14. Idris
Idris
By the time Bellwether calls, the house already smells like butter, lemon, melted sugar, and the last of the dinner Sloane keeps trying to turn into Theo’s emergency grocery list. Garrett and I stand at the island with the security tablet between us, the final arrival route pulled up beside the visitor lockout schedule.
The suite upstairs is ready. The cards are placed in the kitchen, sunroom, living room, and Theo’s room.
The low-scent laundry is sealed in the linen bags.
The food list has been checked twice by me and vandalized six times by Sloane.
Callie sits on the counter beside the cooling racks with a mixing bowl in her lap, one bare foot tucked under her thigh and the other hooked around the cabinet pull.
Flour dusts the heel of her hand, the front of her sweater, and the curve of her jaw where she must have touched herself without noticing.
She has already made lemon bars, two trays of shortbread, and something with honey folded into the dough because Theo liked honey mustard at lunch and Sloane apparently took that as a spiritual directive.
Sloane stands between her knees with the grocery list braced against her thigh, pretending to review it while he feeds her another bite from the plate he stole from the table after dinner.
He lifts the fork before she can argue, waits until she opens her mouth, and smiles so openly when she takes the bite that my hand stills on the tablet.
“You added fries again,” Callie says around the food, reaching down with two floury fingers to tap the list. “That is the fourth time. He's one Omega, Sloane, not a county fair.”
Sloane circles something in the margin instead of crossing anything out. “He liked yours better than his, which means we need every possible fry shape until we discover whether it was the potato, the salt, the company, or your fingers.”
Callie’s cheeks go pink, and the spoon in her bowl drags too hard through the dough. Sloane catches her wrist before she can fling flour at him, kisses the inside of it, and lets her go only after she tries to glare at him and fails.
Garrett looks up from the security tablet with his sleeves rolled to his forearms and his tie gone loose at his throat.
He has been here for almost an hour, checking camera angles and entry codes with me while Sloane adds nonsense to the list and Callie creates enough baked goods to survive a siege.
He should look out of place in the middle of this much flour.
Somehow, he only looks like a man who has learned where to stand so he doesn't get hit by Sloane’s elbows.
“The arrival route is locked,” Garrett says, sliding the tablet half an inch toward me.
“Bellwether confirmed the driver's name this afternoon, and I sent the gate code directly to the coordinator. The exterior cameras are set to alert only to unfamiliar vehicles between eight and noon, so the system won’t keep notifying us every time the van shifts in the drive.”
I check the route again, then the time block. “Interior cameras stay disabled in Theo’s room and bathroom. Hallway only, no audio. Kitchen and sunroom remain active until he asks otherwise.”
Garrett nods and marks the line complete. “Agreed. I also added a note that Andrea isn't the preferred transition counselor for tomorrow.”
Callie’s spoon pauses in the bowl. She looks from Garrett to me, then back to Garrett, her expression caught between surprise and the careful softness she has worn around him since his second apology after the first visit. “You did?”
Garrett sets the stylus down and gives her his attention. “Yes, sweetheart. She turned too much into performance. I should have caught more of it before she walked in here with a tablet and a list of practiced responses.”
Callie studies him for a moment with flour on her cheek and cookie dough in her lap. Then she nods once, small but real, and goes back to stirring. “Miller was better on the phone yesterday. Theo seemed calmer when she was the one handling the care package.”
“Miller is who I requested.” Garrett glances toward the bowl as Callie folds something green into a smaller batch of dough. “Is that matcha?”
Callie’s mouth curves before she looks up. “Green tea. I’m making a batch for you too.”
Garrett’s expression changes in that quiet way of his, less polished at the edges and more like the man who sits with us during late dinners when no one needs him to be Alpha Crane. “You hate those cookies.”
“They’re nasty,” Callie says, lifting the spoon and letting the dough slide back into the bowl. “You like them.”
Sloane makes a wounded sound and tries to steal dough from the wrong bowl. Callie catches his hand without looking, smacking his knuckles with the spoon hard enough to leave a pale streak across his skin.
“Theo’s batch,” she says.
Sloane looks down at the mark on his hand, then at me as if I might intervene. “I'm being abused in my own kitchen.”
“You are being supervised in our kitchen,” I say, taking the grocery list before he can add anything else in the margin. “You wrote emergency cheese under toiletries.”
“It belongs somewhere,” Sloane says, but his attention has already slid back to Callie’s mouth as she tries not to laugh at him.
The phone rings on the island before he can make the laugh happen.
Bellwether’s name appears across the screen, and the kitchen keeps moving around it: Callie scraping dough from the side of the bowl, Sloane’s thumb smoothing flour from her wrist, Garrett’s hand already moving to silence the second tablet alert.
I answer with one finger on the security schedule and my eyes on the woman sitting on the counter.
“This is Idris Ward.”
The coordinator confirms my name, Garrett’s signature, the arrival address, and the counselor assigned for transport.
I answer each item while Garrett watches the tablet and Callie leans forward without pretending she isn’t listening.
Sloane goes still only in the places that matter, his hand curled around Callie’s ankle, his thumb moving once over the bone there.
“Then everything is settled,” the coordinator says. “Theo Mehra will be transported to your residence tomorrow at ten. The placement window begins upon arrival, and Counselor Miller will remain on site for the initial transition review.”
The words land in the kitchen, and the room gets brighter with them.
“Thank you,” I say. “We’ll be ready.”
I end the call and set the phone facedown beside the tablet. Callie’s spoon is still in her hand. Sloane is already smiling, slow and wide, and Garrett’s shoulders drop around the first true breath I have seen him take all evening.
“It’s settled,” I say. “They’re bringing Theo home tomorrow at ten.”
Sloane reaches me before the news has fully settled.
He catches the back of my neck, pulls me down, and kisses me hard enough to knock my hip against the island.
I grip his waist and kiss him back while Callie laughs beside us, and when Sloane releases me, his forehead stays against mine for one unsteady breath.
Then Callie makes a sound that catches halfway between a laugh and a gasp.
Sloane turns toward her immediately, pressing his mouth to the flour on her wrist, then the inside of her elbow, then the place where her sleeve has slipped down her arm.
She laughs for real this time and tries to keep the bowl balanced while he kisses his way up toward her shoulder.
“Don't make me drop Theo’s cookies,” she says, but her free hand is already in Sloane’s hair, holding him there.
Sloane lifts his head with flour on his mouth. “Theo’s coming home. He’ll forgive me.”
“He has known you for two visits,” Garrett says, reaching past them for the tablet. “Let’s not test his generosity before he unpacks.”
Callie turns her laugh toward him, and the movement sends flour off her sleeve. It lands across Garrett’s forearm and the side of his dark shirt before she can stop it. Her eyes go wide for half a second, then she looks down at the white smear and back up at his face.
“Oh,” she says, pressing her lips together. “That one wasn't Sloane’s fault.”
Garrett looks at the flour on his shirt, then at the bowl in her lap. The corner of his mouth moves. “I’ll note the distinction for the record.”
Callie reaches for a towel and only manages to smear more flour over his cuff when she tries to brush it off. “I’m sorry. Wait, no, I’m making it worse.”
“Leave it,” Garrett says, catching her wrist before she can fuss with the sleeve again. His thumb rests briefly against the flour-dusted skin near her pulse, and there is nothing clinical in the touch. “Thank you for the cookies, sweetheart.”
Callie’s expression softens so openly that I look back at the tablet and give her the privacy of it. Garrett’s thumb remains near her pulse for another second before he releases her wrist and reaches for the ruined towel.
Sloane takes advantage of the moment to steal a piece of dough from the green tea bowl. Callie sees him too late, but Garrett doesn't. Garrett catches Sloane’s wrist with a napkin and turns his hand away from his mouth before the dough can reach him.
“That batch is mine,” Garrett says.
Sloane stares at him. “You’re defending the nasty cookies?”
“I have been promised nasty cookies,” Garrett says, releasing him with a light shove toward the grocery list. “You may continue your work with the fries.”
Sloane goes back to the list with flour on his mouth and triumph in his posture, adding another line while Callie laughs hard enough that she has to set the mixing bowl beside her.
I watch the house take the news and fold it into what it was already doing.
No one stops to make the moment formal. No one turns Theo into a subject on an agenda.
He's coming home tomorrow, so Callie reaches for the next tray, Sloane adds more food than any household needs, Garrett wipes flour from his cuff with the towel she ruined, and I update the arrival schedule with the final counselor name.
The timer near the stove goes off, and Callie slides down from the counter before Sloane can lift her.
Her feet hit the floor, and she moves around him with the baking tray in both hands, shoulder brushing his chest as she passes.
Sloane follows her as far as the oven and stays there, one hand hovering near the small of her back while she bends to slide the tray inside.
“Don't touch me while I’m holding hot metal,” she says, turning her head enough to aim the warning at him.
Sloane plants his hand flat against the cabinet beside her instead. “I'm a model of restraint.”
“You have flour on your mouth and stolen cheese written under toiletries,” I say, setting the tablet aside now that the final schedule is saved. “Your case is weak.”
Callie shuts the oven door with her hip and turns the timer.
The click seems to satisfy something in her.
Her shoulders loosen, and she looks around the kitchen at the cooling racks, the grocery list, the tablets, the towel in Garrett’s hand, the flour on her sweater and Sloane’s mouth and Garrett’s sleeve.
“Tomorrow,” she says, quieter now, but the happiness is still in it. “He’s really coming home tomorrow.”
“Yes,” Garrett says from beside me. “Tomorrow, Theo joins the pack.”
Sloane moves the second the oven timer is set. He catches Callie around the waist and lifts her off her feet before she can reach for another bowl. Her laugh comes out startled and bright, both hands grabbing his shoulders while he turns away from the counter with her against his chest.
“Sloane,” she says, still laughing, “I have dishes.”
“No,” Sloane says, carrying her toward the doorway while she leaves flour prints across his shirt. “You have timers, three Alphas, and a tomorrow. The dishes have lost access to you.”
She looks over his shoulder at me, eyes bright and face flushed, but she doesn't ask me to stop him. Her fingers curl into the back of his shirt, and when he kisses the side of her neck on his way out of the kitchen, her laughter softens into something that pulls low under my ribs.
Garrett remains beside the island while their voices drift down the hall, Sloane saying something too low for the words to carry and Callie answering with another breathless laugh.
The kitchen feels larger after they leave, the counters cluttered with bowls and trays, the final Bellwether confirmation still open on the tablet, flour floating through the light over the stove.
Garrett folds the towel once, flour still streaked along the edge of his cuff. His gaze stays on the doorway where Sloane carried her out, and when he speaks, his voice belongs to the house rather than the paperwork spread between us.
“Go take care of our Beta.”
I look at him.
He picks up the security tablet but doesn't hand it back to me. “Everything that needed checking has been checked. Tomorrow, we add one more to the pack. Tonight, let her have this.”
Callie laughs again from somewhere beyond the hall, and Sloane’s answering growl is muffled by distance and affection. The oven ticks behind me. The kitchen smells like lemon bars, green tea, sugar, and the dinner Sloane abandoned for celebration.
I leave the tablet with Garrett and follow their voices.