Chapter 6
Vee
The smell of burning eggs wakes me.
I lie there staring at the ceiling for a long time trying to piece together my new situation. It’s quiet here in a way that's different from the house I spent five years in.
I sit up slowly. My body is less wrecked than yesterday. The deep ache from heat is fading to a more manageable, dull soreness I can breathe around easier than yesterday.
The burning smell gets stronger.
I reach for the shirt before I'm fully upright. Not the coffee one. The other one. The one Arden brought.
It's enormous on me. Bigger than Malcolm's shirt, bigger than I imagine Alex's would be. Whoever it belongs to is a very large person. The hem falls to my thighs. One shoulder drops halfway to my elbow. I have to push the sleeves up just to free my hands.
The scent is so strange. It's not like anything I've smelled before. A little sharp at the edges, the burnt wood layered in a way that doesn't resolve into anything familiar no matter how many times I try to place it.
I bring the collar up to my nose.
There it is.
My body starts to unknot. The low-grade anxiety I wake up with every morning—the immediate inventory of everything wrong, everything uncertain—softens around the edges. Just slightly. Just enough.
I don't understand it. The scent is strange enough that I keep expecting not to like it. But somehow I do. I find myself going back to it the way your tongue finds a sore tooth. I can't leave it alone.
I walk out of the room for the first time since I arrived with the exception of the attached bathroom.
The stairs creak under my feet. Voices drift up from the kitchen. The burning smell is accompanied now by someone swearing.
I reach the kitchen doorway and stop.
Malcolm is at the stove. Shirtless. Sweatpants hanging low. His back is to me and I can see the whole map of him. Broad shoulders, the shift of muscle as he moves, tattoos covering his forearms and climbing to his shoulders. A few old scars scattered across his skin.
He's jabbing at a pan of eggs with a spatula like they've personally offended him.
"I think they're dead," I say.
He turns.
His eyes go straight to the shirt. A slow smile spreads across his face. Not the smirk he usually leads with. It’s warmer underneath it.
"Hey." He looks at me for a long moment. "You look cute in that."
My face makes an involuntary move. "It's enormous."
"Yeah." His smile doesn't move. "Still cute."
I look down at myself. The hem. The sleeves bunched at my forearms. "It's bigger than yours."
"Bit, yeah."
"Whose is it?"
His expression shifts. Not quite evasive. More like someone choosing which version of the truth to offer.
"Arden will explain," he says. "Later."
Before I can push, Finn appears from behind me with two mugs and stops short when he sees the shirt.
"Oh, good." He sounds genuinely pleased. "You wore it."
"You knew about it?"
"We all did." He holds a mug out to me. "Do you like it? The scent?"
I wrap both hands around the mug. "Yeah, actually. It's strange though. Do you think it smells strange?"
Finn considers this seriously, like I've asked a real question deserving a real answer. "A little unusual, maybe. But not bad."
"Not bad at all," Malcolm agrees. He's turned back to the eggs. What's salvageable anyway. "Why, are you not sure about it?"
"It’s not that." I bring the collar up to my nose again without thinking about it, catch myself, lower it. "I keep expecting to change my mind. But it's… I don't know. Calming in a way."
Malcolm glances back at me over his shoulder. His face is softer. "Then keep wearing it. When the scent fades I'll ask Arden to bring another one."
"How well do you know Arden?"
"Well enough. Mostly through Chase." Malcolm plates what's left of the eggs. Finn is already reaching past him to start fresh ones. A silent, practiced exchange that speaks to years of this exact dynamic. "The OPA works alongside the registry so Finn's crossed paths with him a lot too."
Chase. All those months and I had no idea how deep the web went.
I want to ask more. I decide against it.
Not yet. There's only so much I can hold at once.
"Sit down," Finn says. "I'm fixing Malcolm's disaster."
"It wasn't a disaster," Malcolm says. "It was rustic."
"It was char."
I sit.
Alex comes in while Finn is plating the real eggs. He takes one look at the pan Malcolm abandoned, raises an eyebrow, and then looks at me.
His eyes rest on the shirt the same way Malcolm's did. The same quality of attention, like he's checking off a list in his head.
"Suits you," he says.
"Everyone keeps saying that."
"Because it's true." He pours himself coffee. "How are you feeling?"
"Better than yesterday."
"Good."
He sits across from me. Malcolm drops into the chair at the end.
Finn distributes plates and we eat. Something about the four of us around this small table with the morning light coming through the window feels—strange.
Not bad strange. Just strange. Like I've slipped into a life that was built for someone else and discovered it fits anyway.
They can tell I don't want heavy conversation. I don't know how they can tell but they can, and they don't push.
Finn starts it. "Malcolm, tell her about the pancakes."
"Absolutely not."
"He used salt instead of sugar," Finn tells me anyway. "We had to throw the whole batch. Even the dog wouldn't touch them."
"We didn't have a dog."
"Exactly."
I smile in spite of myself.
Alex leans back in his chair. "He's not even the worst. I almost burned the apartment down once."
"Almost," Malcolm says. "Very generous."
"The fire department came," Finn says. "It was toast. On the stovetop. Directly on the burner."
"The toaster was broken."
"So you adapted by eliminating the toaster from the equation entirely."
"Adaptive thinking. A survival skill."
"The curtains didn't survive."
I'm laughing. Actually laughing, the sound coming out of me before I can think about it. Full and surprised and real.
All three of them go quiet. Like they're listening to it. As if it means something to them.
"There it is," Alex says. Quiet. Looking at me with warmth in his expression.
I look back down at my plate.
I ache, but in the soft way this time. Not the hollow way.
After breakfast I help Finn with the dishes and then go looking for somewhere to put myself.
I find Alex on the porch.
He has two mugs of coffee, the chair next to him is open, and there's a phone on the small table between them. I'm not sure how he knew I was coming, but he apparently did. Maybe it's a scent match thing I haven't caught onto yet.
I sit.
He looks at me with those soulful eyes. I think he understands that I'm ready for answers now.
"It's yours," he says. "New number. Your contacts are loaded in."
I pick it up and scroll. Jess. Noah. The instructor from my dance class at the gym. My omega friend from the registry that I haven’t spoken to in years.
I swallow hard. "How did you get these?"
"Chase."
"How did Chase—" I stop. "Never mind. I don't want to know."
"He also spoke to them briefly. Let them know you're safe but needed space. They're waiting." He wraps his hands around his mug. "No pressure. Whenever you're ready."
Someone thought about my friends. In the middle of everything. In the middle of a registry case, a heat and Alex's pack stealing me away from Ragon to protect me. Someone made sure I didn't lose everyone.
"Thank you," I manage.
He nods.
The woods stretch out in front of us. Dense and still. A bird calls somewhere deep in the trees.
"Some practical things," Alex says. "While you're here."
"Rules."
"Practical ones." He doesn't look at me. Just the trees. "No contact with Ragon's pack. Unless you want to go straight back, it's best you don't reach out. And please don't tell your friends where you are or that you didn't choose to come."
"Because they might call the registry."
"Yes. If someone reports an unclaimed omega here, you go back to Ragon." A pause. "And I go back to prison."
He says it the same way he says most things. Even. Direct. No cushioning around it.
I appreciate that but the word still catches.
"Prison," I repeat.
"Yeah."
"You've been to prison."
"Yes."
I look at him. The profile of him. The careful stillness. "What for?"
He's quiet a moment. Then he exhales slowly.
"Many years ago, a man almost lost his life in an alley behind a bar.
He was beaten badly. Ended up in the hospital's critical care unit.
They weren't sure he'd make it." He turns the mug in his hands.
"He lived. But I went to prison, and when I got out the registry flagged me.
They decided I was too unstable to have an omega or even be around one. "
I take that in.
"You can't be around omegas at all?"
"No."
"So you're not even supposed to be in this house with me in it."
"No. I'm not."
"Every time I came to your kitchen," I say slowly. "Every time you were in the garden with me. When you came over to my house for dinner."
"All of it."
"You were risking going back to prison."
"Yes."
I look at him. "Why?"
He turns his head. His eyes find mine and hold them.
"Because you're worth it, Verena."
The words move somewhere deep and sit there.
I look back at the trees and give myself a moment to breathe through it.
"That's why you wouldn't help me during my heat," I say.
He nods slowly. "You can't imagine how much it hurt me not to open that door.
But if I'd touched you that way—even with you in heat and needing alphas, even with you being my scent match—the registry wouldn't just have sent me back to prison.
They would have buried me. Zero chance of the flag ever coming off.
Zero chance of my pack ever being an option for you. "
I remember the hours he spent on the other side of that door. The sounds I was making and what those sounds do to an alpha, let alone a scent-matched one. What it costs to choose someone else's future over your own immediate need.