“Come on.” I jerk my head toward the only door, following Cliff and Perrin into the bedroom.
Elowen is sitting in front of the only piece of furniture in the place. It’s an enormous dark wood thing, completely out of proportion with the small room. She pulls open the bottom drawer and my eyes go wide.
The thing isfilledwith medication.
Rows of orange and white pharmacy bottles, labels all facing the same way. I see cooling packs, syringes, and scent patches arranged by dosage. In the back, there are two brands of scent-neutralizing spray, one nearly empty. One I recognize, but the other must be prescription grade because I've never seen the label before.
I look up and find Cliff standing in the middle of the room, arms crossed, watching Elowen pack a large duffle bag. The pack alpha is very still in the way he gets when he's trying very hard not to say something out loud.
His eyes move over her slowly, tracking every bottle she pulls out, every careful stack she makes.
Then his gaze shifts.
It slides past me, over my shoulder, and his brows lift.
I turn around, and I see the saddest bed that's ever existed.
It's a cot mattress on the floor. Three inches thick at most, the foam so compressed it's barely there, the worn fabric stained at one corner. Two blankets on top. One so threadbare I can see light through it. The other lumpy, thestuffing inside shifted into hard little knots from years of washing.
And there's not a single pillow.
Just looking at it makes my joints hurt.
The pity hits me so fast and so hard I have to look away.
"I forgot the boxes in the car." Raff's voice comes from behind me. "Perrin, you want to grab them with me?"
"Yeah." My brother’s already moving. "Sure."
Their voices drop to something low and private as they move through the living room. I can hear the murmur of it but can't make out the words. The front door opens and closes.
And then it's the three of us.
Cliff hasn't moved from the middle of the room. Elowen is bent over the duffel, rearranging the medication bottles, her hands moving with focused precision. But I can see the flush that's crept up the back of her neck, visible even above the collar of her shirt.
She stares into the bag.
"It looks sad, doesn't it," she says to no one in particular. Her voice is light, almost breezy, and she lets out a small laugh that doesn't quite land. "I mean, I know it looks sad." Her laugh dies in the quiet room.
I can practicallyfeelthe discomfort pouring off her.
It lands somewhere in my sternum and stays there, a dull, pressing weight that sends a restless energy through my hands that has nowhere to go.
I've always been like this.
Other people's unease gets under my skin like a splinter and sits there, impossible to ignore, until I do something about it.
"Minimalism is very on trend," I say, desperately needing to cut the tension. “In fact, I read a whole article onhow celebrities spend thousands on decorators to get this exact vibe.” I smile, hoping the joke lands.
Elowen laughs. It's soft and a little surprised, like she wasn't expecting it, and her whole face opens up with it. The embarrassment doesn't vanish completely, but it loses its grip on her, and when she looks at me, there's something in her eyes that tells me she’s thankful.
“So.” I cross to the dresser before I've fully decided to, and pull open the top drawer. "What goes with us?" I ask. “Is there anything you want to purge?”
“Um, yeah. I don’t know.” She lets out another nervous laugh as she stands. “I guess everything comes with us.”
We work through the drawers together. There isn't much. Two drawers worth, maybe three. She hands things to me and I fold them properly and stack them in the single box Raff and Perrin brought back from the car.
We don't talk about the nest on the floor, the broken lamp in the living room, or the barstool in the kitchen.
