Chapter 19
Finn
The conversation happens days after he heard me.
Days of me finding reasons to be in whatever room Alex isn't in and rearranging my schedule around his, which is harder than it sounds in a cabin this size.
Days of Vee noticing something is off and me telling her I'm fine, which she accepts with the grace of a woman who knows when someone is lying and is choosing to let them.
Malcolm told me to talk to him when I was sober and rested. I've been both for a while and I still haven't done it.
It's not that I'm afraid of what Alex will say.
It's that I'm afraid of what he won't say.
Alex doesn't yell. He doesn't guilt. He processes, adjusts and moves forward.
Somehow that's worse than any confrontation could be—the possibility that he heard the worst thing I've ever admitted about myself and just..
. absorbed it. Put it away somewhere and recalibrated his understanding of me without telling me what the new calculation looks like.
I'm in the kitchen reorganizing the spice cabinet for the second time this week when he finds me.
"Finn."
I don't turn around. "The cumin was behind the paprika. That's not where cumin goes."
"Finn."
"It goes alphabetically or by frequency of use. I haven't decided which system we're implementing yet but either way, behind the paprika is wrong."
"We need to talk."
I put the cumin down, close the cabinet and turn around slowly.
Alex is leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed. His expression is calm in that way that means he's already thought about this extensively and arrived at the conversation fully prepared.
I am not prepared.
"Okay," I say.
He pulls out a chair and sits. I stay standing because sitting feels like accepting that this is happening.
"Sit down," he says.
I sit down.
The kitchen is quiet. Vee is outside with Rhys. Malcolm went for a run. It's just us. Alex probably engineered that.
"How much did you hear?" I ask. Might as well start with the part that's been eating me alive.
"Enough."
"Enough meaning—"
"All of it.” He says it flatly. "I was on the porch for most of the conversation. I came out to check on you two and you were already talking."
My throat closes.
"The relief," I say. The word comes out rough. "You heard the part about the relief."
"Yes."
I look at the table. At a knot in the wood I've memorized from staring at it during meals. "I was relieved when you got the flag, Alex. You sacrificed everything for Rhys, you went to prison, and my first reaction was relief that we'd never have an omega because I was afraid of not being enough."
"I know."
"That's not—" I stop. "That's not who I want to be. That's not the kind of pack brother I want to be."
Alex is quiet. Then he leans forward, forearms on the table.
"Do you remember what happened after I got arrested?"
I look at him.
"You came to see me on the first visiting day.
You drove four hours because the facility was in the middle of nowhere and you sat in that plastic chair across from me.
You brought my entire quarterly tax filing because you'd been doing the company books while I was gone and you wanted me to check your math. "
"Your filing system was a disaster. Someone had to—"
"You drove four hours to show me spreadsheets, Finn.
" His mouth twitches. "You came every visiting day without fail.
You kept the company running with Malcolm even though you had a full time job.
You kept Malcolm from spiraling. You sat with Rhys when nobody else could be in the room with him.
You held everything together while I was gone. "
"That's just—"
"Don't say 'that's just what I do.' I know it's what you do. That's my point." He holds my gaze. "You think I heard you say you were relieved and I thought less of you?"
I can't answer that.
"I thought: of course he was relieved. He was twenty-three years old and terrified that an omega would walk into this pack and confirm every fear he'd ever had about being a beta among alphas." He says it steady. "Relief was the honest response. You think I'd rather you'd lied about it?"
"I should have been angry for you."
"You were. Later, when it mattered." He pauses. "A moment of relief doesn't cancel out years of showing up Finn. It doesn't cancel out the spreadsheets or the visiting days or the fact that you're the reason I had a company to come back to."
I stare at the table.
"Finn. Look at me."
I look at him.
"You are enough," he says. "You've always been enough.
Not despite being a beta. Because of who you are.
The pack works because you're in it. I work because you're in it. I wouldn’t have made you co-head if I didn’t believe it.
" He pauses. "And Vee is not going to wake up one day and wish you had a knot.
That's not how she sees you, that's not how any of us see you. "
I want to argue. The instinct is strong—to list the biological deficits, to catalog what I can't provide, to build the case against myself like I build every other case. With evidence. With precision.
But Alex is looking at me with an expression that doesn't leave room for argument. Not the pack lead face He’s just Alex, the man I've known since I was nineteen. The one who handed me a set of keys to a startup office and said "I need someone who notices things."
"Malcolm told me to cut myself some slack," I say. "The night in the garden."
"Malcolm was right."
"He said you'd know what was in my heart."
"He was right about that too." Alex stands. "Are we done?"
"Are we?"
"We're done." He crosses to the counter and pours two mugs of coffee. Then sets one in front of me. "I need you to look at something Chase found in the registry filings. He thinks there's a discrepancy in the wellness check records that could help Vee's case."
I stare at him. "You're just—moving on? Just like that?"
"There's nothing to move on from." He takes a drink of his coffee. "You had a feeling you were ashamed of. You told someone about it. The person you were ashamed of disappointing just told you it doesn't change anything." He looks at me over the rim. "What else is there?"
I pick up the mug. The coffee is exactly how I take it, because Alex notices things too.
"Nothing," I say. "There's nothing else."
"Good. Now look at these filings."
We work at the kitchen table for the next hour. It's normal. It's completely, entirely normal, in the same way that only happens after something has been resolved so thoroughly that it doesn't need to be referenced again.
The knot in my stomach loosens. Not dramatically, but slowly, over the course of an hour of shared silence and paperwork and coffee, the way tension leaves a body that's finally been given permission to let it go.
***
Vee finds me that evening.
I'm on the porch with a book I'm not reading, watching the tree line go dark. She comes out and drops into the chair beside me and pulls her knees up.
"Hey," she says.
"Hey."
"You've been weird this week."
"I haven't been weird."
"You've been avoiding Alex, reorganizing every cabinet in the kitchen, and you alphabetized the bookshelf yesterday. Twice." She looks at me. "That's weird even for you."
I close the book. "I talked to Alex today."
"I figured. You seem less... compressed."
"Compressed?"
"Like you’ve been holding your breath for days. Now you look like you're breathing again." She studies me. "Want to talk about it?"
I look at the trees. The last of the light is going. Inside the cabin I can hear Malcolm laughing at something and Rhys's low response that might be a word or might just be acknowledgment.
"I'm scared," I say.
She waits.
"I'm scared that you're going to realize you don't need me." It comes out before I've decided to say it. "That you have three alphas who can purr for you and knot you and scent bond to you and do all the things an omega needs biologically, and I'm just... the guy who organizes the fridge."
Vee is quiet.
"Finn," she says. "Look at me."
I look at her.
"Do you know what I think about when I can't sleep?"
"No."
"I think about the night you texted me. When you saw my light on from across the yard and asked me if I wanted to come bake cookies." She pulls her knees closer. "Nobody in that house had noticed I was awake. Nobody checked. Nobody cared enough to bother. But you did."
"That's just—"
"If you say 'that's just what I do' I'm going to throw that book at you."
I close my mouth.
"It wasn't just what you do," she says. "It was the first time in a long time that someone noticed I was struggling and did something about it. And you didn’t use a purr or a knot or biology.
It was just you. Just a person, seeing another person, and showing up.
" Her voice has gone rough. "That's not nothing, Finn. That's everything."
I stare at her.
"I don't need you to be an alpha," she says.
"I have three alphas here. I have more alpha energy in my life than any one person should reasonably have to manage.
What I need is you. The person who color-codes the fridge, argues about card games.
The person who makes me laugh when I forget I'm allowed to. "
"Vee—"
"When I'm overwhelmed by alpha pheromones and I need somewhere to just breathe?
You're that place. When I want to have a conversation that isn't loaded with biology and instinct and the constant pull of the bond?
You're that person." She holds my gaze. "You're not the gap in this pack, Finn.
You're the thing that holds it together.
And if you can't see that, then you're the least observant person I've ever met. "
I laugh. It comes out slightly broken and slightly wet. I push my glasses up to buy myself a second.
"That's a contradiction," I say.
"I know. I'm making a point."
"It's a good point."
"I know it is." She reaches over and takes my hand. Her fingers are warm and small and they fit between mine in a way that they wouldn’t if I were an alpha. "You're enough, Finn. You were enough before I got here and you'll be enough for as long as you want to be."
I look at our hands.
"I want to be," I say. "For a very long time."
"Good." She squeezes once. "Then stop reorganizing my spice cabinet."
"Our spice cabinet. And the cumin was behind the paprika."
"The cumin can go wherever it wants."
"That's anarchy."
"That's flexibility."
"Those are not the same thing."
She laughs. The real one. The full one. The one she's been giving more and more freely as the weeks pass and the old Vee comes back piece by piece.
I hold her hand and listen to it and think: this is what enough sounds like.
Just a woman laughing on a porch because the person next to her said something that made her happy.
I'll take it.
I'll take it every single day for the rest of my life and never once call it less than.