"Cliff has to bring me things."
"Essentially yes."
"Raff has to stop leaving his tools on the kitchen counter."
"That's probably a separate conversation but?—"
"I can ask for things and nobody can say no because I'm a delicate omega." Adam's expression has completed its full journey from horror to something that looks dangerously, suspiciously like satisfaction. "I have a condition."
"You have several," I say.
He points at me again, but this time he's smiling.
Cliff pushes off the wall and crosses to the exam table in two strides. He takes Adam's face in both hands, tilting it up, and looks at him for a long moment with those steady, dark eyes.
"How are you doing?" he asks quietly. Just the two of them, even with all of us in the room.
Adam's humor fades by a degree. Not all the way, not back to the panic and the paper gown dread of a few seconds ago. "I don't know yet," he says honestly.
Cliff nods, his thumbs moving slowly across Adam's cheekbones. "That's okay."
"It doesn't feel okay," Adam says. "It feels like the floor moved, and I haven't figured out where to put my feet yet."
I know exactly how that feels.
"I know, baby." Cliff leans down and presses his lips to Adam's forehead, holding them there. "But the floor is still there. And so are we." He pulls back, looking at him. "All of us."
Adam's throat moves as he swallows. His eyes cut briefly to Raff, who has crossed the room without anyone noticing and stands right beside Cliff, his hand finding theback of Adam's neck with a quiet, certain grip that makes Adam's shoulders drop by about two inches.
Then Adam looks at me.
Not at his mates or his brother. Just at me, with those warm honey-brown eyes that have been through so much in the last week and are still somehow managing to be kind.
"How did you survive this?" he finally asks quietly. "All on your own." Deep sympathy moves through his eyes. “It must have been hell.”
I shrug, keeping my smile easy and light. "I don’t know," I say simply. "I didn’t really have a choice."
Adam looks at me for a long moment.
And I watch realization move across his face. The full weight of it landing, what it actually means to go through what we went through, alone, with no pack, no warm bed, no Cliff's hands and Raff's purr and Perrin's steady presence on the other side of a wall. Just a cot mattress on the floor and a false bottom drawer and three years of chemical suppression and silence.
His expression does something that makes my chest tighten.
"Elle," he says softly.
"I'm okay," I say, and I mean it. "I'm here now." I squeeze his hand. “I have a lovely pack to love and care for me.”
Adam holds my gaze for one more moment, and in it is everything neither of us needs to say out loud. The understanding between two people who went through something nobody else in this room could fully comprehend, no matter how much they loved us.
Then Perrin drops Adam's neatly folded clothes into his lap, breaking the moment cleanly.
"Get dressed," Perrin says. "The car is waiting."
Adam looks down at his clothes, then he lets out anexaggerated sigh. "I probably shouldn't walk," he says a little too dramatically. "Given my condition." He gestures vaguely at himself. "I'm very delicate."
Perrin stares at him for a flat, unhurried second.
"I will carry you," he says, "directly to the back alley and leave you there."
