Chapter 11
Chapter eleven
"You're collecting broken people," he says. To the ceiling.
"Mmmhmm," I say.
"That's all you've got?"
"What do you want me to say, Leo."
He's quiet for a moment.
"I need you to tell me where I fit," he says. "In this thing you're building."
I look at him. He's still looking at the ceiling.
"You were first," I say.
"I know I was first." He says it without satisfaction. "First doesn't mean anything if the pack fills up around me and I end up being the one who's just — always been there. Background. Furniture."
"Leo."
"I'm not upset." He says it in the tone of someone who is upset.
"I'm asking a genuine question. Jake is broken in a specific way.
Jim is broken in a specific way. Gray is broken in a specific way.
RJ is—" He stops. "RJ is RJ. And you go toward all of them like you know exactly what they need.
Like you can see the shape of the damage and you know where to put your hands. "
He turns his head and looks at me.
"I don't know what you see when you look at me," he says. "I'm not sure I want to know. But I also — I need to know I'm not just the one who opens doors and creates distractions and makes you laugh when things are terrible."
I sit on the edge of the bed.
"You're the one who pays attention," I say.
"When everyone else is focused on their own damage you're watching the whole room.
You knew Jake needed twenty minutes to talk himself into knocking.
You knew Jim before anyone told you anything about him.
You knew I needed to go to the fence before I'd admitted it to myself. "
He watches me.
"You're not furniture," I say. "You're the reason any of this works."
Something shifts in his face. He doesn't move. His eyes do something.
"That's not very sexy," he says.
"I'm getting there."
"Are you."
"Leo." I put my hand on his chest. "You're the one I trust to see clearly. You always have my back. Trust is really hard for me."
He looks at my hand on his chest. Then at my face.
"I don't know where I fit with them," he says." Jake barely tolerates me. Jim finds me — " A pause. "Jim finds me interesting, I think."
"That's just Jim."
"I know. That doesn't make it less unsettling." His hand comes up and covers mine on his chest. "I'm working on it."
"I know you are."
We look at each other. The bond between us is warm and even, the thing it's always been — Leo's frequency, sharp-bright and familiar.
"I'm not going anywhere," he says. Flat. Like it cost him something to say it plainly instead of sideways. "I need you to know that."
"Oh Leo."
"You don't have to manage me. I'm not going to — I'm not going to be a problem about the others. That's not—" He stops. Tries again. "That's not who I want to be."
"Leo, I love you." I lean down and kiss him.
He makes a sound against my mouth that is relief and want simultaneously, his hands finding my waist, pulling me closer. The Leo-bond flares warm and immediate.
His mouth is familiar and his hands are familiar and when he pulls me into him it feels like coming back to something rather than arriving somewhere new.
He doesn't say anything for a while. Just his hand moving down my back.
"The furniture thing," he says. "Forget I said that."
"Already forgotten."
We stay like that until the building quiets around us.
***
Lumi's session is the next afternoon.
The room is the same as it's always been — green walls, candle, couch and chair, the smell of whatever she burns that my body has learned means safe. I've been coming here long enough that I stop looking for the angle when I walk in.
She looks at me when I come in and her face does the thing it does — reading, quick, filing.
"Sit," she says. Not a question.
I sit on the couch. She sits in the chair. The routine. Familiar enough to be its own kind of comfort, which still unsettles me slightly.
"Tell me," she says.
Not a question either.
She looks at my wrist. The four arcs, dark and permanent. She takes my arm, gently, and looks at them. She knows what each one cost. She was on that mountain. She brought some of these people down herself.
"Jake," she says.
"Last night."
She sets my arm down carefully. Something moves in her face that she doesn't try to hide from me.
"He's okay?" Her voice is even but I know what's underneath it.
"I think he went to Jim after," I say.
Something releases in her. Not dramatically — a breath, barely. "Good." She looks at the candle. "Jake needed Jim to be real again before he could be real himself. They kept each other alive on the mountain. Losing that—" She stops. Chooses differently. "It hollowed him out."
"You know all of them," I say. Not an accusation.
"I know all of them." She meets my eyes. "That was always going to be complicated when you started bonding them. I want you to know that I'm aware of that. That my investment in their recovery doesn't compromise what I offer you in here."
"I know," I say. "That's why I'm still coming."
She nods once. Then tilts her head. "How many were there last night?"
I look at her. "Excuse me?"
"You didn’t have any bonds the last time we met." She says it with the serenity of a woman who has seen a lot. "I'm asking for context, not details."
"Three," I say. "Leo and Jake. And Gray came through earlier."
"Gray came from Gold House."
"He did."
She's quiet for a moment. "How."
"Leo."
She closes her eyes briefly. "Of course." A pause. Then, very carefully controlled, "Is everyone alive?"
I laugh. I don't mean to. It just comes out — startled and genuine — and Lumi's mouth does the thing where it's not quite a smile.
"Everyone is alive," I say.
"Good." She uncrosses her legs and recrosses them. "I ask because when Stone came down from the mountain and we — when we first—" She stops. "Neal walked in."
I stare at her.
"He didn't knock," she says. "He never knocks. He thought I was in medical distress."
"What did you do?"
"I told him I was fine." A pause. "He didn't fully believe me for about three weeks. He kept asking if I needed anything." Her mouth does the thing again. "He was very concerned."
I press my hand over my mouth. Lumi watches me with amused patience while I get myself together.
"The alpha thing," Lumi says. "Tell me how it feels. Not institutionally. In your body."
I think about it.
"Like I stopped being slightly wrong," I say.
"Like something that was always slightly misaligned just — settled.
And now I can feel the pack. Not just the bonds individually, I can feel the whole thing.
The shape of it. Who's okay and who's not.
" I pause. "And then there's RJ, he’s just something my alpha nature does without asking me.
I know where he is. I know when something shifts in him.
" I pause. "It's loud sometimes. Like a room where everyone's talking at once and one person is in the hallway and you can still hear them through the door. "
"That's accurate," she says. "An alpha's bond sense is broader than a standard mate bond. You're not just connected to your mates — you're responsible for the field. You'll feel the whole pack. All the time."
"That sounds exhausting."
"It is." She says it plainly. "And it's also the thing that makes you what you are. The pack feels you too. Not just the bonded ones — all of them. RJ feels you. Somewhere in whatever's left of his conscious processing, he knows you're here."
The fence. His thumb moving over my marks through the chain link.
"I know," I say.
A pause. Then I look at her.
"What about you," I say. "The omega thing. What does it feel like — having all of them bonded to you? Carrying all of that?"
She pauses.
"Like being the eye of something," she says. "Not the storm. The eye. Everything moving around you and through you and you're the still point that makes it possible." A pause. "It can actually feel lonely sometimes. Even when you're never alone."
I look at my wrist. Four arcs. The wanting that monitors RJ without my permission.
"Yeah," I say. "It is."
She looks at me steadily. "The reclassification is going to take time. Gavin's board is going to ask things that don't have precedent. You're going to be studied." A pause. "I want you to know that I'll be there. Not as staff. As someone who has been exactly where you are."
"You're an omega," I say. "That's different."
"The biology is different. The experience of being a thing nobody has a protocol for—" She looks at me. "That part is the same."
We sit with that.
"Can I ask you something?" I say.
"Always."
"This room." I look at the candle, the green walls. "I always feel calmer in here. I thought it was the routine." I pause. "Is that you?"
Lumi's cheeks do something. Subtle — she's controlled, always controlled — but it's there. "My omega biology does have a passive calming effect on—"
"On wolves in proximity." I stare at her. "That's been you this whole time."
"It's not intentional—"
"Lumi." I gesture between us. "I walk in here and my shoulders drop and I tell you things I don't tell anyone and I thought I was getting better at trusting people." I pause. "I need a candle for my room."
She laughs — an actual laugh, surprised out of her, warm and real. "It doesn't work like that. You can't bottle it."
"That's extremely unfair." I lean back into the couch. "Everyone in my vicinity drops to the floor. Wolves go to their knees." I look at her. "You just make people feel calm and safe."
"You make people feel anchored," she says. The laughter still in her voice.
"I know. It's meaningful. It's what I am." I look at her. "But calm vibes, Lumi. Calm vibes."
She presses her lips together. "I'll see what I can do about a candle."
"Thank you."
"Same time next week," she says.
"I'll be here."
I get up to go. At the door I stop.
"Lumi."
She looks at me.
"Neal," I say. "Does he knock now?"
A beat of silence.
"He knocks or joins, only two options that work," she says laughing.
I go.