21. Idris #2
“Absolutely,” she says, and the answer comes easily. “I have student reports to finish, but I can do those on the couch if you don’t mind me complaining about formatting.”
Theo’s shoulders lower.
Sloane kisses the side of Calliope’s neck, careful and lingering. “I missed you.”
“I was gone for a morning.”
“I’m still allowed.”
She laughs under her breath and leans back into him without resistance. “Then miss me closer. I’m cold.”
Sloane wraps both arms around her at once, and she lets herself sink there, eyes closing for a second while his cheek rests against her hair.
She's warm with him. Warm with all of us. The flinch at the table hasn’t made her brittle, and that matters.
It also makes the small way her hand stays on her mug instead of reaching for Theo again feel sharper.
I wait until Theo is settled in the den with Garrett and Sloane nearby before I catch Calliope at the sink.
She's rinsing her mug, sleeves pushed up, damp hair braided loosely over one shoulder now. When I step in behind her, she turns into me without making me ask. Her forehead touches my chest, and my hand settles at the back of her neck.
“You’re quiet,” I say.
“I’m tired.” Her arms slide around my waist, and she breathes in against my shirt. “And I smell like rainwater, tire rubber, Sloane, and your soap. It’s been a textured morning.”
I press my mouth to her hair. “Why did you apologize at the table?”
Her fingers pause against my back, then keep moving in a slow stroke over my shirt. “Because I startled.”
“That’s all?”
“Garrett warned me, I startled, and Theo was already sensitive.” She lifts her head enough to look at me, her expression open rather than wounded. “I wasn’t hurt, Idris. I reached without asking when he’s this close to heat. I should’ve checked color or waited for him to come to me.”
“He was coming to you.”
“I know.” Her mouth softens. “And I love that. I’m not saying I wasn’t allowed to touch him. I’m saying I startled, and I didn’t want him to think he’d done something wrong.”
Her explanation fits too neatly around Garrett’s growl. I cup her jaw and brush my thumb along the place where rain cooled her skin earlier. “You’re sure you’re all right?”
“I’m sure.” She rises onto her toes and kisses me, soft and brief. “I promise. If I start spiraling over a growl at a breakfast table, you can be very stern and make me eat protein.”
“I already have permission to do that.”
“You abuse it constantly.” Her smile is tired but real, and when I draw her closer, she comes without hesitation. “Your phone didn’t ring?”
“It was upstairs.” My hand tightens once at the back of her neck before I smooth it away. “I don’t like that.”
“It happens.” She shrugs against me, easy and competent and not remotely fragile. “I called, then I solved the thing. That’s generally how adulthood works.”
I almost smile. “You are impossible.”
“I learned from Sloane.” She kisses the corner of my mouth, then glances toward the den when Theo makes a sleepy sound. Her hand twitches once at my side, a tiny start toward him before she stops herself and looks back at me. “I’m going to grab my laptop and sit with them.”
I let her go because she's telling me the truth. She's fine. She's loved, capable, steady enough to tease me while her hair is still damp from rain. She's also learning, quickly and quietly, to ask herself whether reaching for Theo will make the room react.
Garrett finds me ten minutes later in the hall outside the den.
Calliope is on the couch with her laptop balanced on one thigh and Sloane’s arm around her shoulders.
Theo is on the floor cushion near Garrett’s knee, blanket around him, eating the last of the toast in slow bites while he watches Calliope more than the food.
From the doorway, it almost works: Theo near Calliope’s hand, Sloane quiet beside her, Garrett close enough to call it structure.
“Idris,” Garrett says from behind me. “A word.”
I turn toward him, then step farther down the hall so our voices won’t carry into the den. “Make it quick.”
Garrett’s expression remains calm, but the morning has left him rougher around the edges. His sleeves are rolled to the forearms, and there is still a faint crease at one cuff where Theo gripped him. “This morning is why hierarchy matters when an Omega is close to heat.”
The word lands wrong immediately.
I wait.
“Theo was in crisis,” Garrett says. “You, Sloane, and I responded as Alphas. He settled. Then Calliope reached in while his body was still sensitive, and the room corrected before anyone had language for it.”
“She reached because he wanted her.”
“She reached because they wanted each other.” Garrett doesn't deny it, and that makes the argument harder to dismiss. “That doesn’t mean the timing was safe.”
I look back toward the den. Theo has shifted closer to Calliope’s foot, and she has lowered one hand from her keyboard to rest palm-up near her knee. She's waiting for him to choose it. She isn't taking the choice from him.
“She knows how to be careful,” I say.
“She does,” Garrett agrees. “And still, she apologized. That should tell you something.”
“It tells me she was startled.”
“It tells me she understands there are rules in those moments even if none of us have named them cleanly yet.” Garrett keeps his voice measured, almost gentle.
“Clear roles protect her too, Idris. If she doesn’t know when to step in and when to let the Alphas anchor him, she’s the one who will keep getting hurt. ”
“Theo isn’t only anchored by Alphas.”
Garrett’s gaze flicks toward the den, where Theo has finally set his fingers in Calliope’s waiting palm. “I know.”
The quiet answer should reassure me.
It doesn’t.
“She’s part of this pack,” I say.
“No one said otherwise.” Garrett looks tired when he says it, tired enough that the concern seems real.
“But being part of the pack doesn’t mean standing in the center of every biological spike.
She’ll try, because she’s Calliope, and because he reaches for her.
That’s exactly why we need structure before heat makes everything harder. ”
His reasoning has too many true pieces inside it.
Theo was in crisis. Sloane was riding the edge of rut. Garrett did growl on instinct, and I have heard Sloane do the same. Calliope didn’t fall apart; she adjusted, explained, and came back warmer than before. The biology is real enough to shelter the rest of what Garrett is saying.
“You keep using structure when you mean hierarchy,” I say.
Garrett’s mouth tightens. “Hierarchy isn’t a dirty word.”
“It is when it decides where Calliope is allowed to reach.”
His eyes sharpen. For a moment, the reasonable mask thins, and I see frustration underneath it, clean and cold. Then he smooths it away and glances back toward the den.
“I’m trying to keep anyone from being hurt,” he says.
“So am I.”
We stand there with the den warm behind us, listening to Sloane murmur something low to Calliope and Theo answer with a soft sound.
Garrett hears an Omega close to heat, two Alphas on edge, and a Beta who might take too much onto herself.
I hear the same room and see Theo choosing Calliope’s hand after every one of us has spent the morning proving he can trust our bodies.
Garrett steps back first. “Then we’ll keep watching.”