Chapter 36
Alex
I watch them from the couch and I can't move.
Vee in Rhys's lap, hollowed out. Malcolm in the armchair with cold coffee and nowhere to put his anger. Finn on the floor with nothing to say for the first time I can remember.
This is because of me.
Not the registry or the broken system or Chase failing to find an angle. Me. The flag on my name that I put there with my own hands and would put there again, because Rhys wouldn't have survived prison and I knew it. I'd make the same call a thousand times.
But the cost of it is sitting in this room.
Rhys looks up and finds me watching. The lost quality in his eyes—I haven't seen that since the early months, before he trusted us, before he knew the world could have places in it that were safe. He worked years to get from there to here. Vee gave him the rest of it in weeks.
And the registry is going to take her away from him.
I get up and walk out the back door before anyone can notice. Before their scents pull me back.
The trees are quiet.
I call Arden.
He picks up on the second ring and knows from one word that something is wrong.
"The flag stays," I say.
A pause. "I'm sorry."
"If she's taken away from Rhys now," I say. "After he's had this. What happens to him?"
Arden is quiet longer than I'd like. "He might backslide. The calm she gives him isn't just comfort, it's regulation. If that's taken now—" He stops. "I don't know. It's not that he can't heal on his own, he can, he's shown that. But snatching her away is going to traumatize him."
"Did I make the wrong call that night?"
"Only you know that."
"He wouldn't have survived prison."
"No," Arden says. "He wouldn't have."
"Then it was right." I look up through the canopy. "But my pack doesn't deserve to lose this. Vee doesn't deserve to lose this. And Rhys—" My voice goes rough. "He was never given a fair chance. But he got there. He got there and she's part of why."
Arden says my name.
"It would work," I say. "If I break the bonds, Malcolm leads. He's ready. The flag stays with me but it's no longer attached to a pack lead. The registry has no grounds to keep Vee from staying with them."
Silence.
"They'll be okay," I say. "I'm lead, so there's no bond sickness.”
"You won't be fine," Arden says. "Not emotionally."
"No. But I'll manage."
He's quiet for a long moment. Then: "You've always been the steadiest person I know, Alex Castillo. I want you to know that."
I hold that. Let it be what it is.
"Take care of Rhys," I say. "If he needs you."
"I will. Take care of yourself."
I hang up.
I think about the door. The hours on the floor outside it, her fingers in the gap underneath. The circles I traced on her palm because it was the only thing I could give her.
Then I push off the tree and walk back.
They're in the kitchen.
All four of them in the same space because the space helps. They're quiet… exhausted.
I stand in the doorway and I look at them.
I take my time with it. Malcolm who loves without asking permission.
Finn who showed up for a broken alpha and just talked, for weeks, without expecting anything back.
Rhys, who survived things that should have destroyed him and came out the other side still capable of this—of being gentle, of making himself smaller, of holding on.
And Vee, who chose us anyway.
After everything we did wrong. After all of it. She still chose us.
Malcolm looks up and reads my face.
"No," he says.
He's on his feet before the word is out. Finn looks between us. Rhys straightens.
Vee turns.
Our eyes meet.
I'm sorry, I think. I'm sorry I can't be the one who gets to keep you.
I reach into my chest and pull.
The alpha bonds go at once. They wisp away so easily compared to the years of brotherhood we put into forming them.
The pain is enormous. I've been bracing for twenty minutes and it still takes my breath.
Malcolm's legs buckle. Rhys goes with him. I go down too, the three of us hitting the floor at the same moment, and somewhere above us Finn makes a sound I've never heard from him before. His bond isn’t physical, but watching this cuts him anyway.
Vee lunges for Rhys, his name falling from her lips. Finn is at Malcolm's side, Malcolm's hand locked around his arm.
I get up.
My chest is hollow where the bonds were. The silence inside me is the loudest thing I've ever heard.
"I'm sorry," I say. My voice breaks on it. "This is how it has to be."
I pick up my keys.
Rhys's hand catches my arm. The warmth of his grip. Ten years of pack. The man I took the fall for and would take it for again without hesitation. I remove his hand.
"You'll be okay by tonight," I say. "All of you. I promise."
Malcolm is on his feet. Unsteady. Eyes bright and furious and wrecked all at once. He steps toward me.
I step back.
"Malcolm," I say. Just his name.
He stops.
I walk to the door.
I don't look back.
The car door closes behind me. The engine turns over. I back out of the driveway and the cabin gets smaller in the mirror. I let it get smaller and I don't stop.
They need the space to rebuild. Malcolm will hold them together. He always has. He just needed me out of the way.
The road opens ahead of me.
My chest is hollow and wrong and silent.
I drive.
Because somewhere behind me, in a kitchen that smells like pack, the people I love most in the world are going to be okay.
That has to be enough.
I tell myself it is and I almost believe it.