32. Theo #3
“With you.” I breathe in, and the sweater smells like her, and her knee is warm against my cheek. “The sunroom is good. Sloane and Idris are good. I want them so much it scares me. But when I’m with them, sometimes my body gets louder than my head. With you, I can hear myself better.”
Her hand keeps moving, slower now. “That makes sense to me.”
It helps that she doesn’t turn the answer into a lesson. Above me, her pen moves again. She is grading while I fall apart against her leg, and the ordinary sound holds me in place better than any protocol could.
Footsteps pass the dining-room doorway a few minutes later. My body tightens before I know who it is, and Callie’s hand presses more firmly to my head.
“You’re okay,” she says quietly. “You can stay.”
Sloane’s voice reaches the doorway, rough and too controlled. “Callie, is he with you?”
“He’s here,” she says, her fingers still moving through my hair. “He needed quiet.”
The floorboards creak as Sloane steps in, then stop. I can feel him realize where I am. His scent pushes into the room, smoked cedar and brown sugar sharpened by fear, and my body answers even while I press closer to Callie’s knee.
“Sweetheart,” Sloane says, quieter now. He lowers himself near the table but doesn’t lift the cloth or reach under right away. “Can I see you?”
I look at Callie’s hand, at the shadow of Sloane’s knees beyond the tablecloth, at the strip of light along the floor. “I’m under the table.”
“I know.” His voice breaks around the second word and smooths out before it can scare me. “I’m staying out here unless you ask me to come closer.”
Idris arrives behind him, black tea and rain cutting cleanly through Sloane’s fear. He doesn’t crowd either. His shoes stop near Callie’s chair, and then his hand rests on her shoulder above me, visible through the gap in the tablecloth.
“Theo,” Idris says, steady and low. “Tell me what happened.”
The words are gentle. They still find the locked place.
I close my eyes. Callie’s hand stays in my hair. Sloane shifts outside the table, and I can hear how hard he’s trying to keep still.
“Garrett talked to me in the hall,” I say at last. My voice comes out quiet, but I keep every word whole. “He said Callie would try to carry what belongs to a heat room if I asked her. He said I should let her keep the place she can survive.”
Sloane makes a sound that is almost a growl. It cuts off fast, like Idris has stopped him with a hand or a look. Callie’s fingers tremble against my scalp, and Idris’s hand tightens on her shoulder once before he lets the pressure ease.
“I wanted to come to her anyway,” I say, opening my eyes to the shadowed underside of the table. “I knew I needed her. Then I got here, and I couldn’t tell if asking was unfair.”
For a breath, the room holds itself completely still.
Sloane’s hand appears beneath the tablecloth, palm open on the rug a few inches from my knee.
He doesn’t touch me until I move my foot into his reach, and when his fingers close around my ankle, his grip is warm and careful enough that my chest hurts.
Idris crouches beside Callie’s chair. His face is partly hidden by the tablecloth, but I can see his mouth, the hard line of his jaw, the control he’s using like both hands around a blade. “Thank you for telling us,” he says.
“I don’t want everyone to fight.”
“We know.” Callie answers before either Alpha can, and her voice shakes more than it did a minute ago. She keeps her hand in my hair anyway. “Nobody is fighting over you under my dining table.”
Sloane breathes out hard, but he doesn’t turn it into a joke.
His thumb moves once over my ankle, then stops there, steady pressure instead of restless panic.
Idris stays crouched, one hand still on Callie’s shoulder and the other resting against the floor near Sloane’s, close enough for me to reach if I want him.
“I can go back to the sunroom in a minute,” I say, because the instinct to offer obedience is still there and still loud. “I know I should be there.”
“No,” Idris says, and the word is quiet enough that it doesn’t bruise. “You can breathe first.”
Sloane’s fingers tighten around my ankle, then loosen. “And when you go back, Callie comes with us if you want her there.”
Callie’s hand stops in my hair.
I lift my head from her knee just enough to look through the gap in the tablecloth.
Sloane is on the floor now, close and strained, his eyes bright with too many things he isn’t letting loose.
Idris watches him for one second, then looks at Callie, and whatever passes between them makes the air shift.
Garrett’s words are still in me. I can feel them, cold and careful, trying to arrange love into separate rooms. But Sloane’s hand is on my ankle, Idris’s hand is beside me on the rug, and Callie’s fingers are threaded through my hair, trembling while she refuses to let go.
I press my cheek back against her knee before anyone asks me to move. “I want her there,” I say, and the sentence comes out quiet but complete. “When I go back, I want Callie with me.”
No one answers right away. Above me, Callie takes one careful breath. Sloane’s growl starts low and breaks before it becomes sound, and Idris says Garrett’s name once, so quietly that the table seems to hold it with us.