Chapter 17 #3
One day passed. Then another. The unfinished main house absorbed the waiting in silence, dust settling on surfaces nobody bothered to clean.
Cleaning would have implied permanence, and those two days had none.
Denil handled remote approvals for the Shelton contractor.
Isak restocked the Swag Bag twice, though it hadn't needed it the first time.
I answered emails. We ate meals at the island.
Bridgeport stayed confined to drive time, parking, and weather. The bond carried everything else.
Isak's restlessness took physical form. He rearranged the guest house living room twice, shifting lamps and angling the sectional toward the windows, then away, then back again.
Each adjustment came with the same explanation to no one in particular: the light was better this way, actually, you wouldn't understand, it's a guest experience thing.
Denil found tasks that required his body: carrying lumber from the dumpster to the shed, running the property perimeter at dawn, checking the gate mechanism three times in one afternoon.
By the second day, their want ran loud enough through the bond that I could track it without trying.
My phone stayed on, volume up and fully charged. I checked it too often. Each time the screen showed nothing new, I set it down and returned to what I'd been doing. By the second evening, the absence had grown familiar.
She called on the third day. Mid-afternoon, the light gone flat and gray through the unfinished windows, rain tapping against the plastic sheeting upstairs.
I was in the guest house kitchen, rinsing a coffee mug, when the ring cut through the silence and both alphas turned toward the sound from opposite ends of the living room.
I dried my hands. Picked up the phone. Her name filled the screen, and my chest tightened just as hard as it had three days ago, untouched by the waiting.
"Nitsa."
Her voice came through warmer than on the first call, honeysuckle layered thick over the herbal ink note. The cadence carried me back to the hotel, to the moment her body had stopped fighting what it wanted. She wasn't frantic. She had already decided; now she was calling.
"It's time." The words were simple and clean, with none of the anger that had edged her first call. She had checked every detail; now she was stating the result.
"Are you sure?" I asked. The question was mine to ask. The alphas could hear her. Isak had moved to the doorway; Denil stood by the island. Both went still, every other concern set down at once.
"Yes." A beat. Rain ticked against her windows while Bridgeport moved behind her. "How soon can you get here?"
"We're on the road in twenty." I didn't look at the alphas. I didn't need to. The bond snapped into focus: three men who had been waiting were finally allowed to move. "Drive's forty-five minutes in this weather. Call if anything changes. Otherwise we'll see you at the door."
"Okay." Her breath loosened around the word, the first clean release of tension I'd heard from her since the call began. "Drive safe."
"We will."
The call ended. I set the phone down on the counter and turned to the room.
"Twenty minutes," I said. "Swag Bag, heat-specific items only. One change of clothes each. One gift, Isak, and it better fit in a backpack."
He was already moving, through the living room toward the hallway, his body remembering the path to the Swag Bag's hiding place before his brain had caught up. Denil stayed by the island, arms crossed, running through drive time, weather, parking, the building, and her door.
"She sounded sure about us." He watched me until I answered.
"She was sure." I picked up my mug, set it in the sink. I kept the movements small and ordinary while everything underneath rushed. "No bites. Remember that part. She was clear."
He nodded. He didn't like the limit, but she mattered more than the instinct pushing him. Then he was moving too, toward the bedroom where his duffel lived, and the space filled with the sound of three men gathering what they needed for a drive they'd been ready to make for days.
I'd packed last night, unwilling to chance it longer than that.
One change of clothes. Toiletries. The mint settled cool against the warmer notes of the alphas moving through the house, and something in my chest had eased with relief, or perhaps the satisfaction of a wait that had ended on her terms rather than ours.
She'd called. We were going. The sequence was right.
The timing was hers. Nothing about it had been assumed or rushed or taken, and the cleanliness of that mattered more than any warmth we could have offered by showing up early.
Isak reappeared with the Swag Bag slung over one shoulder and a small paper bag in his hand. One gift. I didn't ask what was in it. Some questions were better left until we arrived.
Denil had the keys. The Suburban would fit all three of us and the bags, and the drive would be quiet, probably, forty-five minutes of three men holding themselves together while the bond ran warm and the rain came down on the roof and Bridgeport waited at the other end of the highway.
We locked the guest house and pulled until the latch caught.
We'd be gone for days, and none of us intended to second-guess it.
The gravel was wet under our boots. Hemlock and spruce stood dark against the gray sky, smelling of rain and resin.
The unfinished property stayed at our backs, patient and ours for now.
Maybe forever, depending on what happened in a city apartment forty-five minutes south.
I got in the passenger seat. Denil took the wheel. Isak climbed into the back with the Swag Bag beside him and his gift in his lap, and when the engine turned over the sound filled the cab with something that felt almost like relief.
This was not a reward for getting everything right. It was trust, offered after she'd seen what we did when we got it wrong.
The gravel gave way to pavement. The trees opened.
The gate swung wide, and Denil guided the Suburban onto the main road toward Bridgeport, toward her apartment, toward the woman who had built a life with her own two hands and had decided, against every instinct that had kept her safe until now, to let us walk through the door.