Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Elias
They came on a Saturday, three weeks after I had been at Vera's. The doorbell rang at eleven in the morning and I heard Vera's footsteps in the hall, the sound of the front door, and then a pause that went on a beat too long.
I was in the guest room with one of Nana's journals open in my lap, not reading it, just holding it. I heard their voices through the wall, low and careful, and something in my chest tightened. They had come, whatever they were going to say, they had come in person to say it.
Vera knocked twice and opened the door without waiting. She stood in the doorway with one hand still on the frame.
"Carter's here," she said, keeping her voice even. "Well... Carter and the other two. They'd like to speak with you."
I set the journal on the nightstand and stood. Three weeks in borrowed clothes with my bag still half-unpacked. I smoothed my hands down the front of the shirt. "Okay."
"You don't have to," she said quietly. Her fingers tightened on the doorframe.
"I know." I crossed the room toward her. "I want to." She stepped back and I went past her.
They were in Vera's living room standing rather than sitting.
Carter was nearest the window, hands clasped in front of him in that composed way he had when he'd already decided something and was prepared to deliver it.
Devon stood to his left with his arms crossed, jaw set, not meeting my eyes.
Kyle was slightly behind both of them and he was the only one who looked directly at me.
Devon had set something on the coffee table. The container from the bakery on Clement Street. The cardamom pastries.
I stared at it. He had brought them anyway.
"Elias." Carter's voice was level, the voice he used when he'd thought through a conversation in advance. Not unkind, but not warm either. "Thank you for seeing us."
"You came in person." I sat down on Vera's armchair without being asked. My hands folded in my lap on their own. "Whatever you're going to say, you came in person to say it. That means something."
Something crossed Carter's face. He pressed his mouth together once. Then: "We've talked as a pack and we've made a decision. We're ending the courtship." The room went very quiet. Devon's jaw tightened. Kyle had gone completely still.
"Because of what Dr. Ansley said," I said, my voice came out flat. "My reproductive system. That's why."
"That's the core of it, yes." Carter's voice stayed even, measured. "We had built this courtship with a specific future in mind. Children, within the first couple of years. An Omega who could carry them. That was central to what we were building. What you're facing changes that fundamentally."
An Omega who could carry them.
I heard the words and let them sink in. My hands had gone very still in my lap.
"How long." Something in my voice had shifted, gone quieter in a way that meant the quiet was running out. "How long had you been planning to ask?"
Carter held my gaze, he did not hesitate. "We were planning to ask formally when you turned eighteen. Three weeks from now."
Something happened in my chest. A slow, quiet crack.
"So you had already decided I was what you wanted." My voice had gone very low and very slow. "You had agreed on it. Three weeks away from asking."
"Yes." He held my gaze and said it simply, and something in his expression shifted just slightly, the composure costing him more than it had a minute ago.
"And now I'm not." I kept my eyes on Carter. "Because I can't give you children."
Carter's expression stayed composed. "Because the situation has changed and our needs and your situation are no longer compatible. This isn't a reflection of your worth. It's a practical decision about what our pack requires."
A practical decision.
Something in me went very hot.
"Elias." Devon's voice had gone rough at the edges. He had unfolded his arms and was looking at me now, his warm dark eyes carrying something that Carter's face was not showing. He took half a step forward and stopped himself. "We do care about you. I need you to know that hasn't changed."
"Don't." The word came out sharp and Devon stopped moving. My hands were gripping the arms of the chair. "Don't tell me you care about me while he's standing there calling this a practical decision."
"Elias." Carter's voice stayed level. Patient. Which made it worse. "I understand you're upset—"
Something low came out of me. Not a word. Something from a part of me that was animal and instinct and had been pushed past what it could hold. A growl, real and involuntary, pulling out of my chest before I could stop it, and I felt my lips pull back from my teeth and I did not stop them either.
Carter went quiet. His composed expression didn't break, but he closed his mouth and held it. Devon took a step back. His eyes had gone wide and then careful. Kyle made a small sound, something pained, and pressed his hands tighter together.
Good. Let them see it.
"I lost my grandparents." I stood up, my whole body shaking and I let it shake, let all of it be visible.
"I lost the only family I had in the world that I felt at home with.
Then I lost the children I didn't even know I wanted until a doctor sat across from me in a pale cream chair and told me I couldn't have them.
And I have been lying in that guest room for three weeks holding my grandmother's cardigan because it still smells like her, trying to tell myself this was still going to be okay.
" My voice cracked and came back louder.
"And you were in that hospital room with me.
With your flowers and your cinnamon rolls and Carter's hand holding mine.
And you already knew. You sat there for an hour already knowing what you were going to do.
...and continued check ins and phone calls this whole time too. "
Devon's jaw tightened, had pressed his lips together hard and his eyes were very bright.
"I was falling in love with you." I looked at each of them, Carter, who had gone very still, his composure showing the first signs of strain at the edges; Devon, who had turned his face slightly away; Kyle, who had tears running openly down his face and was not pretending otherwise.
"All three of you. I know it was six months and I know we were still early but I was.
I was starting to. And you had already decided I was going to be yours.
Three weeks away." My voice broke wide open on it.
"And now I'm here because my body doesn't work and that makes me incompatible. "
Devon moved. He crossed the room in three steps and crouched in front of my chair, bringing himself below my eyeline, and put both his hands over mine where they had gone white-knuckled on the armrests. His face when I looked at it was completely wrecked, nothing composed about it.
"I know," he said, his voice breaking. "Elias, I know. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
"Devon." Carter's voice was a warning. Quiet and deliberate.
And something in me snapped.
I turned toward Carter and the growl came again, deeper than the first, tearing out of my throat before I decided to let it, and this time I felt my teeth bare and I leaned forward in the chair with Devon's hands still over mine and I watched Carter take a breath and hold it and not move and I held his gaze and I let him see all of it.
All the grief and the rage and the seventeen years and the pale cream chair and the December twenty-second and every week I had spent in that guest room telling myself I was going to be fine.
"Get out." My voice was low and shaking and I was still leaning forward, still showing my teeth. "Get out of this house."
Carter opened his mouth.
"I said get out." Louder now. Loud enough that I heard Vera's footsteps stop in the hall. "I don't want to look at you right now. I don't want your apologies and I don't want your practical decisions and I don't want any of you in this room anymore."
Devon stood slowly. He kept his eyes on me and his face was open and devastated and he nodded once, very slightly. Kyle crossed the room toward me and stopped just short. His voice was barely above a whisper when he said my name.
"Please." My voice broke on it. "Please just go."
Kyle's breath came out ragged. He pressed his hands together in front of his mouth, his eyes squeezing shut, and then he nodded and turned away.
They left.
Vera's voice in the hall, murmuring something low. The front door. The car. The house went quiet. I sat back down in the armchair because my legs needed me to. The cardamom pastries were still on the coffee table.
Vera came back into the living room. She stood in the doorway and looked at me and her expression settled into pity, real and genuine and utterly unbearable.
"Elias." She crossed her arms over her chest. "You don't have to be alone right now." She took a step toward me, her hand lifting.
"I'm going to go lie down." I got to my feet. "Thank you for letting them in."
"I'm right here," she said quietly. "You don't have to do this alone."
"I know." I met her eyes so she would understand I meant the next part. "I need to be alone right now. Please."
She held my gaze for a beat and then stepped aside. I went past her and down the hall and into the guest room and I closed the door. I sat on the edge of the bed for a while. Then I lay down and stared at the ceiling and it pressed in and I sat back up.
I had lost Pop and Nana. I had lost the children I had not known I wanted. I had lost the pack I had been falling in love with. And the reason, the stated reason, was that I was not compatible. That I could not carry children. That without that I was not what they required.
I pulled my knees to my chest and pressed my forehead against them and the sound that came out of me was not something I had planned.
This was different from the hospital. That had been contained grief, managed.
This went all the way down, to the part that had been holding December twenty-second and the pale cream chair and now this living room, all of it at once.
I don't know how long it was. Long enough. When it was done I was lying sideways on the bed with my face in the pillow and the room was dim. At some point I got up and opened the wardrobe.
Pop's old flannel was there, the heavy one he wore around the house in winter. It had been in the laundry basket and Vera had packed it without thinking. I took it out and sat with it in my lap. It smelled of him still, soap and cedar and something underneath that was just him.
I found Nana's cardigan too. I held it for a moment and set it on the bed beside the flannel. Then, without quite deciding to, I started building.
I did not have much. One extra blanket, thin and beige.
Two spare pillows on the shelf. I pulled them all down and stacked the pillows against the headboard and arranged the blanket over them into something like a barrier.
Pop's flannel inside at the center. Nana's cardigan beside it.
The small throw from the chair by the window tucked along the edge.
It was not much. Nothing like what a real nest should be, built with time and good materials and people who brought their own things when you invited them.
This was spare pillows and a borrowed blanket and two pieces of clothing that smelled of people who were gone.
Imperfect and small and private and it was the only thing my body knew how to do.
I climbed into the center of it and lay still.
The room was quiet. Outside the window the light was going. At some point Vera knocked softly and I did not answer and she did not try the door.
I pressed my face into Pop's flannel and let the smell of it hold me. Outside the light came on in the neighbor's house across the street, a warm yellow square in the dark, someone else's ordinary Saturday evening.
I breathed in and out and stayed very still and let the nest do what nests are for.
That was the only thing I had left to control.