Chapter 33
Vee
Alex tells them.
He doesn't make a speech out of it. He just comes in from the porch behind me, looks at the three of them scattered around the living room, and says, "Vee's decided to stay. She's chosen the pack."
Then he sits down like that's a normal sentence.
For about two seconds nobody moves.
Then Finn makes a sound that is technically a word but functions more as an exclamation point, and he's off the couch and across the room before I've fully processed what's happening.
His arms are around me and he lifts me completely off the floor, spinning once, his glasses going crooked against my temple.
"Finn—"
"Sorry, sorry—" He sets me down, straightens his glasses, and his whole face splits into a grin. "Sorry. I just—okay. Okay." He takes a breath. "We're keeping her."
"We're keeping her," Malcolm confirms from behind him.
I turn.
Malcolm is standing in the middle of the room with an expression I haven't seen on him before. It’s not the smirk or the armor. It’s bigger than all of those. The only thing you can call it is joy, plain and uncomplicated.
He crosses to me in two steps and picks me up with his hands around my waist. He buries his face in my neck and inhales, a growl/purr escaping his lips.
"Malcolm—" I'm laughing, hands on his shoulders.
"Nope." He sets me down and kisses me. Quick and warm and completely unceremonious. "We're keeping you. That's happening."
"I made the decision," I say. "I didn't get acquired."
"Same outcome." He grins. Unrepentant.
Rhys hasn't moved from his chair.
I look at him.
He's watching me with those dark warm eyes, and his expression is the fullest version of itself—no containment, no management, just everything he feels sitting right there on the surface for once. He stands slowly, like he does everything, deliberate and careful, and crosses to me.
He doesn't spin me or pick me up.
He just puts his hands on either side of my face and looks at me. Then he presses his forehead to mine.
His purr starts. Broken and utterly sincere.
I close my eyes.
"Okay," I say softly. "Okay."
He pulls back and nods once. That small certain nod. Then he sits back down, which is peak Rhys—maximum feeling, minimum spectacle.
Finn is still grinning at me from across the room. "We need champagne. Do we have champagne?"
"We have beer," Malcolm says.
"Beer it is. Beer is fine. Beer is celebratory." He's already moving toward the kitchen. "Someone put music on."
"We're not putting music on," Alex says.
"We're absolutely putting music on," Finn calls back.
Music goes on.
We spend the rest of the afternoon around the kitchen table with beers and the leftover banana bread from this morning and nobody trying to have a serious conversation. We just exist in the warmth of something good.
Eventually it turns into dinner.
Nobody plans it exactly. It just happens how things happen with this pack.
Someone starts something and everyone else joins without being asked.
Malcolm starts chopping vegetables. Finn takes over the pasta because Malcolm's relationship with boiling water is fraught.
Rhys, who has discovered that he is useful in the kitchen in the way of someone who can reach things on the highest shelves and carry very heavy pots without strain, positions himself as infrastructure.
I take over the sauce because I have opinions about sauce.
Alex pours wine.
It's loud and crowded and nothing is coordinated.
Finn and Malcolm argue about whether the pasta needs more salt and the argument escalates to a point that requires Alex to intervene with a calm authoritative verdict that both of them immediately dispute.
Rhys reaches over all of us to get the pepper without moving anyone out of the way, which requires the rest of us to briefly become very small.
I burn the first round of garlic and Finn doesn't say anything but his expression says everything.
It's the best dinner I've cooked in years.
We eat at the table, all five of us, elbows bumping, conversation running over itself, nobody waiting for a gap before speaking.
At some point I realize I haven't thought about the registry in hours.
I haven't thought about Ragon. I haven't run the low-level anxiety inventory that has become so habitual I stopped noticing I was doing it.
I'm just here.
"Where are we going to live?" Finn asks. He has his wine glass in one hand and his fork in the other and he's asking it like it's the most natural dinnertime question in the world.
"Not here permanently," Malcolm says. "The cabin is Chase's."
"We need something bigger anyway," Alex says. He glances at Rhys. "Significantly bigger."
Rhys doesn't look up from his plate. "I'm not that large."
Everyone at the table looks at him.
"I'm not," he says.
"You took out the flour container, the banana bowl, and two measuring cups this morning," I say. "Without trying."
"The kitchen is poorly designed."
Finn makes a sound into his wine.
"Something with land," I say. "I want a garden. A real one, not just tomatoes in pots." I think about it. "Space. Trees maybe. Somewhere that feels like—somewhere that feels like it belongs to us."
"Somewhere with a kitchen that can accommodate all skill levels," Finn says. He glances at all three alphas. "And all sizes."
"The kitchen is poorly designed," Rhys repeats.
"We'll find somewhere good," Alex says. He's looking at me with that quiet expression. "We have time to figure it out right."
"Chase will probably want us out of here once the flag situation is resolved," Malcolm says. "Whenever that is."
"It'll happen," I say. I mean it. "Chase isn't going to stop pushing on it."
"No," Alex agrees. "He won't."
We sit with that. The flag. The last obstacle between almost and completely. Between chosen and claimed.
It's not tonight's problem. Tonight we have wine and pasta and the warm noise of five people planning a future.
That's enough.
After dinner, while we're still at the table with the last of the wine and the bread nobody finished, I set my glass down.
"I have something serious I want to talk about," I say.
The table shifts. It isn’t dramatic. Just a subtle shift in posture, five bodies tensing slightly as the mood changes.
"I need to see Ragon," I say. "One more time."
Silence.
Then everyone talks at once.
"Absolutely not," Malcolm says.
"Vee—" Finn starts.
"No." This from Rhys. Flat and final.
Alex doesn't say anything. He just looks at me thoughtfully.
"Let me finish," I say.
They let me finish. Mostly.
"I need closure. Real closure, not the kind I give myself by processing it alone.
I need to look him in the eyes and tell him what he did to me.
I need to know whether he actually understands it.
" I look around the table. "I've forgiven Drake and Eli.
I said what I needed to say to Jasper. Ragon is the only one I haven't faced directly.
And I don't want to spend the rest of my life wondering if he knows.
If he really, truly understands what he cost me. "
"He knows," Malcolm says. "The registry made sure he knows."
"The registry told him what he did wrong. That's different from hearing it from me." I hold his gaze. "I need to say it to his face. I need him to hear it from me."
Malcolm looks away. His jaw is tight.
"She's right," Alex says.
Everyone looks at him.
"She's right," he says again. "This is hers to decide. Not ours." He looks at me. "I don't like it. I want to be clear about that."
"I know."
"But I understand it." He reaches for his phone. "I'll call Chase."
Chase picks up on the second ring.
Alex explains. Chase listens without interrupting, which is one of the things about Chase. He processes before he responds, never wastes words on reactions that don't serve the conversation.
"The registry won't love it," Chase says when Alex finishes. "They've flagged him against omega contact. But if Vee requests the meeting and it happens in a controlled environment—at the registry, supervised—they'll probably allow it."
"Can you set it up?" Alex asks.
"Give me a few minutes."
Alex puts the phone face down on the table.
We sit.
Rhys's hand finds mine under the table. He doesn't say anything. He just holds on, his thumb moving in that slow circle across my knuckles that means he's managing.
"I'll be okay," I tell him.
He looks at me. "I know," he says. Like he's decided to believe it even if it costs him something.
The phone buzzes.
Alex picks it up. Listens. His expression doesn't change much except for the added tension around his eyes. "Tomorrow morning. Nine o'clock." He looks at me. "Ragon confirmed immediately."
Rhys growls.
Low and involuntary, the sound of a man whose instincts have just received information they don't like.
"He wants to see her," Malcolm says flatly. Like the fact itself is an offense.
"Of course he does," I say. "That doesn't change anything." I look at Rhys. His jaw is set. I squeeze his hand. "It's one conversation. In a registry office with Chase there. And then it's done."
He doesn't look convinced.
But he nods.
***
We go to bed later than we mean to.
The conversation winds down slowly, like conversations do when nobody wants to be the one to end them. Eventually tiredness wins and we migrate upstairs in the loose collective way of people who haven't yet established whose room is whose but have stopped pretending it matters.
My room is the biggest.
Everyone ends up there.
It's a process. Malcolm takes one side immediately with the confidence of a man who has decided this is where he's sleeping and the logistics are someone else's problem.
Finn disappears and comes back with every spare blanket in the cabin, which he deposits on the bed with the focused energy of a man solving an engineering problem.
Rhys stands in the doorway assessing the situation with the expression he gets when he's calculating spatial arrangements.
"I can go to my room," he says.
"Get on the bed, Rhys," Malcolm says.
Rhys gets on the bed. The mattress registers his presence significantly. He ends up along the far edge, which still puts him in the middle of the room relative to everyone else's sense of scale.
I'm in the middle. Obviously.
Alex takes the other side, which puts him next to me. Alex who has been so careful and so controlled and so deliberate about distance for so long is now choosing proximity. I think I like it.
Finn surveys the situation.
"I'll take the floor," he says.
"Finn, there's room—" I start.
"There is not room," he says pleasantly. He's already arranging his blanket pile at the foot of the bed with the systematic focus he brings to everything. "I'm fine on the floor. I like the floor. The floor is underrated. And it’s just until we get a big enough bed for everyone."
"You said that last time too," I say.
"I meant it last time. I mean it now." He flops down onto his blanket nest. Adjusts. Adjusts again. "Perfect. This is perfect. Goodnight everyone."
The light goes off.
Then Malcolm says, in the dark: "Is that Finn's shirt in your nest?"
A pause.
"Malcolm," Alex says.
"I'm just asking. I see four shirts in there and one of them is definitely—"
"Malcolm," Alex says again.
"I'm being observant. It's a good quality."
From the floor Finn makes a sound.
"Finn," Malcolm says, with great satisfaction, "your shirt is in Vee's nest."
"I know that," Finn says. His voice has gone slightly higher than usual.
"That means something."
"I'm aware of what it means."
"Your cheeks are red. I can tell even in the dark."
"You cannot tell in the dark."
"I can absolutely tell in the dark. I know your embarrassed voice."
"I don't have an embarrassed voice."
"You have a very specific embarrassed voice. It goes up approximately—"
"Malcolm," I say.
"Yes?"
"Go to sleep."
There's a silent. Then, with enormous contentment: "Goodnight, Vee."
Finn makes another sound. I'm fairly sure it's his laugh disguised as something else.
I pull the blankets up.
My nest is around me—the shirts I've gathered without quite deciding to gather them, one from each of them, the layered scent of my pack wrapping around me in the dark.
Juniper and coffee and burnt wood and ash.
Something warm that's just Finn, just ink and rain without any alpha marker, which is its own kind of scent and its own kind of comfort.
All of them. Here. Mine.
Tomorrow I'll go see Ragon and say what needs saying.
But tonight, surrounded by my pack, I drift off in my carefully built nest. Malcolm's rumbling purr vibrates through the mattress on my left while Rhys's halting one starts and stops on my right.
Below, Finn's measured breaths rise from his blanket pile, and beside me, Alex radiates a steady, grounding heat against my side.
Safe.
Chosen.
Home.