Chapter 16
Vee
Arden shows up at ten in the morning with his leather bag and his calm therapist face.
I let him in. We sit in the living room, him in the armchair, me curled on the couch with my legs tucked under me.
We sit in silence. Arden is good at silence, he doesn't rush to fill it.
"Sleeping?" he asks finally.
"Some."
"Eating?"
"Yeah."
"How's the anxiety?"
I shrug. "Present."
"On a scale of one to ten?"
"Six. Sometimes seven. Rhys helps—in a way I still can't fully explain, even after what you told me in the car."
He makes a note. "That's good Vee. I'm really glad to hear that."
"Is it? I'm afraid to get attached to him."
"Fear of attachment is reasonable,” he says. "It doesn't mean you should avoid it."
"Yeah, but maybe I should. I mean, I found my scent matches, the one pack in this world that won't return me but they probably can't keep me anyway."
He's silent contemplating that.
Arden sets his notebook aside. "I want to ask you about something."
My stomach tightens. "Okay."
"How did you end up with Ragon's pack?"
The question burns my skin.
"The registry," I say. "How else?"
"Can you tell me more about that?"
I take a breath. "I met with them a few times at the registry. That's how it works when a pack shows interest in your file. They set up meet and greets."
Arden nods. "That's typical."
"I'd been passed over a few times," I continue. The words taste bitter. "Since I'd been returned by my first pack."
"That's also typical," Arden says. "Returned omegas are often viewed as defective by potential packs. Even when the return wasn't their fault. It's completely unfair."
The clinical way he says it should make it easier to hear. It doesn't.
"I was excited when Ragon's pack showed interest," I admit. "No other pack had been really interested in months. I'd had a couple bites, yes, but none that lasted beyond the initial interview. I hated being in the registry. I was eager to try again even though—" I stop.
"Even though your first pack had hurt you," Arden finishes softly.
I nod.
"Tell me about meeting them. Ragon's pack."
"They were sweet." The memory surfaces easily. Too easily. "Drake was warm and funny. Eli was so smart. Ragon was—" I swallow. "He was warm too. A little nervous around me, which I thought was cute."
"You liked them."
"I really did. I could see myself making a home with them."
"What happened next?"
My breath hitches. "The last meeting was just with Ragon."
"Just the pack lead," Arden notes.
"Yeah. That usually means they're about to ask the omega to join their pack. I was excited."
The memory pulls me under.
The meeting room at the registry was small and sterile. White walls, fluorescent lights, a table with two chairs. I'd been in this room so many times I'd lost count.
But this time felt different. This time I was hopeful.
Ragon came in and I could tell immediately something was wrong. His usual warmth was there but muted, buried under layers of nervousness that made his scent spike sharp.
He sat across from me and gave me a half smile. Then he reached across the table and took my hands in his.
My heart kicked up. This was it.
"Vee," he said, his voice low. "My whole pack very much wants to take you home."
I smiled, relief and joy flooding through me in equal measure. "I want that too."
"But—" He stopped. My smile faltered.
"But?"
He squeezed my hands. "There's a condition."
My stomach dropped.
"I need to tell you something about my family," he continued. "About how I grew up."
I waited, my hands still in his, my heart hammering.
"My fathers and my mother were scent matched. All three of them." His voice went soft. "I grew up watching my fathers dote on my mother. Watching her look at them with this awe, like they hung the moon. The love they shared because of that pull, that biological certainty… it was special."
I didn't understand where this was going but dread was building in my chest.
"My mother got sick when I was eighteen," he said.
"She passed soon after. I watched my fathers wither away slowly.
It… broke them." His grip on my hands tightened slightly.
"When my biological father passed two years later, he told me he wouldn't take back the years he had with her for anything.
That loving her for that long was worth it. "
Tears pricked my eyes. Not for me. For him. For the loss in his voice.
"He told me he hoped I'd find the same," Ragon continued. "That same kind of love. That certainty."
And there it was... the condition taking shape.
"I made a deal with myself," he said, his blue eyes meeting mine. "That I was going to give myself a chance to find it. A scent match. They're rare but they happen. I don't want to spend my life waiting for something that may never come, but I can't give up before I really try."
My throat closed.
"My pack is still young," he said. "We have time. So I want to make you a promise, Vee."
I couldn't speak. Could barely breathe.
"If we haven't found a scent match in five years, we'll bond you permanently. Make you ours officially. No more waiting."
Five years.
Five years of maybe.
Five years of being temporary.
My eyes filled with tears. I'd already met with two other packs that decided not to take me. I'd been in the registry for months watching other omegas get chosen while I sat in that sterile waiting room day after day.
And now this. The first pack that wanted me, but only conditionally. Only temporarily.
Ragon's whole face softened when he saw my tears. He started purring immediately, the sound filling the small room.
"Vee, listen to me," he said urgently. "My pack will treat you like you're already claimed. We'll care for you. You won't even know the difference. And if in five years we haven't found our match, we'll make you our own. We'll love you as if you were our match."
As if.
Not because I was.
But as if.
The purr wrapped around me, soothing and insistent. My omega responded to it automatically, the distress easing even as my heart broke.
"I know it's not ideal," he said, still purring. "I know it's asking a lot. But I promise you, Vee. We'll take care of you. You'll be safe with us. You'll be home."
Home.
I wanted a home so badly. I wanted out of the registry so badly. I wanted to stop being passed over and rejected and evaluated and found wanting. Plus the likelihood of them actually finding a scent match was low.
"Okay," I heard myself whisper. "Okay."
His relief was palpable. He squeezed my hands and his purr deepened.
"You won't regret this," he promised. "I swear to you, Vee. You won't regret this."
But I already did.
I already regretted it and I hadn't even left the room yet.
I come back to the present with tears streaming down my face.
Arden is watching me. He doesn't reach for tissues or try to comfort me. He just waits.
"And then he found her," I continue, my voice breaking. "The one he'd been waiting for since his father took his dying breath. And then there was no more Vee."
Arden looks at me for a long time. His expression is complicated—sad and angry and like he’s noting something to save for later.
"Did the registry know Ragon had set a condition?"
I shake my head. "I doubt it. It's unusual, why would he have told them?"
"I agree. It's not something they likely would have allowed."
I know he's right. They would have wanted me claimed as soon as possible.
The whole thing is broken. The registry doesn't care what happens to omegas once they're with a pack, they only want them out of the system.
Out of sight, out of mind. They let me go five years with Ragon's pack unclaimed and never even bothered with a random wellness check which is supposed to be standard until claiming paperwork is filed.
But they never cared enough to check… as long as I wasn't returned, no harm no foul.
"Thank you for telling me that," he says finally.
"Why?" My voice comes out harsh. "What good does it do?"
"You needed to say it out loud." He says it gently. "You needed to hear yourself tell that story. To really understand what he asked of you."
"I already knew what he asked."
"Did you?" Arden leans forward slightly. "Or did you spend five years trying to convince yourself it was reasonable?"
The question is sharp. It cuts right through me.
"He asked you to be temporary," Arden continues. "To build a life knowing it could be dismantled the moment something better—in his mind—came along. He asked you to love him while he kept looking for someone else."
"Stop."
"And you said yes because you were desperate. Because the registry had broken you down until conditional love felt like a gift."
"I said stop." My voice cracks.
Arden stops and sits back.
The silence stretches.
"I'm not trying to hurt you, Vee," he says. "I'm trying to help you see that what he did wasn't okay. That it was never okay. He had his reasons, but he let them justify what he wanted to do."
I wipe my face with the back of my hand. "It doesn't matter now."
"It does matter. Because you're still carrying it. You're still blaming yourself for not being enough when the truth is he never gave you a real chance to be."
More tears come. I can't stop them now.
Arden lets me cry. He doesn't rush me, doesn't try to fix it.
Eventually he stands and packs his bag.
"I'll see you next week," he says. "Take care of yourself, Vee."
I nod. Can't speak.
"Vee," he says before he gets to the door.
"Yeah?"
"Let them help you."
He lets himself out before I can respond.
I sit on the couch for a long time after he leaves, staring at nothing and feeling everything.
Eventually I force myself to stand. Make it to the stairs. Climb them one at a time.
My room is quiet and dim. I close the door behind me and crawl into bed fully clothed.
I pull the blankets over my head… I let myself break.
I don't know how long I lie there. Time does that thing where it stretches and compresses at the same time.
Then I hear my door open.
Footsteps cross the room and the bed dips.
Malcolm crawls in beside me and pulls me close without a word. His purr starts immediately, deep and consuming, vibrating through the mattress and into my bones. The scent of rich coffee pulling into me, tugging at the place deep inside that longs for him.
I turn into him and press my face against his chest.
The bed dips again on my other side. Finn lays behind me, his warmth solid against my back.
I'm bracketed between them. Safe. Held.
Malcolm's purr never stops.
More footsteps. Quieter than the others. Heavier but deliberate, careful, the tread of someone who moves with intention.
The chair beside the bed scrapes softly as it's pulled closer.
I crack my eyes open.
Rhys is lowering himself into it. He's too big for the chair and he knows it, his knees spread wide to accommodate himself, his elbows resting on them, hands loosely clasped. He doesn't touch me. Doesn't reach for me. Just settles into the space beside the bed and stays.
His eyes find mine through the blanket's edge.
He holds my gaze. Then he nods once, the same small certain nod from before.
I'm here. That's all it means. Nothing required from you. I'm just here.
His purr starts.
It's low and resonant and it reaches the places inside me that the other purr can't quite touch. The broken places. The ones that have been broken so long they've started to feel like just the way I'm shaped.
His purr doesn't try to smooth those places over.
It just sits with them.
I hear more footsteps before Alex appears in the doorway. He takes in the room—Malcolm, Finn, Rhys in the chair—and moves to the foot of the bed. He rests against the wall with a book in his hands, opens it and starts to read.
He doesn't look at me. Just turns a page.
His purr joins the others.
No one talks. No one asks what's wrong or tries to fix it.
They're just there.
All four of them.
The sobs come harder.
Finn's hand finds my shoulder and stays there, steady pressure.
Rhys leans forward slightly in the chair. His hand comes to rest on the edge of the mattress beside me. Not touching me. Just there. Close enough that if I reach for it, it's there.
I reach for it.
His fingers close around mine with that careful deliberateness that I'm starting to expect.
Alex turns a page.
I cry until I can't anymore. Until I'm empty and exhausted and wrung out and there's nothing left.
And they stay.
All four of them stay.
When the crying finally stops the room is very quiet. Malcolm's purr has settled to something slower, softer. Rhys's still stutters but it's gentler now, like it knows the crisis has passed.
I loosen my grip on Rhys's hand.
He doesn't let go first.
I close my eyes.
Let myself be held by all of it. The warmth and the weight and the sound of four different people breathing in the same room because they decided, without being asked, that this was where they needed to be.
I fall asleep like that.
And they stay.