. "
"He was that worried? Because he miscounted?"
"He called me four times in one hour." His eyes crinkle at the corners. "The third call I didn't pick up. He called back immediately."
I laugh.
It surprises me. It surprises Rhys too, I think. His expression opens up in a way that makes him look younger.
"Alex is your pack lead," I say.
"Yes."
"And you've been here because Arden is helping you and you couldn't be next door." Arden's words in the car come back to me. About Rhys and unfamiliar alphas. About the years of work. "If you'd been next door—"
Rhys's expression darkens. A low sound in his chest that isn't quite a growl but isn't quite not one either.
"The alphas that were hurting you… there would have been no more alphas to speak of," he says flatly.
I take that in. The matter-of-fact quality of it. He's not posturing. He's just stating what would have happened.
"But I don't recognize your scent," I say. "Not how I do Alex's. Or Malcolm's."
"No," Arden says from the couch. "You wouldn't. His scent changed significantly after what happened to him. Your omega recognizes the original scent profile, the one encoded in the match. Not this version."
"But you recognize mine," I say to Rhys.
That almost-smile again. Slow. "Vanilla and wildflowers after rain." His voice drops slightly. "With cinnamon underneath."
Warmth rolls through me at that.
"Did you know?" I ask. "Everything they were doing? The whole plan?"
He shakes his head. "I knew they were trying to help an omega out of a bad situation.
The details—" He pauses. "They wanted me focused on my own work.
On Arden's sessions. I didn't need the whole picture.
" He's quiet. "I learned more as time went on.
But it wasn't until Arden brought me something of yours that I understood what I was to you. What you were to me."
He says it the same way he says everything else. Direct but sparse, like it's just a fact he's reporting.
But his eyes say the rest of it.
Arden's words from the car are still with me. Him refusing to give the blanket back. Him laying with it at night even after the scent faded.
This enormous, scarred but gentle alpha found something in my scent that made him hold on to a faded piece of fabric rather than give it back.
I look at him.
He looks back.
And I realize what Arden said in the car was right. About the shared architecture, the shared brokenness that somehow makes his scent speak to mine in a language I don't have words for.
He never tried to manage me. Never moved pieces around me. Never ran an operation. He was just here, in this house, healing slowly, holding a piece of my nest at night.
"What happens now?" I ask.
Rhys looks at Arden. Arden looks at me.
"That depends on you," Arden says.
"Do you want to come back with me?" I ask Rhys directly.
He holds my gaze.
"Yes," he says.
Simple. Certain. Like he decided a long time ago and has just been waiting to be asked.
"Okay," I say.
Rhys nods once and almost smiles again.
I'm starting to think I'm going to spend a lot of time trying to get that almost-smile to become a real one.
I think I'm okay with that.