21. Sloane #2
I nod because if I speak too fast, I’ll say something wrong or too abrupt.
I’ll say she's mine. I’ll say the bond means she has to know me.
I’ll say love should count for something when every other piece of proof has been forged.
None of that matters if Callie looks at me and sees the man from the recording.
None of that matters if my voice reaches her before my remorse does.
“I’ll crawl,” I say eventually, and the words come out stripped down. “If that’s all she’ll allow, I’ll crawl. If she says stop, I stop. If she says leave, I stand outside until she tells me the street is too close.”
Theo makes a sound in the back, small and wounded.
In the mirror, I see him curled around the sweater with his face half hidden, eyes open and shining in the passing dark.
His temporary bite from Idris is hidden beneath the stretched collar of my hoodie, but I know it is there because Idris has kept renewing it, night after night, every time Theo panicked at the feeling of losing one more piece of us.
Temporary. Not enough. Necessary anyway.
“She’ll think I didn’t want her,” Theo whispers.
The words gut everyone in the car.
“She won’t think it forever,” Idris says, turning enough to look at him. “You will tell her the truth. We all will.”
Theo shakes his head against the sweater. “What if she can’t hear it?”
I grip the wheel so hard the leather creaks. Dash’s voice repeats in my head. It doesn’t matter what happened yet. Not for this call. Not for the woman asleep in the next room who has spent three months believing it did.
“Then we stay until she can,” I say. “And if she never can, we still make sure she knows you wanted her. That part comes first, Theo. You and Callie. She needs to know you didn’t choose the lie either.”
Idris' hand moves toward mine on the console, then stops short of touching. I reach for him because I need the contact and because he's right not to assume. His fingers close over my wrist, thumb pressing into my pulse with brutal, grounding pressure.
Dash has her.
The thought keeps repeating until it becomes something more complicated than relief.
My brother has her. My brother, who has not known how to sit in the same room as me without turning quiet into distance for years.
My brother, who should not know the way Callie takes coffee now, or how she looks when she wakes from a nightmare, or what tone keeps her in her body when her phone rings.
He found her because I didn't. He protected her because I could not reach her.
He watched her fall apart with my name in her mouth and still answered the phone instead of letting the call die.
I owe him for that.
I hate him a little for it too.
The hate isn't clean. It isn't fair. It burns beside gratitude until I can't tell which one hurts more.
I picture Callie in his house, in his light, wrapped in a robe he may have handed her, sleeping because he made the room safe enough for rest. The Alpha in me wants to howl until the windows break.
The part of me that loves her wants to fall at his feet and thank him for every breath she took under his roof.
Idris knows. He always knows. “Do not make Dash the enemy because he was there when we were not.”
“I know,” I say, but my voice sounds like gravel. “I know he kept her alive.”
“And she may love him for it.”
The road blurs for half a second. Rain, headlights, the white lines splitting under the tires. My lungs pull in air that feels too thin to use. “Then I’ll thank him for that too.”
Idris says nothing, but his hand stays on me.
The miles stretch. Kade checks in twice, each call short and controlled.
Zana is filing something I don't understand and don't have room to understand.
Garrett is being held in place by law, pressure, and whatever threats Zana can put into professional language.
None of it feels like enough. Nothing will feel like enough until I see Callie with my own eyes and don't reach for her before she reaches for me.
Theo dozes and wakes and dozes again, never releasing the sweater. Every time his breath catches, Idris turns in his seat and says his name softly. Every time the GPS subtracts another mile, my body tries to surge forward faster than the car can carry us.
I think of the last real morning before Garrett took her from us.
Callie in the kitchen, hair loose, sweater sleeves covering her hands, smiling at something Theo did.
My bond mark warm in her shoulder. Idris watching her like a man who thought time was a resource he could manage.
My hand touching her waist as I passed because the world had not yet taught me that every ordinary touch could become evidence of what I failed to protect.
“She was ready,” Idris says suddenly, so quiet I nearly miss it beneath the rain.
I know who he means. “For you?”
His jaw tightens. “Yes.”
“She’ll let you when she’s ready again.”
“I should have done it before.” He looks out the windshield, face carved from grief and control. “I thought waiting was care.”
I can't comfort him. Not because I don't want to, but because I know the wound is true. “We both thought the love we had already given her would be enough proof.”
“It was proof,” Idris says. “Garrett just learned how to forge louder.”
The sentence sits between us for a long time.
The rain turns harder as the miles disappear beneath us.
Idris keeps one hand near mine without touching unless I reach for him, and Theo stays curled in the back seat with Callie’s sweater tucked under his chin like prayer.
I want to arrive as the man she remembers.
I want to arrive as the Alpha who never stopped loving her.
But wanting does not make me safe. Wanting does not undo three months of silence wearing my voice.
So I drive through the dark and make myself one promise I can keep.
When I see her, I won't take a single inch she does not give me.