21. Sloane
Sloane
The call connects, and for three seconds, nothing in me works.
Three months of silence. Three months of the bond in my chest feeling like a cauterized wound.
Three months of calling dead numbers, chasing paper ghosts, sleeping with my hand pressed to the place in my ribs where Callie used to answer me.
Now her number is live against my ear because Zana got it through the university’s counsel-facing channel after the restriction was stayed, and I dialed before my hands were steady enough to hold the phone right.
“Callie?” I breathe, and her name comes out broken. A prayer, a sob, a desperate hope shoved into two syllables. “Callie, baby, please—”
“Don’t call her that.”
The voice isn’t hers. It’s a man’s voice, low and controlled, vibrating with a protective edge I could recognize in my sleep. I haven’t heard it in years, but the cadence is unmistakable. It’s the sound of a childhood I tried to outrun and a brother I let become a stranger.
Dash.
My brother is on the other end of my mate’s phone, and the world inverts so violently I grab the edge of the hall table to stay upright.
“Dash?” His name scrapes out of me. “Why do you have her phone? Where is she? Dash, if you’ve touched her, I’ll—”
“You’ll what, Sloane?” Dash cuts through me, cold enough to quiet every violent thing in my throat.
“Tell me why my new faculty hire has spent months looking like your name might kill her? Tell me why she goes white when her phone rings? Tell me why the woman sleeping in my house called you her ex with your bond still sitting in her shoulder?”
“No.” The word tears out of me too fast, too jagged to be useful.
My knees hit the hallway floor before I know I’m falling, one hand still locked around the phone as Idris reaches me in the next breath.
“No, Dash, that’s not what happened. She didn’t leave me.
I didn’t leave her. I don’t know what she told you, but I’ve been looking for her every second since the bond went dark.
I haven’t slept. I haven’t eaten. I haven’t—”
“It doesn’t matter what happened yet,” Dash says, and the coldness in his voice does more damage than rage would have.
“Not for this call. Not for the woman asleep in the next room who has spent three months believing whatever happened was real. I’ve watched her fall apart over your name, Sloane.
I’ve watched her lock herself down so hard she could barely breathe because a phone lit up.
I’ve watched her touch that bite on her shoulder like she didn’t know whether it was proof she’d been loved or proof she’d been stupid. ”
My mouth opens. Nothing comes out. Idris' hand settles on the back of my neck, heavy and grounding, but even his touch can’t make sense of the fact that Callie has been close enough for my brother to know how she looks when she breaks.
“Right now, the truth isn't the first thing she needs from you,” Dash says. His voice drops lower, not softer. “She needs you to understand that whatever you know, whatever proof you have, she doesn’t have it yet. She believes you hurt her. She believes going back to you means being hurt again. I don’t know the whole story, and frankly, I don’t give a damn about your side until I know hearing it won’t put her back on my kitchen floor. ”
A sound comes out of me that doesn’t feel human. Idris lowers with me, one knee hitting the floor beside mine, his phone already in his hand and his eyes gone black with focus.
Garrett. The voice-splicing, the forged documents, the rerouted calls, the silence with teeth. All of it sits behind my ribs at once, too big to explain through a phone while my brother stands between me and the woman I failed to find.
“It was Garrett,” I manage, but even that sounds too small for what he did.
“Dash, listen to me. Whatever she thinks I did, Garrett built it. He faked things. Calls. Papers. Messages. I don’t know which pieces she saw, but I know I never stopped wanting her home.
I thought she left because she hated us.
I thought she shut the bond because I failed her so badly she couldn’t stand to feel me anymore. ”
Dash is silent for long enough that I can hear his breathing, steady and controlled.
That steadiness nearly kills me. He has seen her.
He has held the version of Callie I could not reach.
To him, I am not the brother who shared a bedroom or blood or old family wounds.
I am the Alpha whose name taught her to flinch.
“She’s safe,” he says finally. “She’s with me. She’s asleep right now, and I’m not waking her up so the voice that gutted her can ask for comfort before she knows what’s real.”
Asleep.
Callie is asleep somewhere my brother can see her, somewhere he knows how to keep his voice low and the lights soft and the phone away from her hands.
Relief hits first, brutal and bright enough to hollow me out.
Then the pain follows. She has been sleeping within reach of another Alpha because my name became something she had to endure.
“And she's staying with me until I’m convinced you aren’t going to finish the job Garrett started,” Dash continues.
“No Garrett. No games. You don’t come to my door with Alpha command in your throat, and you don’t take one step toward her unless she allows it.
If the rest of your pack is with you, they wait until she knows they’re there. ”
“I’m coming,” I say, already trying to stand and failing because my legs don't remember their purpose. Idris grips my elbow and hauls me up, his control doing what my body cannot. “Dash, please. Tell her I love her. Please. Tell her I never stopped. Tell her I’m coming and I won’t touch her unless she lets me.
Tell her I’ll stay outside. Tell her anything, just—”
“I’m not giving her your words while she’s asleep,” Dash says. “You can say them to her yourself if she chooses to hear them.”
The line goes dead before I can beg again.
For one second, the house has no sound. Then everything crashes back in at once: Idris' breath beside me, my own pulse roaring in my ears, the distant hum of whatever security monitor Kade left running in the study, the empty air where Callie’s scent should be.
I stare at the dark screen in my hand until Idris takes the phone from me before I can crush it.
“He has her,” I whisper. The words are too big for my mouth. “Dash has her. She’s alive. She’s with my brother.”
Idris is already moving. He does not ask whether I am sure. He heard enough, and everything in him has gone quiet in the way that means danger has become a plan. He grabs his coat from the hook, keys from the bowl, and his phone from the hall table as he turns toward the stairs.
“Kade,” Idris says into the phone, voice low and clipped. “Zana got the number through counsel. Dash answered. She’s with him.”
Kade’s answer comes through sharp and awake, like he has been standing on the edge of this moment for weeks.
“Zana sent the address from the counsel-facing channel. I’m cross-checking the property and road access now, but I am not turning this into a raid.
You go careful. You go clean. You don't give anyone a reason to say two Alphas descended on a protected Beta.”
“Garrett?” I ask, and his name comes out with enough violence that Idris' hand closes around my wrist in warning.
“He was last confirmed at his office,” Kade says. “My team is watching the exits we can legally watch, and Zana is already moving to keep him tied up with filings. That is the best I can give you. Do not make me regret sending you before every door is locked.”
Theo appears at the top of the stairs before anyone calls him.
He's small in my hoodie, hair mussed from the nest, one of Callie’s old gray sweaters clutched so tightly to his chest that his knuckles are pale.
He does not need an explanation. He can smell the change in the air, hope spiking through the grief and Alpha intent so sharply it almost hurts to breathe.
“Callie?” he asks, and her name is barely sound.
“We found her, baby,” I say, and my voice breaks so badly Idris' hand tightens on me again. “She’s with my brother, Dash. She’s safe.”
Theo comes down the stairs too fast, stumbling on the last step.
Idris catches him before I can, one arm locking around his back while Theo makes a cracked, desperate noise into Callie’s sweater.
The scent of him shifts hard, cardamom sharp and peach blossom crushed thin by grief, and I have to close my eyes because Garrett used this boy’s fear as a blade against the woman who loved him.
“I want to go,” Theo says. His voice shakes, but it holds. “Please. I need to go.”
“You’re coming,” Idris tells him, and there is no command in it. Only a promise he has already decided how to keep. “You stay with us. Garrett doesn’t get within breathing distance of this.”
I move because if I stop moving, I will fold.
Shoes. Coat. Keys Idris takes from my hand and gives back after looking me in the eyes long enough to make sure I can see him.
Theo gets bundled into the back seat with Callie’s sweater pressed under his chin, and Idris takes the passenger seat because he knows I need the wheel or I will tear through my own skin.
The drive begins in rain and for the first few miles, I don't remember us turning out of the driveway.
I don't remember the gate opening or the road catching beneath the tires.
All I know is the address on the dash screen, the sound of Theo breathing too quickly in the back, and Idris beside me, still enough that his restraint becomes the only thing keeping mine from snapping.
“She’s going to be scared,” Idris says after a long stretch of road. His gaze stays fixed ahead, but his voice is pitched for my bones. “She has had three months to build a fortress around herself. Do not expect her to fall into your arms, Sloane. We earn our way back in. Every inch.”