Chapter 6 #2
I'm not sure I have a word for what that is.
"What happened that night?" I ask. "At the bar."
"There was an omega. She had her daughter with her.
Her alpha had been hurting her for a while before I got involved.
I'd noticed her around. Seen the bruises.
" His voice doesn't change. Still even. But underneath it, there’s an old weight he's learned to carry rather than set down.
"When I saw him hit her that night, I stepped in. It escalated. It went too far."
"You tried to stop it."
"Yes."
I let the full shape of that sit. The cruelty of it. A man who stepped in front of an omega being hurt, went to prison for it, and came out the other side with a registry flag that says he's too dangerous to be near the very people he was trying to protect.
"That's—" I stop.
"Yeah," he says. Like he already knows. Like he's had that thought ten thousand times and has made an uneasy peace with it.
We sit with it.
"Is it really going to be that hard? Getting the flag removed?"
"Chase is working on it but we don't know yet. He says I've done all the right things. I did the time. I was in therapy for anger management for years. I've done the work."
"What do you expect from me if he does get it removed? If your circumstance changes?"
He shakes his head. "Nothing. I don't expect anything."
"But your pack wants me."
"My pack very much wants you." He says it without hesitation. "Not because of the scent match, though that's part of it. Because it's you. We know you. You know us." He turns to look at me. "We want Vee. That's all."
"But you can't have me."
The corner of his mouth moves. Not quite a smile. "Not yet, anyway."
The words get comfortable in my chest, like living things nesting inside me.
I look down at the shirt. The enormous, strange-scented shirt that calms me down for reasons I still can't explain.
"You knew about the shirts," I say. "When you saw it this morning. You knew."
Not a question.
He doesn't deny it. "Arden will explain that. When the time is right."
"You guys keep saying that."
"Because it's true." He looks at me steadily. "Some things need the right moment. This isn't it yet."
I let that go for now. There's a larger question sitting underneath it anyway.
"When did you figure it out?" I ask. "That I was your match."
He's quiet. Deciding.
"Eight months ago," he says. "In a hardware store parking lot. I was loading lumber while Malcolm was still inside." He pauses. "The wind shifted."
I wait.
"Your scent hit me before I could see you.
I dropped my keys I was so stunned. I just..
. stood there in the middle of the lot while my entire nervous system rearranged itself around someone I hadn't found yet.
" He goes silent. Like he's back there. "Then I saw you.
Thirty feet away, loading groceries. Ragon was with you. "
I think I remember that day. An ordinary afternoon. Groceries at the store next to the hardware shop and a drive home. There was nothing remarkable about any of it.
"Malcolm came out of the store and smelled it too," Alex continues. "We watched you drive away. Didn't know what to do."
"But Finn did," I say. Because of course Finn did.
Alex's mouth curves slightly. "Finn pulled Ragon's pack files that night through his registry access.
Found out about Marie's incoming transfer.
That your pack had been visiting their scent match at the registry for two months.
We thought you were about to be replaced.
" He turns the mug in his hands. "Finn found your history.
That your first pack sent you back for their match.
We thought it was about to happen again. "
The matter-of-fact way he says it doesn't soften it. My first pack. The clinical assessment. The cold hallway and the woman with the file who looked at me like I was a problem being reassigned to her.
"They weren't sending me back though."
He takes a deep breath. "I know. Finn dug deeper but he couldn't find any paperwork indicating you were going to be returned.
We figured out Ragon was going to try to keep you both.
Two omegas in a pack isn't unheard of and it can even work. But not like that. Not when they’re bringing a scent match into the home of a long term, established but unclaimed omega.
We knew it wouldn't work just from the fact that Ragon didn't bother to introduce you to Marie before he brought her in.
He just expected you to follow orders without any kind of preparation. "
"So you called Chase," I say.
"We needed someone with reach. Chase came over, we laid everything out for him, and he started an investigation process right there. Just in case."
I nod slowly.
"He also sent someone in," Alex says. "Into your pack. To watch and report back."
I swallow hard, my eyes widening. "Jasper,” I whisper.
Alex looks at me. "Jasper."
I sit with it.
Jasper. Who always seemed to exist slightly apart from everything. Who gave me sympathetic looks and then looked away. Who kept a careful distance I always attributed to shyness or an introverted nature. He was always just out of reach, and I thought it meant he didn't care.
"He was reporting to Chase," I say.
"Yes. All of us, really. His reports were cautious at first. Then they started getting worse. That’s why we bought the house next door.
We wanted to keep an eye on you. To be there if you needed a place to go, even if just for a little while.
" His voice sharpens. "By the time Ragon destroyed your nest, Jasper was pushing Chase hard to move faster. He called Arden in to help."
The threads connect. All of them. Arden appearing in my life with his careful questions.
I knew Jasper called him, that was never a secret.
But Chase showing up at the gym that day, all easy charm and registry badge hidden.
I’m certain now Finn told him I’d be there.
That wasn't a coincidence. Or how Alex's pack sometimes seemed to already know things about me before I told them.
"When Chase found me at the zoo that day... the day I met him. It wasn't an accident was it?"
"No. Jasper told him you’d all be there."
"Why did he ask to take me in his pack? Wasn't he just trying to get me out?" I pause and really think about it. "He needed me to say I wanted out."
Alex nods once. "Without your consent he couldn't touch it. The registry needed to know you wanted out before they’d really listen to him.”
"But I couldn't say it."
Of course I couldn't. Five years in a pack rewires you in a way that’s deeper than thought.
The proximity, the scent, the constant low-grade pull toward your alphas—it stops being want and becomes closer to oxygen.
You don't leave because leaving feels like suffocating.
Even when they're hurting you. Even when you know.
His fingers tighten around his mug.
"At the gym," I say, pieces clicking into place, "when he repeated his offer..."
Alex's jaw clenches visibly.
"He thought you might be ready by then. You weren't."
"And that brings me to what happened next."
A sigh escapes him. "I can guess what you're about to ask."
"So tell me."
"I'm flesh and blood, Vee. When my alpha instincts say you're mine—"
"You got jealous."
His eyes darken. "I saw you through that window with another alpha. My scent match. Months of keeping my distance and I nearly threw all of it away because he made you laugh. It didn’t matter that I knew him or that he was just trying to help.
Chase silently talked me down when he pushed back in there.
He stopped me before I said enough to make you realize and the whole case blew up in our faces. "
I picture the gym. Alex through those doors, eyes dark, shoulders tense. At the time it felt like too much. Now it just makes sense.
"Jasper," I say again, turning it over. "He always kept me at arm's length."
"Yes."
"I thought he just didn't like me."
"He liked you." Alex says it simply. "He just couldn't let himself get close. It complicated things for him. I don’t know why, he never would open up to us."
All those moments I extended toward Jasper and watched him step carefully back. The times I thought I was reaching for a friend and finding empty space instead.
It should make me angry. Maybe it will later.
Right now I mostly just feel like what was blurry has finally come into focus. Like the shape of the last few months was always this and I just couldn't see it from the inside.
"Why didn't you just tell me?" I ask. "About any of it. When I was coming to your kitchen to bake and talk… why not just say what I was to you?"
He's quiet for a long moment.
"Would you have kept coming over?" he finally asks.
I open my mouth.
Close it.
Think about it honestly. If he had sat me down in that first week and laid it all out—scent match, registry flag, Chase building a case, Jasper inside my house—would I have kept showing up?
Would I have kept baking in his kitchen and talking until late and using his house as the place I went when mine was too much to stay in?
After a beat I shake my head. "No."
"No," he agrees. "You would have pulled away. Decided you were only torturing yourself. And you needed somewhere to breathe. You needed a safe space to go when things got tough at home."
"You could have told me anyway," I say. "You probably should have."
"I know." He doesn't argue it. "We made choices. Not all of them were right. But we made the ones we thought gave you the best chance."
"Also," he says after a moment, his expression turning amused, "Ragon thought we were a weak pack.
I have a beta as co-head." The careful neutrality gives way slightly underneath.
"He never took us seriously and that's the only reason he let you socialize with us alone.
He thought himself too far superior to me to steal "his" omega.
If he'd found out you were our match he would have locked you in that house and never let you come near us again. It was safer for you not to know."
That's true. I know it's true the second he says it. Ragon's contempt for what he saw as Alex's soft structure was always obvious.
“The night Finn found me,” I say. “I could suddenly scent you fully. You weren’t muted anymore.”
Alex nods. “Because of the state of you before you left our house the last time. Marie’s heat was getting to you.
We couldn’t wait for Chase anymore so we stopped taking blockers.
We were going to come clean and get you out the next day if not sooner.
I didn’t even know where we were going to go, we were just… going.”
“But then Finn found me in heat.”
“Yes. Plans changed.”
“One more thing. You don't smell like pine anymore. Malcolm doesn't smell like cedar. None of you smell how I remember. Well… you do. You smell the way I remember when you first moved in. It was muted from the blockers, but recognizable. Juniper, coffee, ink and rain. But when you came over for card night, it was different. You almost smelled like Ragon’s pack. Stronger too.”
Alex pauses, his lips tightening.
He doesn’t answer right away. His jaw is tense, almost like he’s bracing for what he knows is coming.
I wait, mug warming my hands, the silence stretching between us.
When he finally speaks, he’s careful. “The first time you scented us was our true markers. It was muted enough by blockers that you wouldn’t imprint, but there enough to smell.
Later, we picked up a different kind of blocker.
Those were engineered to match Ragon’s packs’ scent.
Finn got them. The registry uses them sometimes to help traumatized omegas.
He thought it might help you feel more at home with us, not… out of place.”
I stare at the trees. That makes sense. It hurts, a little, but it makes sense.
“It worked,” I say softly. “It was easier to be around you when you reminded me of what I was losing. Like I had another door to them.”
He nods. “That was the idea.”
“It was manipulation,” I say dryly. “You know that, right?”
“I do, Vee. We all know that and we aren’t proud of it.” He sighs and leans forward. “But it wasn’t malicious. We saw how much pain you were underneath all the silence and we were willing to do anything to help. Anything to ease your suffering until we could get you out.”
I let it soak in, unsure how to feel. It’s hard to be angry at people who did bad things for good reasons. It’s also hard not to be angry. But I’m tired of being mad and sad and confused. I just want peace.
"That's enough for now," I say finally.
"Yeah?"
"I'll ask more later. There's a limit to how much I can hold at once."
He nods. "That's smart."
We go quiet.
The bird calls again from somewhere in the trees. Farther away now, or maybe just moving. The coffee has gone lukewarm in my hands.
I pull the shirt collar up to my nose one more time. Hold the strange, layered scent there. Burnt wood. Ash. Deep and sharp and somehow exactly right.
Alex watches me do it. He doesn't comment.
Six inches lay between our hands on the chair arms.
Neither of us closes them.
Neither pulls away.
The woods stretch out ahead of us. Quiet and green and full of things I can't see yet.
I stay anyway.