Chapter 8 #2
I shoved at his chest. "I'm going to kill you."
He was grinning, water dripping from his hair, eyes bright with mischief. "You're not mad."
"I am absolutely mad."
"You're laughing."
"I'm plotting your murder."
He tickled my sides and I shrieked, splashing him. "Forgive me," he said.
"Never."
"Forgive me or I'll dunk you again."
"You wouldn't dare."
He raised an eyebrow.
"Fine! Fine, you're forgiven!"
He pulled me into a hug, warm despite the cold water, and kissed me softly. Eli was laughing from the shore. Ragon was there too, sitting on his towel with his book, but he was smiling. Actually smiling, not the tight-lipped thing he'd started doing later. A real smile.
It was a good day. One of the many good ones before everything got complicated.
I come back to the present slowly, my hands still in the dirt, the memory sitting bittersweet in my chest.
I miss them.
Not the pack they became after Marie arrived. I don't miss the careful, painful choreography of trying to exist in their atmosphere while watching them orbit someone else.
I miss the pack they were. Like we used to be when things were simple and I was enough and we were enough. Before the scent match. Before my body became transparent and everything broke into pieces I didn't know how to put back together.
I pull another weed and the rosemary releases its sharp, clean scent into the air.
I grab the hem of the huge shirt and bring it to my nose, breathing deep. The scent is still strange, still bordering uncomfortable. But it helps. My brain quiets and I feel better.
Alex appears with water sometime later.
I didn't hear him coming, but suddenly he's there, setting a bottle down next to me in the dirt. He steps back immediately, giving me space, not crowding.
"You looked like yourself out here," he says. "Whoever you are when nobody's watching."
I sit back on my heels and wipe dirt on my jeans, looking up at him. The afternoon sun is behind him, turning his edges gold.
"I don't know who that person is anymore."
"Then this is a good place to find out."
The words sit between us and do something to me I can't immediately name.
He crouches down. He doesn’t crowd me, he’s just close enough to be present. His juniper scent drifts over, grounding and familiar in a way that shouldn't feel familiar yet. The connection between us tugs, pulling deep, making me want to lean in his direction.
I don't.
I choose not to. I feel the pull and I don't move. The fact that I can do that sends a stab of anger through me at Drake. He had the same choice. He had Ragon barking orders and biology pulling at him and years of real love with me on the other side of that pull.
He chose anyway. Every single time. He chose anyway.
"Do you want to talk?" he asks. His eyes are steady on mine, patient in a way that doesn't feel like waiting for me to break. "I know you have a lot on your mind."
I shake my head. "Not yet."
"Okay."
That's it. Just okay.
Not like Ragon, who would have pushed. Who would have insisted we process, talk it through, deal with it right now because my feelings were inconvenient and he needed them resolved so he could stop worrying about me and focus on more important things.
Alex just accepts my answer. He stands up, brushes dirt off his jeans, and walks back inside without making it into a whole production.
I notice the difference.
I notice, and I put it away next to all the other small kindnesses accumulating like stones in my pockets.
This pack lied to me for months. I see now they had reasons. I know there's more I don't know yet. I'm not ready to forgive them, not yet. But for now I can exist in their space.
It's nice to be seen again.
***
That evening, the pack argues about the hot water heater.
I'm on the couch with a book I'm not really reading when it starts. Something broke, someone needs to fix it, and no one wants to be the one to do it.
"I fixed it last time," Malcolm says from the kitchen doorway.
"You took it apart and couldn't put it back together," Finn counters from where he's sprawled in the armchair. "I fixed it last time. At our house."
"You called a guy."
"Calling a guy is fixing it."
"That's outsourcing, not fixing."
"That's being smart enough to know when you're in over your head."
Alex pinches the bridge of his nose like he's being tested by higher powers. "We're not calling a guy for a pilot light."
"The pilot light is a metaphor," Finn says.
"For what?"
"For the fact that Malcolm refuses to admit he doesn't actually know how appliances work."
"I know how appliances work."
"You think microwaves are magic boxes."
"They are magic boxes."
I watch from the couch, book forgotten in my lap.
They argue like people who've argued before and will again, like this is a familiar dance they all know the steps to.
There's no venom in it. No real consequences. They’re three people who know each other well enough to push buttons without breaking things.
It occurs to me as I watch them—a certainty that I can simply exist here without consequence.
I don't need to step between them or smooth things over.
No one expects me to play peacemaker, and no other omega waits in the wings to render my presence unnecessary.
I can just be here, breathing, witnessing their familiar rhythm without becoming part of it.
It's strange.
It's good.
Eventually Alex goes to deal with the water heater himself while Malcolm and Finn bicker about whose fault it is that it broke in the first place, and I go back to pretending to read my book.
***
Invisible care accumulates in ways I only notice after the fact.
Malcolm leaves chamomile tea outside my door that night. It’s still warm when I find it. There’s no note, just a mug sitting on the floor like it appeared by magic.
Finn texts me a song in a link with no explanation. I listen to it alone in my room. It's soft and acoustic, the lyrics about finding home in unexpected places, and something behind my sternum gives, just slightly, like a door that's been stuck finally moving.
Alex leaves a book on the kitchen counter the next morning. It's open to an essay about forests growing back after fires, about how the land remembers what it was even after devastation, about roots that survive and send up new growth.
I read the first paragraph and have to close the book because my eyes are stinging.
Nobody asks me to acknowledge any of it. Nobody needs me to say thank you or explain how I feel or perform gratitude. The care just exists, quiet and steady, offered without expectation of return.
It's so different from what I'm used to that I haven't learned the shape of it yet.
That night, I start a nest.
I don't mean to. I don't sit down and decide to build one like I'm making some grand declaration about where I belong or what I want.
It just happens.
Malcolm's shirt is on the chair in my room where I left it this morning. The coffee-scented one that I woke up in my first day here post heat. I pick it up, hold it to my face, and breathe in.
Coffee and a piece that's just him... warm and safe and solid.
My omega hums approval before my brain can talk me out of it, before I can spiral into guilt about whether this means what I'm not ready for it to mean.
I fold the shirt carefully and tuck it under my pillow.
It's small. It's a beginning.
I climb into bed and rest my head on the pillow, and the scent wraps around me like arms. My body relaxes in increments I didn't know were possible, tension I've been carrying for months finally starting to ease.
I don't examine it.
I just let it be.
***
I wake in the middle of the night to darkness and quiet.
For a moment I don't remember where I am, and panic flutters in my chest. Then the coffee scent registers, the burnt wood scent on the shirt I'm still wearing. The soft weight of blankets. The distant sound of someone moving downstairs—Malcolm, probably, since he doesn't sleep much.
I'm not afraid.
I should be. I'm in a strange place with a pack that isn't mine, with alphas who lied to me for months, a future I can't see and a past I can't go back to.
But I'm not afraid.
I close my eyes and let myself drift back to sleep.
I sleep through the rest of the night without nightmares and I don't feel the tight knot of anxiety that's lived in my chest for months.
I just sleep. Deep and dreamless and safe. With no alpha in my bed, no real nest. Just me.
Just Vee.