Chapter 37
Vee
Nobody moves for a long time after his car disappears.
We're still in the kitchen. Rhys is on the floor where he went down, sitting with his back against the cabinets and his knees up and his hands loose in his lap, staring at nothing.
Malcolm is standing in the middle of the room looking at the door Alex walked out of like he's deciding whether to go through it after him.
Finn is beside Malcolm with one hand on his arm, not restraining, just present.
I'm holding myself together with both hands.
This is my fault.
The thought arrived the moment Alex said this is how it has to be and it hasn't left.
It's just sitting in my chest getting heavier.
If I hadn't come here. If I hadn't chosen them.
If I hadn't made them want me back so completely that Alex decided the only way to protect what we had was to remove himself from it—
"Stop," Finn says.
I look at him.
"Whatever you're thinking," he says. "Stop."
"You don't know what I'm thinking."
"You're thinking this is because of you." He holds my gaze. "It's not."
"If I hadn't—"
"Vee,” he says. "Alex made a choice. Alex always makes choices. It's the thing he does—he sees a problem and he solves it. He doesn't ask anyone's permission first." He pauses. "This one is on him. Not you."
"He did it for me."
"He did it for all of us," Malcolm says. His voice comes out rough. He's still looking at the door. "He did it because he's Alex and Alex would rather blow himself up than watch his pack suffer."
He finally turns away from the door.
His face is one I’ve never seen before. There’s no smirk or armor. There’s none of the real warmth I always see underneath. This is something rawer than all of those. This is Malcolm genuinely undone and not knowing what to do with it, which for Malcolm expresses itself as movement.
He picks up his phone, and calls Alex.
It rings. And rings. Then goes to voicemail.
"Alex." His voice is controlled but barely. "Call me back. Right now. I mean it."
He hangs up. Calls again immediately.
Voicemail.
"You absolute—" He stops. Breathes. "Call me back."
Finn takes the phone from his hand. "Give him a minute."
"I'll give him nothing." But he lets Finn take the phone. He runs both hands through his hair and makes a sound that isn't quite a word. "He didn't even—he didn't tell us. He didn’t warn us. He just decided and he did it and now he's just—" He gestures at the empty doorway. "Gone."
"That's Alex," Finn says.
"I know that's Alex." Malcolm drops into a chair. Hard. "I know exactly who he is. That's the problem."
I cross to Rhys.
I sit on the floor beside him and don't say anything. He looks at me. He looks lost like Drake seemed lost when he got here.
It’s not quite the same though. He's not lost how Drake was then. But there's something in his eyes that belongs to a man who has just had something taken away that he didn't expect to lose.
I take his hand.
He looks down at our joined hands.
"This isn't your fault either," I say.
He doesn't say anything.
"Rhys."
He looks at me.
"It's not," I say.
His jaw tightens. I know what he's thinking—that his existence is the reason Alex felt he had to do this.
That everything… the flag and the decade of consequences all trace back to one night when Rhys couldn't stop and Alex stepped in front of it.
That debt has always been there between them and now Alex has added to it.
Rhys is sitting here in a kitchen that no longer has its pack lead in it because of choices that started with him.
"Don't," I say.
He exhales.
His fingers tighten around mine.
Malcolm calls Chase.
"Alex broke the pack bond," he says, without preamble, when Chase picks up. "He's not answering his phone. We need you to find him."
A pause on Chase's end. Then: "He broke the bond."
"Yes."
Another pause. Longer. "Is everyone okay?"
"No," Malcolm says flatly. "Everyone is not okay. Can you find him or not?"
"I can try to locate him. Give me some time."
"We don't have time—"
"Malcolm." Chase's voice is measured. "Give me some time."
Malcolm hangs up and looks at his phone for three seconds before he calls Alex again.
Voicemail.
He doesn't leave a message this time. Just hangs up and sets the phone on the table and stares at it like he's deciding whether to throw it.
"We need to talk about what happens next," Finn says.
"What happens next is we get Alex back," Malcolm says.
"I know that's what you want. But in the meantime—"
"That's not in the meantime. That's the whole plan."
"Malcolm." Finn's voice is patient in the specific way it gets when he's managing something. "We can want Alex back and also figure out how to function while he's gone. Both things."
Malcolm looks at him, then at me, then back at Rhys on the floor.
He deflates slightly. Just slightly.
"Okay," he says. "What?"
Finn pulls out his laptop. The efficiency of it—how he just reaches for something practical—is so deeply Finn that I feel something move in my chest. He opens it. Types something. Turns it to face Malcolm.
"Alex named you as successor lead when we formed the pack," Finn says. "It's in the original paperwork. If Alex breaks the bond, leadership transfers to you automatically." He pauses. "But I'm also on the paperwork as co-lead. Always have been."
"I know that," Malcolm says.
"So legally and structurally we're fine. The pack exists. It's just—" Finn glances at the empty chair where Alex usually sits. "Restructured. All we’ll have to do is rebuild the physical bonds between you and Rhys. And claim Vee."
"We're not restructuring," Malcolm says. "We're getting him back."
"We're doing both," Finn says firmly.
Malcolm opens his mouth.
Closes it.
"Fine," he says. The word sounds like it costs him something each time.
Rhys shifts beside me. "I don't want to lead," he says, flat and certain. "I'm saying that now."
"Nobody's asking you to lead," Malcolm says.
"I'm saying it anyway. Someone needs to say it because if it gets left ambiguous someone will eventually look at me and think I should have an opinion about pack direction and I won't. I'll have an opinion about Vee and about not getting into fights I don't need to be in.
That's the extent of my leadership ambitions. "
Despite everything, Finn's mouth curves.
"Noted," he says.
"Also someone needs to keep Malcolm's impulsiveness in check," Rhys continues, in the same flat tone. "That was always Alex's job. I nominate Finn."
"I'm already doing it," Finn says.
"Then keep doing it."
"Hey," Malcolm says.
"You called Alex sixteen times in twenty minutes," Rhys says.
"I called him—" Malcolm stops. Counts. "Twelve. It was twelve."
"My point stands."
I look between them. This exchange, dry and familiar, is so normal that it aches. The same and completely different. Alex's chair is empty and they're still doing this, still functioning, still holding themselves together through the specific mechanism of being themselves.
I ache with how fiercely I need them.
"We need to figure out the registry," Finn says, pulling us back. "Now that Alex isn't the lead, the flag doesn't attach to the pack anymore. Technically Vee can stay. But we need to inform Chase, who needs to inform the registry, and we need to do it before they try to move her somewhere."
"Call Chase back," I say.
"Already texting him," Finn says. His thumbs move across his phone. "He needs to know the full picture."
"He's going to try to talk us into accepting this," Malcolm says.
"Probably," Finn agrees.
"We're not accepting this."
"I know."
"I want that on record. This is temporary. We get Alex back or we—" He stops, looks away. "We figure something out."
The room is quiet.
"Malcolm," I say.
He looks at me.
"I know," I say. "I know you're not accepting it. Neither am I." I pause. "But you also get to want this. What Alex did—it means we get to be together. You and me and Finn and Rhys. You're allowed to want that even while you're angry at him for how he did it."
His face shifts through several emotions at once, like he's trying to solve an equation with too many variables.
"It feels like choosing," he says. "Between him and you."
"It's not choosing," I say. "You didn't choose. He did."
"Still feels like it."
"I know," I say. "I know it does."
He looks at the table
"I want both," he says. "That's all. I just want both."
"Me too," Finn says.
Rhys squeezes my hand once without saying anything.
Me too, I think. Me too.
Chase calls back an hour later.
"He's not answering me either," he says. "But I've located him. He's not far. Checked into a motel about forty minutes out."
"Give me the address," Malcolm says immediately.
"Malcolm—"
"The address, Chase."
"He needs time—"
"He's had time. He had time in the woods when he was deciding to blow up our pack without telling any of us. He doesn't get more time." Malcolm sounds like he’s hanging on by a thread. "Give me the address."
Chase is quiet.
"I'll reach out to him," Chase says. "Let him know you're all okay. That the pack is intact." A pause. "Let me try that first."
"And if he doesn't respond?"
"Then we revisit."
Malcolm doesn't look satisfied. But he nods. "One hour."
"Give me until tomorrow morning."
"One hour, Chase."
Chase sighs. "I'll call you back."
He hangs up.
Malcolm sets his phone down, stands up and goes to the window. He looks out at the driveway where Alex's car isn't.
We sit in the kitchen with the empty chair and the silence of a pack that's missing a piece of itself.
Finn gets up eventually and starts making dinner. Nobody asked him to. He just does it like he does everything—competently, because someone has to and he's decided it's him.
Rhys moves from the floor to a chair. I stay beside him.
Malcolm stays at the window for a long time.
"He's going to try to stay gone," he says finally. Not to anyone in particular. Just to the window. To the empty driveway. "You know that, right. He's going to decide this is noble and dig in."
"Yes," Finn says from the stove.
"We're not letting him."
"No," Finn agrees.
"I don't care how long it takes. I don't care what we have to do." Malcolm turns from the window. His face has hardened into the lines of someone who has made an irrevocable choice. "We're not a pack without him. We're just people who live in the same house."
Nobody argues with that.
Because nobody disagrees.
Finn puts food on the table. We eat. It tastes like nothing but we eat it anyway because Finn made it and Finn making it means something.
After, I wash the dishes. Rhys dries them without being asked, passing the plates to Finn who puts them away, and Malcolm sits at the table with his phone and calls Alex one more time.
Voicemail.
"It's me," he says. His voice has gone quiet.
The loud has burned off and what's underneath is just Malcolm, unarmored, talking to his pack lead who isn't there.
"We're okay. Vee's okay. Rhys is okay. Finn is—Finn is Finn.
" A pause. "We're going to come get you.
I want you to know that. Whatever you think you did, whatever you think this solves—" He stops.
Starts again. "Just…. answer your phone, Alex.
That's all I'm asking right now. Just answer your damn phone. We love you man."
He hangs up.
The kitchen is quiet.
Outside the window the last of the light is going. The driveway is still empty.
We stay together in the kitchen until it's fully dark, none of us quite willing to be the first one to go to bed. Like going to bed means accepting the night. Means accepting that Alex is in a motel forty minutes away in the dark and we're here without him.
Eventually Finn turns off the kitchen light and we go upstairs.
We pile into my room like we have been—Rhys on one side, Malcolm on the other, Finn on the floor without being asked.
The space where Alex would be is just empty.
Nobody says anything about it.
We don't sleep for a long time.
But we stay together.