33. Idris #2
“I know, sweetheart,” Sloane says. His voice is rough, but he keeps it low. “I’m sorry I made it feel like you had to tell me.”
We move together because separating would be worse.
I carry Theo, Calliope walks close enough that his hand stays in hers, and Sloane stays behind her with one palm hovering near the small of her back until she leans into it and lets him touch.
He looks down at that permission like he’s been starving for it.
When his hand settles there, Theo’s breathing eases again.
The sunroom is still warm from the morning, the nest rumpled from bodies and blankets and too many interrupted attempts at comfort.
I lower Theo into the center and keep one arm beneath his shoulders until Calliope climbs in beside him.
He turns toward her immediately, then reaches back for Sloane with his free hand.
Sloane gives it to him. He kneels at the edge of the nest, both hands wrapped around Theo’s, and bends his forehead to their joined fingers. “I’m here,” he says, quieter than I expected. “I’m angry, but I’m here.”
Theo nods. His voice is small but whole when he says, “I need Callie here too.”
“She’s here,” I answer before anyone else can make the promise sound like a concession. I tuck the cooling cloth behind his neck and look at Calliope. “Stay with him. If his breathing changes or the spike starts building, call me before you try to manage it alone.”
Calliope nods, but I see the familiar apology rising in her face.
Before it can become words, Sloane reaches up and catches her wrist, pressing his mouth to the inside of it.
The gesture is more desperate than polished, but it does what it needs to do.
Her breath shakes, and the apology goes back down.
I wait until Theo’s eyes begin to focus again before I touch his cheek. “I’m going to step into the study with Sloane for a few minutes. We’ll be close.”
Theo’s gaze moves from me to the doorway. “Is Garrett in his office?”
“I don’t know.” I won’t lie to him, and I won’t feed the fear either. “We’ll keep the doors open between us.”
He nods after a moment. “Okay.”
Sloane stands only after Theo lets go of his hand. His body turns toward the hallway before his mind catches up, and I put a hand flat against his chest as soon as we clear the sunroom door. He stops because I make him, but the growl that comes out of him vibrates under my palm.
“Study,” I say.
“He put his hands on him.” Sloane’s voice is barely controlled. “He put his hands on our Omega and filled his head with that.”
“I know,” I tell him, and the words barely make it through my own restraint.
“He did it to Callie too.” His eyes cut toward the kitchen, the stairs, every place Garrett might be. “He’s been doing it to her all week. Longer. Fuck, Idris, longer.”
“I know that too.” I keep my hand on his chest until his eyes return to mine. “Study. Now.”
He goes because the alternative is ripping open Garrett’s office door while Theo shakes in the sunroom and Calliope tries to hold herself together with one hand in an Omega’s hair.
I close the study door most of the way behind us, leaving it open a few inches so the hall can still carry sound.
Sloane paces once, then catches the edge of the desk with both hands, head bowed, shoulders heaving.
I stand between him and the door. It’s deliberate, and he sees it. His mouth curls with fury, but he doesn’t try to move me.
“Say it,” he demands. “Whatever you’re calculating, say it before I do something that makes you stop me harder.”
I keep my voice level. “Theo’s silence changes around Garrett.”
Sloane’s grip tightens on the desk, and the answer comes through his teeth. “Yes.”
“Calliope’s words disappear after Garrett speaks to her,” I continue, watching the confirmation move across Sloane’s face before he can shape it into speech. “You keep sensing command pressure without catching a bark.”
“Yes,” he says, and this time the word sounds like something dragged out of him. His hands flex against the desk as if the wood might hold him where reason can’t.
“I asked Theo one question about whether Garrett told him not to ask Calliope for something.” My jaw tightens around the next part, but I don’t let anger change my volume. “He locked so hard Calliope felt it through his hand.”
Sloane closes his eyes. The sound he makes is quiet and ruined, worse than a roar because he keeps the roar swallowed. “I felt something earlier. In the hall. It wasn’t a bark, but my Alpha kept reacting like there was one. I thought I was losing my mind.”
“You’re not,” I say, and I step closer because he needs the pressure of another Alpha in the room before his own instincts fill all the space. “We’re naming what we have.”
He looks at me then, and there’s blood in his expression. “Don’t smooth this over.”
“I’m not soothing you.” I hold his stare until the words land under the rage. “We have a pattern. Theo locks around Garrett’s name. Calliope makes herself smaller after Garrett corrects her. Your body keeps sensing command pressure without a clean verbal trigger.”
Sloane pushes away from the desk. “That’s enough.”
I put a hand on his chest when he steps toward the door. “It’s enough to change how we move. It isn’t enough to confront a pack-law attorney who controls the filings, Bellwether communication, household accounts, and the visible structure of this family.”
His eyes go black at the edges. “He’s poisoning them, and you want me to wait.”
“I want you to protect them in a way he can’t use against them.”
Sloane’s breathing turns rough. “He’s head Alpha on paper.”
“Yes.”
“I’m Callie’s bonded Alpha.”
“Yes.”
“Then why the fuck does paper get to stand between me and my mate?”
His voice cracks on the last word, and for a moment he looks younger than I’ve ever seen him. Furious, terrified, half-feral with the need to get back to her. I understand it too well. My own hands want to close around Garrett’s throat, and that desire is exactly why I keep them at my sides.
“Because paper brings police,” I say. “Paper brings Council intervention. Paper gives him language for your anger before we get language for what he’s doing. If you go through that door and confront him right now, he’ll make the confrontation the evidence.”
Sloane turns away, hands locking behind his neck. He bends forward and breathes like the room is too small for his lungs. “I can’t just stand here.”
“You aren’t. You’re going back to the sunroom.
You’re going to put your hands on Theo and Calliope where Garrett can see you do it gently.
You’re going to let Theo ask for her without making the room shake.
You’re going to make it impossible for Garrett to claim Calliope destabilizes him every time Theo reaches for her. ”
He laughs once, but there’s no humor in it. It comes out shredded. “You’re asking me to act calm while he rewrites our fucking family.”
“I’m asking you to make calm into a weapon.
” I move to the desk and pick up my phone, then set it back down without unlocking it.
There’s no message I can send yet that won’t create more exposure than protection.
“Tonight, we document quietly. We don’t leave Calliope alone with him.
We don’t let Theo get isolated in hallways.
We watch what happens when Garrett speaks, and we write down exactly what changes after. ”
Sloane turns back. “And if he corners her?”
“Then you interrupt before he finishes the sentence,” I say, and the simplicity of it finally gives his rage a path that doesn’t lead straight through Garrett’s door.
He stares at me, chest still moving hard, and I watch the plan take shape in him. It doesn’t satisfy the Alpha. It gives the man somewhere to put his hands.
“Theo’s heat is too close,” I say. “The spikes are coming faster. He needs us steady more than he needs us righteous.”
Sloane’s jaw flexes. “Callie needs us to stop letting Garrett make her vanish.”
“Yes.” I let that sit between us because it’s the part that burns. “So we stop letting it happen. Carefully. In front of him when we can. On paper when we must. Without giving him the explosion he’s waiting to file under unstable.”
The house makes a small sound around us: a pipe settling, a door easing somewhere upstairs, Calliope’s voice murmuring through the gap in the study door. Theo answers her, too low for me to catch the words, but the fact of his voice steadies something in the room.
Sloane hears it too. His whole body turns toward the sound.
I open the study door before restraint can start feeling like surrender.
“No one leaves Calliope alone with him,” I say, keeping my voice low enough that it stays inside the room.
Sloane’s answer is the smoke of his Alpha rising behind his teeth, but he nods, and when we step back into the hall, he moves toward the sunroom instead of Garrett’s office.