Chapter 40 #2
"You're the new piece," Alex says. "Now that the flag is gone, you can be formally registered as our omega. I’ll file the paperwork this week." He looks at me steadily. "After that, as the claiming bonds form with each of us, the pack bond strengthens. It builds. One layer at a time."
"How long?"
"Months," Malcolm says. "Maybe longer. But we'll feel it growing."
"I already feel it," Rhys says.
Everyone looks at him again.
He doesn't elaborate. He just looks at me with those dark eyes and the steadiness in them says more than an explanation would.
"Okay," I say. "So we rebuild."
"We rebuild," Alex confirms.
***
Evening comes slowly.
Someone suggests a movie. This leads to a twenty-minute negotiation that involves Malcolm campaigning hard for an action movie, Finn lobbying for a documentary, Rhys not caring, Alex staying out of it, and me eventually choosing something none of them suggested just to end the debate.
Finn starts to push the coffee table aside. Malcolm joins him without being asked.
"What are we doing?" Alex asks from the armchair.
"Floor night," I say.
"We have a couch."
"Floor night," Malcolm repeats, already dragging blankets out of the hall closet.
Alex watches the couch get abandoned for a pile of blankets and pillows on the floor. He looks at the couch. He looks at the floor. He looks at me.
"Floor night," he says. Resigned.
We build the nest together. Malcolm brings every blanket and pillow in the cabin. Finn arranges them with a system that only makes sense to him. Rhys contributes by standing in the middle of the operation and being directed by Finn to place things in high locations.
When it's done it's a ridiculous sprawling mess of bedding that takes up most of the living room floor.
I settle into the center of it.
Alex lies down beside me. This is the first time he's been in the nest pile since and I can feel the significance of it in how he lets himself be close without a buffer. His arm comes around me. The weight of it against my ribs.
Rhys takes my other side. He arranges himself with his usual precision, accounting for his size, making sure I have room. His warmth is immediate and steady.
Malcolm drops down on the other side of Alex and stretches out with the contentment of a man who has achieved exactly what he wanted. His hand finds my knee across the pile, just resting there. Contact.
Finn settles in against Rhys's other side, which puts him at the edge of the nest. He adjusts three times, rearranges his pillow, takes off his glasses and puts them carefully on the coffee table, puts them back on, takes them off again.
"Finn," Malcolm says. "Lie down."
"I'm optimizing."
"Lie down."
He lies down. Then shifts once more. "Okay. Good."
The movie starts.
Nobody watches it.
Malcolm and Finn pick up an argument from earlier in the day.
It has something to do with pasta and whether a specific shape is objectively superior to another shape.
It escalates. Finn uses the word "empirically.
" Malcolm uses the word "wrong." Alex tells them both to be quiet. Neither of them is quiet.
Rhys's purr starts up beside me. The stuttering rhythm of it moves through the blankets into my bones. I press closer to him and his arm tightens slightly.
Alex's fingertips trace circles on my hip. Slow. Absent. Like he's not even aware he's doing it.
On screen, a car chase happens. Nobody notices.
"Penne is structurally superior," Finn says. "The tube holds the sauce."
"Penne is a vehicle," Malcolm says. "Rigatoni is an experience."
"That doesn't mean anything."
"It means everything."
"Alex, tell him."
"I'm not getting involved in pasta discourse," Alex says.
"Rhys?"
Rhys's purr doesn't change. "I don't have opinions about pasta."
"Everyone has opinions about pasta," Malcolm says.
"I don't."
"That's an opinion."
I'm smiling into Rhys's shoulder. My pack is arguing about pasta shapes in a blanket nest on the floor while a movie nobody is watching plays in the background.
Alex's hand is warm on my hip. Malcolm's fingers are still resting on my ankle.
Finn's voice is rising in pitch the way it does when he's genuinely invested in being right.
This is it. This is what I was waiting for without knowing I was waiting for it.
The argument eventually dies down. The movie keeps playing. The room gets quieter. Finn's breathing evens out first, because Finn falls asleep faster than anyone I've ever met. Malcolm goes next, mid-sentence, which Finn would find hilarious if he were awake to witness it.
Rhys is still awake. He's always the last one. The sentinel thing, the need to make sure everyone is safe before he lets himself rest. I reach up and touch his jaw. The scar tissue under my fingers. He turns his head slightly and presses his mouth to my palm.
"Sleep," I whisper.
He closes his eyes. His purr keeps going. I don't think he can turn it off tonight.
Alex is still awake too. I can tell from his breathing.
"Hey," I say.
"Hey."
"Thank you. For everything."
He's quiet. Then his arm tightens around me. "You don't have to thank me."
"I know. I'm doing it anyway."
The cabin is quiet except for the movie's low murmur and the sounds of four people breathing around me. Rhys's stuttering purr. Malcolm's occasional sleep-mumble. Finn curled at the edge of the nest with his mouth slightly open.
I think about tomorrow. About the paperwork and the pack bond rebuilding and the house they keep talking about with the big kitchen and the land. About the garden I'll plant. About the life we're building, one ordinary day at a time.
Then I stop thinking about tomorrow.
Because I'm here. Right now. In this nest, with these people, with Alex's claiming mark still tender on my neck and the bond humming warm and new between us. This room full of people who chose me and who I chose back.
Whatever comes next will be good.
I know that now.
I close my eyes and let my pack carry me into sleep.