9. Idris
Idris
The house glows warm when I pull into the drive. It looks obscene from the street, all lit windows and clean lines, the kind of place people pass and imagine safety but without Callie’s presence…
Sloane’s already on the stairs when I step inside.
Theo is half behind him in one of Sloane’s shirts with Callie’s sweater bunched in both hands, his face pale and eyes too wide.
Sloane must feel what is coming through the bond before he sees my face, because his hand goes back to Theo’s hip, holding him steady while his gaze drops to my coat pocket where the case number sits like a loaded gun.
“What did they say?” Sloane asks, and the restraint in his voice is a thread pulled so tight it has started to sing.
I can't answer him yet. If I look at him while I say the words, I will become the thing Zana warned me not to be in the station. So I move past the stairs toward the study, toward the spill of lamplight beneath the closed door, toward the faint scratch of Garrett’s pen moving over paper as if tonight has been ordinary enough for notes.
“Idris,” Sloane says behind me, and the warning in it is almost a plea. Theo makes a small sound, but my hand is already on the study door.
I throw it open hard enough that it hits the inside wall.
Garrett looks up from his desk. He's in a navy sweater with his sleeves rolled once, hair neat, glasses low on his nose, a file open beneath his left hand. He looks inconvenienced for half a second before concern settles over his face. That concern is what breaks the last clean piece of me.
“What did you do to the cameras?” I ask.
His pen rests on the page. He doesn't rush the motion. “Good evening to you too.”
“The porch feed is corrupted. So is the side camera. The garage skips in the same window.” I step into the study, and the storm in my scent rolls ahead of me hard enough that the curtains stir near the vent. “What did you do?”
Garrett removes his glasses and folds them with maddening care. “We’ve had intermittent issues with the exterior cameras.”
“No, we have not.”
“Idris, systems fail. Especially under high household activity. You know that better than anyone.” He leans back in his chair, eyes moving past me to the hall where Sloane and Theo have stopped near the threshold. “This isn’t the night to turn technical maintenance into a conspiracy.”
I cross the room so fast his chair scrapes back before he can hide the instinct. “I checked those cameras before Theo’s heat. I checked them repeatedly. Porch, side entrance, garage, back gate. They worked when I checked them, Garrett. They worked until the only minutes I need.”
Sloane appears in the doorway with Theo close to his back, one arm locked behind him to keep Theo shielded without pushing him away. He hears enough. I feel it when he does. The bond fills with something ragged and red, his fury dragging teeth through mine.
Garrett’s gaze flicks to Theo and softens as if our Omega’s fear belongs to him. “This is exactly why I said we would discuss placement when everyone was calmer.”
“The police report has Sloane’s name on it.
” The words tear out of me before I can decide whether to save them for strategy.
“The heat-space restriction was delivered to Callie at the campus. She came back here after you said you were going to help her, and then officers removed her from the house.”
Theo makes a wounded sound. Sloane turns his body farther in front of him, but his eyes stay on Garrett with such raw hatred that I feel the air around him strain.
Garrett stands slowly. “If Calliope ignored a protective restriction during an Omega medical event, the responding officers made the safest choice available to them.”
“Sloane didn’t request that restriction.”
“No?” Garrett’s mouth barely moves. “His distress was evident. Yours too. Theo’s condition was unstable, and Calliope’s involvement had already become a point of biological confusion.”
The Alpha register comes into my throat so hard I taste blood. “Do not do that.”
“Do what?” Garrett asks, calm enough to sound wounded. “Name what everyone in this house was refusing to address? She had become too central to an Omega transition she had no biological capacity to anchor. Sloane’s bond made him irrational, and you were encouraging it because you wanted her too.”
The tears come without warning, hot and humiliating and immediate.
I feel them gather before they fall, and there is no space left in me to be ashamed.
“Callie was mine too,” I say, and my voice cracks through the room like broken glass.
“She was going to be mine. She was going to wear my fucking bite, and you made her stand outside this house with police between her and the people who love her.”
“Then you should have formalized that bond before the house entered a crisis.”
Sloane moves and I catch him around the chest before he reaches the desk, but grief makes him stronger than the body should allow.
He surges against me with a sound that is barely human, Theo crying behind him, Garrett watching as if the scene has been written in advance.
For one second, I have him held. Then Garrett says, softly, “This is exactly why she could not stay in the center,” and Sloane tears free.
The punch lands against Garrett’s mouth with a sound I will remember for the rest of my life.
Garrett staggers into the edge of the desk.
Blood appears at the corner of his lip, red against the composure he has worn like a second suit for all the years I trusted him.
Sloane stands over him shaking, fists clenched, breath coming in brutal pulls.
I get between them before he can swing again, both hands on Sloane’s chest, my own rage fighting me so hard that stopping him feels like tearing muscle from bone.
“Enough,” I say, and the word comes out rougher than I intend. Sloane’s eyes snap to mine, wet and wild, and I force my purr back into my throat because Theo is behind us and Garrett is bleeding and this room is turning into the exact shape he wanted. “Sloane. Look at Theo.”
That reaches him. Not fully. Enough.
Sloane turns his head. Theo stands just inside the doorway with Callie’s sweater clutched to his chest, tears spilling silently down his face.
He's staring at Garrett’s blood, then at Sloane’s hand, then at me, and the purr that crawls out of him is frightened and thin.
Sloane’s fury collapses inward so fast it nearly takes him to his knees.
“Star,” he says, wrecked. He backs away from Garrett with both hands open. “I’m sorry. Fuck, Theo, I’m sorry.”
Theo shakes his head. It means too much. He looks at Garrett, and his voice comes out soft enough that the room has to hold still to hear it. “You used my name.”
Garrett presses a folded handkerchief to his mouth. His eyes settle on Theo with a tenderness that makes my skin crawl. “You were in no condition to understand what you needed.”
Theo flinches as if struck. Sloane’s whole body jerks toward violence again, and I put one hand against his chest, keeping him with us by touch because words are starting to fail.
My own hands are shaking now. There is blood on Garrett’s handkerchief.
There are tears on my face. Callie is still gone.
“You don’t get near him again,” I say.
Garrett’s eyes lift to mine. The softness drains from him so cleanly that I understand, too late, how much of the man I knew was built for our benefit. “Careful,” he says. “I’d hate for you to lose everything.”
Sloane’s growl rips through the study. Theo’s purr cuts off, and he presses closer to Sloane’s back. I hold Garrett’s gaze while every instinct in me begs for teeth, for blood, for the brief animal simplicity of making him hurt where I can see it.
“What exactly are you threatening?” I ask.
Garrett dabs at his split lip, then lowers the handkerchief.
“If you try to remove Theo from this house tonight, it will be documented as an Alpha extraction from a monitored placement during medical recovery.
If Sloane assaults me again, I will include that too.
If you interfere with the Bellwether review while he's this unstable, the language won't favor any of you.”
I hear Zana’s warning in every sentence as Sloane’s hand finds Theo’s without looking. Theo grips him immediately, fingers locking around Sloane’s like a lifeline. That small motion saves Garrett’s life more effectively than any law he has ever practiced.
“You think paperwork makes you head Alpha,” I say, and my voice comes back colder than I feel.
The tears are still there, but they have become something else on my skin.
“You think structure is the same thing as loyalty because you have never understood the difference between being obeyed and being chosen.”
Garrett’s jaw tightens slightly.
I step back from him and take Sloane with me.
He resists for a breath, then lets me move him because Theo is attached to his hand and following would drag our Omega farther into the room.
The study suddenly looks smaller than it ever has, Garrett behind his desk with blood on his mouth, the bookshelves orderly, the lamp warm, the whole scene dressed as civilization around the violence he invited and planned to use.
“We are calling Zana,” I tell him. “Every word you say to Theo goes through counsel or a medical witness from now on. Every placement conversation. Every household restriction. Every filing. You wanted procedure, Garrett. You can have it.”
“You are making a mistake,” he says.
“No.” I look at his bleeding mouth and feel no satisfaction. I only feel the space where Callie should be, the bite I never gave her, the porch camera full of static, and Theo’s written sentence folded against my heart like a prayer I haven't earned. “I already made it.”
I turn before he can answer, because staying in that room will cost me something Theo can't afford to see. Sloane moves with me, one arm going around Theo the moment we clear the threshold. Our Omega folds into him, shaking hard enough that the sweater slips from one hand. I catch it before it hits the floor and press it back into Theo’s grip, waiting until his fingers close around Callie’s scent again.
In the hall, Sloane looks at my face. He reaches up with the hand that struck Garrett and touches the wetness on my cheek with the back of one knuckle, gentle enough that it undoes me more than the study did. “Idris,” he says, and there are too many apologies in my name.
I close my hand around his wrist and hold him there for one breath. “We call Zana. We protect Theo. We get the footage back if Kade’s person can get it back. Then we find her with enough ground beneath us that Garrett can’t turn the search into another weapon.”
Sloane lowers his forehead to Theo’s hair and breathes until the worst of his scent settles from scorched to smoke. Theo looks between us, his face pale and tear-streaked. “Callie didn’t know,” he whispers.
“No,” I say, and my voice nearly breaks again. I touch his cheek with two fingers, careful, waiting for him to lean before I give the contact weight. “She didn’t know.”
Sloane’s eyes close. His hand tightens around Theo’s, and the three of us stand in the hall outside the study while Garrett moves inside it, chair creaking, drawer opening, phone lifting from wood.
I take out my phone and call Zana before I do anything else with my hands. The report number is still in my messages. The footage is already with Kade. Garrett has blood on his mouth, and Callie is still somewhere beyond us, carrying a lie with our names on it.
When Zana answers, I look down at Theo’s page in my other hand, the torn paper folded around the only truth this house has managed to keep.
“Tell me exactly what happened,” Zana says.