10. Theo
Theo
Garrett's still in the house which is the first thing my body understands, even before I understand the papers on the table or Dr. Mercer’s bag beside the sofa or Zana standing near the library door with her coat still on.
Garrett isn't in the room, but he's upstairs, or in the study, or somewhere behind a closed door with his split mouth and his careful hands and the kind of patience that feels like a knife laid flat against skin.
I can feel him in the floorboards. I can smell the cold mint and polished leather he left in the hall. Every time the house settles, my body tries to decide if the sound is him coming back.
I'm pressed between Sloane and Idris on the library sofa, wrapped in Callie’s sweater and Sloane’s hoodie, with my knees drawn close and one hand locked around the torn notebook page in my lap.
Callie, you didn’t leave me. The words are still there, crooked and too dark where the pen ripped through the paper.
I keep touching them with my thumb, like they might vanish if I stop reminding them they're true.
Sloane sits on my left with his body angled toward the door.
His hand rests over my shin beneath the blanket, heavy enough to tell me he's there, loose enough that I can move if I need to.
Idris sits on my right, bandaged hand resting on his thigh where I can see it.
He has not hidden the cut since the glass broke.
Every time I look at the white wrap across his palm, he lets me look, and that helps more than if he pretended his control had never cracked.
Zana finishes reading the copy of Dr. Mercer’s note, then sets it on top of the Bellwether folder with too much care. Careful things make me nervous now. Everything Garrett did was careful. Every sentence he used had smooth edges until I was bleeding from it.
“He still has leverage,” Zana says. Her voice is quiet, but no one mistakes that for comfort.
“Garrett is the head Alpha of record. He's tied to the original Bellwether placement documents, and because Theo’s heat recovery is still medically active, he can argue that his standing gives him a right to participate in placement decisions.”
Sloane’s hand tightens on my shin for one breath before he catches himself. “He doesn’t get rights over Theo after what he did.”
“I agree,” Zana says, and she doesn't flinch from the violence under Sloane’s words.
“But agreement isn't enough. Dr. Mercer can document that Theo is reactive to Garrett and doesn't consent to care from him. I can document the threats, the police report concerns, the rerouted phone evidence as far as you legally have it, and the coercive language. All of that matters. But Garrett’s cleanest argument is still structural.
He will say he's the head Alpha attached to the placement, and everyone else is reacting out of distress.”
The word structural makes my stomach turn.
I hate how much of my life can fit inside words that don't sound like skin.
Placement. Standing. Recovery. Consent. Heat-space.
They keep saying me, but not saying me. They keep building sentences around my body while trying so hard not to make me feel used that I almost want to apologize for being difficult to protect.
Dr. Mercer pulls the chair closer but stays far enough away that I don't feel surrounded. She has changed out of the jacket she wore earlier, and her sleeves are rolled to her elbows, practical and tired. “There is another option,” she says, looking at me instead of over me. “Only if you want it. No one in this room is going to ask you to do it because it’s convenient.”
Idris goes still beside me, and Sloane’s scent changes so sharply I feel it in my teeth. Smoked cedar and brown sugar, burnt at the edges, grief and refusal tangled together so tightly that my purr tries to start before I can stop it.
“A witnessed Alpha bite,” Zana says. “Temporary. Not a permanent mating bond. Without a sexual claim and full biological lock, it will fade. But while it holds, it gives Idris biological standing as one of your Alphas. That puts him above Garrett’s abstract head-Alpha authority in a placement argument because your body will have accepted Idris directly. ”
My hand closes around the notebook page.
The paper crumples under my fingers, and Sloane’s hand moves like he wants to save it, then stops before touching me without permission.
I look at Idris because I can’t look at Zana.
Idris is watching me, not the folder, not the doctor, not the legal path out of the room.
Me. His face is stripped down to something quieter than control.
“It won’t be permanent?” I ask, and my voice sounds very small inside the library.
“No,” Dr. Mercer says gently. “A temporary anchor bite can last long enough to be documented, long enough to give your body another point of Alpha recognition, but it will fade unless you choose to reinforce it later.
A permanent bond requires a different biological context.
Sex, full consent, the body accepting the claim all the way down. This isn't that.”
Heat moves through my face at the word sex, quick and embarrassing, and I look down at Callie’s sweater so no one sees how my body answers even while fear sits in my throat.
Sloane’s hand flexes once beneath the blanket, and Idris lowers his eyes for a moment like he's giving me privacy inside a room where privacy is impossible.
Zana’s pen rests against the folder. “The document would say you accepted the bite willingly. It would say you were not under Alpha command, not coerced, and not medically impaired beyond the ability to consent. Dr. Mercer would witness from a medical standpoint. I would witness legally. It would also state that the bite is temporary and reviewable.”
“Reviewable,” I repeat, because that word feels better than trapped.
“Yes,” Zana says. “You can ask for review later. You can decide later whether you want it reinforced, replaced, deepened, or left to fade.”
My fingers loosen on the notebook page. I think of Garrett standing over me with tea I didn't ask for, telling me my fear was confusion.
I think of his phone in my hand, my name on messages that hurt Callie.
I think of him using my heat, my wanting, my crash, my body as the proof that Callie didn't belong and he did. I’m tired of letting him be the only person whose words become records.
“Why Idris?” I ask, looking at Sloane before I can stop myself.
Sloane’s face changes like the question has gone straight through him. He looks down at my leg under his hand, then at my face, and the honesty in him comes up raw enough to scare me. “Because I can’t give you the bond clean right now, sweetheart. Not while Callie’s gone.”
My chest hurts around her name.
Sloane swallows hard and keeps going, even though every word looks like it costs him.
“If I bite you tonight, you won’t just feel me.
You’ll feel the place where she should be.
I don’t know how to keep that out of the bond.
I don’t know how to give you only safety when my body is one big wound where she used to be.
I won’t put that in you because I’m scared. ”
“You’re still mine,” I whisper, and I didn’t know I needed him to hear it until the words were already out.
Sloane breaks a little. It happens quietly, in the tremble around his mouth and the way his hand turns palm-up on my leg. “Yeah,” he says, voice rough. “I’m still yours. I don’t need to prove that tonight if proving it hurts you.”
I look at his bandaged hand. “Why didn’t you bite Callie?”
The room becomes so quiet that I hear Dr. Mercer’s pen click softly against her clipboard.
Sloane’s hand leaves my shin, then comes back, not gripping, only there.
Idris doesn't answer right away. All the careful language drains out of him, and for a second, he looks more frightened than I have ever seen him.
“I don’t fucking know,” he says.
Zana’s eyes lower to the folder, giving him the only privacy she can. Dr. Mercer looks away too. Sloane does not. He watches Idris like he's ready to catch him if the answer opens too much.
Idris presses his good hand over his mouth, then drops it.
“I’m not sure what I was waiting for. She was ready.
I know she was.” His voice roughens until the words barely hold shape.
“I think I told myself there would be a better moment. After you settled. After Garrett stopped making every room feel like strategy. After we had proof, or quiet, or time. I thought restraint was care because I didn’t want to push her into a bond while the house was shifting around her. ”
His throat works. The rain in his scent turns sharp and bitter, but he keeps it pulled close, contained where it can't crash over me.
“She was ready,” he says again, softer, and this time the words sound like punishment. “I knew she was. I just kept waiting for a version of this house where loving her didn’t have to be negotiated around Garrett’s rules. I was wrong.”
Sloane makes a small sound beside me, wounded and furious, not at Idris exactly. At time. At all the doors they left open for Garrett to close.
Idris looks at me then. His eyes are red, but his voice steadies because he's speaking to me now, and that matters to him. “I’m not waiting when we find her. If she’ll let me, I’m not waiting again.”
I press Callie’s sweater to my mouth. The wool smells faintly like honeyed pear and vanilla tea, almost gone and still enough to hurt. “She’ll let you,” I whisper, though I don't know if I’m saying what I believe or what I need to be true.
Idris closes his eyes for one breath, then opens them. “I hope so.”
Zana waits a few seconds before she moves. I like that she doesn't rush to turn the pain back into procedure. When she does speak, her voice is quieter than before. “Theo, I need to ask you directly. Do you want Idris to give you a temporary witnessed bite?”