37. Sloane
Sloane
Theo sleeps for fourteen minutes before he wakes up asking for Callie again, and I know because I count every one with my hand on his stomach and my phone faceup beside my knee.
He’s curled between me and Idris in the sunroom nest, body warm and loose from the spike but still wrong in the quiet afterward.
The sex helped. It gave his body somewhere safe to spend the worst of the rush, and Idris and I kept him with us through every shaking breath until the sharpest edge finally passed.
But his face stays too tight even in sleep, his injured hand is tucked carefully against his chest, and his other fist hasn’t let go of Callie’s gray sweater since Idris put it back into his hands.
“Callie?” he whispers into the wool.
The sound cuts straight through the center of me.
I press my palm more firmly over his stomach, giving him warmth and pressure without holding him down.
His skin is still damp beneath the soft shirt we put on him, and the tremor in his thighs hasn’t fully faded.
“She’s probably still in the interview, sweetheart.
We left the message. She’ll hear your voice when she gets out. ”
Theo’s eyes open halfway. Cardamom and peach blossom cling to him, sharp with exhaustion, and Callie’s honeyed pear and vanilla tea is fading from the sweater every time he breathes into it. “She said she’d come home after.”
“I know.” I bend and press my mouth to his hair, keeping my voice steady because he needs steadiness more than he needs the truth of what my chest feels like. “She will.”
Idris sits on Theo’s other side with a cooling cloth in one hand and a bottle of water in the other.
He doesn’t say the interview should’ve ended by now.
He doesn’t look at the phone where Callie’s name still hasn’t changed.
He only smooths the cloth over the back of Theo’s neck and says, “Drink for me.”
Theo’s brow pulls tight. “I drank already.”
“Again,” Idris says, and his voice softens when Theo’s mouth trembles around the refusal he’s too tired to make. “Small sips. Your body worked hard.”
I hold Theo upright while Idris tips the bottle to his mouth.
Theo drinks because Idris waits like the whole room can wait with him, and when he’s done, Idris wipes a drop from his lower lip with his thumb.
The tenderness of it should make me feel better.
It doesn’t, because Theo’s gaze slips past Idris to the doorway again, searching the empty place where Callie should appear.
My phone is still dark.
I pick it up before I can talk myself out of it, thumb already on her name. Idris watches me across Theo’s body and doesn’t tell me to stop. We’ve already called. Theo left his message. I left mine. Idris kept his calm and told her to drive carefully. None of it changed the screen.
The call rings until the flat voice of voicemail answers.
“Hey, baby, it’s me again.” I keep my voice low because Theo is listening and because Callie might be standing outside a room full of people deciding whether they want her future.
“Theo’s resting. He’s asking for you, but he’s safe with us.
We’re not trying to scare you or pull you out of anything.
Just call the second you can, okay? Even if it’s only long enough to tell me you’re all right. I love you.”
I end the call before the last word can break. Theo’s fingers move against my shirt, searching until I put my hand over his. He looks at the phone, then at me.
“You didn’t tell her the spike got bad,” he says.
Idris answers before my guilt can make me careless. “We need to tell her when she can answer us, not when she’s trapped listening to a message with no way to help. If she’s in the interview, she can’t leave the room safely. If she’s driving, we don’t want fear in her hands.”
Theo thinks about that with his whole tired body. His gaze drops to the sweater beneath his cheek, and he rubs the cuff between two fingers. “I don’t want her to think we didn’t need her.”
“She won’t think that,” I say.
I wish it sounded less like hope.
Garrett comes back while the phone is still warm in my hand.
He appears in the sunroom doorway with campus health papers tucked under one arm and his own phone in the other, his suit still too neat for the day we’ve had.
He pauses there long enough to take in Theo tucked between us, the damp cloth, the bandage, Callie’s sweater, my phone beside my knee.
His eyes flick over every piece of it before his expression settles into concern.
“She still hasn’t called back?” he asks.
No accusation. No anger. Just a soft question shaped like worry, and my entire body reacts before I can tell it not to. Idris looks up from Theo’s wrist with his face calm and his scent gone sharp with rain.
“She’s in the interview,” Idris says. “Or somewhere she can’t step out yet.”
Garrett nods as if the answer has been entered into a file. “That’s where her focus needs to be right now. Today already became more complicated than anyone wanted.”
Theo’s hand tightens in the sweater. His eyes are open again, glassy but intent. “I wasn’t scared of Callie.”
Garrett’s face softens immediately. “No one said you were.”
“You keep almost saying it,” I say. I keep my hand flat over Theo’s stomach because his body jumps when my anger gets too close to the surface. “He told us what happened. The café got loud. A mug broke. Callie took him to the nurse. That’s the story.”
“It’s part of the story.” Garrett steps into the room, stopping near the edge of the nest. He doesn’t rush.
He doesn’t loom. He makes every inch look measured and reasonable as he sets the papers on the side table.
“The rest is that Theo was injured during an off-site visit hours before his expected heat window. Calliope was responsible for him in that moment, and now she isn’t answering while he’s asking for her. ”
Theo flinches. Small. Fast. Enough that I feel it against my chest.
“She’s at an interview,” I say, and the words scrape because I’ve been telling Theo the same thing for over an hour. “An interview you told her to focus on.”
“I told all of you to let her focus on it.” Garrett takes off his suit jacket and drapes it over the chair near the windows. Then he loosens his tie, slow and calm, like he’s preparing to settle into the room for whatever comes next. “There’s a difference.”
Every part of me goes tight.
Idris sees it. His gaze catches mine across Theo’s body, controlled and warning, but he doesn’t tell me I’m wrong to feel it.
Garrett unbuttons his cuffs and rolls one sleeve up, then the other.
It’s a practical thing. Alphas strip down for heat rooms. We all do.
Clothes get in the way of touch and temperature and whatever the Omega needs when the next spike rolls in.
But watching Garrett make himself ready while Sloane’s phone stays silent beside my knee turns the nest too small around my lungs.
Theo pushes his face harder into the sweater. “I wanted lunch. I wanted Callie. Then everything got loud.”
“I know,” Garrett says, his voice smooth with comfort that should belong here and doesn’t. “You’re explaining the emotional truth well. I’m talking about the practical reality. Campus overwhelmed you. Calliope was with you. The incident became tied to that setting and that plan.”
I move before I realize I’m moving, but Theo is against me and the nest catches the shift before I can do something worse. Idris’s hand lands on Theo’s ankle, steadying him when my body tenses behind him.
“Stop putting words in his mouth.”
Garrett looks at me then, and for the first time, the polish thins. “I’m not.”
“You are.” My voice drops lower. “You’re taking what scared him and shaping it until it points at Callie.”
Garrett’s eyes cut to Theo, who has gone still between us. Whatever answer he was preparing changes before it leaves his mouth. He draws a slow breath and reties the loosened knot of his voice into something softer. “Outside. We’re not doing this over him.”
I don’t want to move. I want to stay where Theo’s back is pressed to my chest and where my hand can keep telling him I’m still here.
But Garrett is right about one thing, and I hate him more for being able to use it.
Theo doesn’t need three Alphas arguing over his head while his body is this close to opening again.
I lower my mouth to Theo’s hair. “We’re stepping into the hall,” I tell him. “Right outside the door. You’ll hear us, and we’ll hear you. You say my name, and I’m back before the second breath.”
Theo’s fingers clutch my shirt. “You’re not leaving?”
“No.” I cover his hand with mine until his grip loosens by a fraction. “Hallway, sweetheart. That’s it.”
Idris shifts closer to him as I ease out from behind Theo. “I’m right here until Sloane stands, then I’m right beside the door. You won’t be alone.”
Theo looks at him, then me, then the empty doorway behind Garrett. His eyes are heavy again, but the fear in them is awake. “Callie said she’d come home.”
“She did,” I say, and I make it sound like a promise instead of a prayer. “We remember.”
I stand slowly because fast movement makes Theo jump. Idris settles him back into the blankets, tucking the cooling cloth at his neck and putting Callie’s sweater under his cheek. Garrett waits until I’m on my feet, then turns for the hallway like this was his idea of restraint all along.
We stop just outside the sunroom door. Not the kitchen.
Not the study. Not far enough for Theo’s breathing to leave my hearing.
The hallway is narrow here, one side lined with framed photographs and the other opening back toward the foyer.
I can see the edge of the nest if I turn my head.
Idris stands near the doorway, close enough to step back in, close enough to put himself between the conversation and Theo if the next sentence lands wrong.