The bond tells me. It's been telling me all day—a low tightening in my chest like a fist closing around something fragile, the thread that points northwest going taut in a way I haven't felt before. I've been ignoring it. Chalking it up to distance, to the fact that he's been gone nearly two weeks and my body has started keeping count without my permission.
But when the front door opens at ten past seven on a Tuesday evening and Atlas steps into the foyer still in his travel suit,I know.
He doesn't look at me.
He looks at Zero first. Then Bane. A glance that lasts less than a second and carries the weight of something I'm not supposed to understand yet.
"Upstairs," he says. "Now."
Not to me. To them.
The three of them move toward the stairs and I stand in the kitchen doorway with a glass of water in my hand and the bond screaming in my chest and no one has said hello.
No one has said hello.
Margot and Richard are in Connecticut for the week—some anniversary trip Richard planned as a surprise. The house has been ours for two days. Bane and I made pasta last night while Zero fell asleep on the couch watching something he'd never admit to watching. I wrote in my notebook for about an hour–a complete brain dump that I’ll probably never go back and reread. But once I was done with that, the words were flowing so well I actually picked up my latest work-in-progress and added four new pages to it.
But the three of us knew we were just killing time, waiting until our fourth member came home. Things feltoffwithout Atlas and I could barely contain my excitement to see him again.
Except, not like this…
Now they’re upstairs in Atlas’ office and I feel like an idiot down here.
I wasn't invited.
I set the glass down on the counter and stand there with my hands braced on the marble and try not to let it sting. He's been gone thirteen days. Thirteen days of the bond pulling northwest like a compass needle, thirteen days of sleeping in beds that smelled less like him every morning, thirteen days of pretending I wasn't counting—and he walked through the door and looked at his brothers first.
Not me.
Them.
Upstairs. Now. Like I wasn’t standing right there. Like I'm not the one who's been feeling his thread go darker and darker for a week and a half, lying awake at two in the morning with my hand over my sternum trying to press the ache out of it.
I'm being unfair. IknowI'm being unfair. Whatever happened on this trip is family business—Graves business—and I'mnota Graves. I'm the omega who sleeps in their beds and eats at their table and loves them in the spaces between the partsof their lives I'm not allowed to see. There are rooms in this house I don't get to enter. I know that.
I should give them space.
I should give them privacy.
I should be the version of Max who understands that Atlas runs an empire and sometimes empires need closed doors and I am not owed every single one of his minutes just because the bond in my chest saysmine, mine, minewhen he walks into a room.
I wash my glass. I wipe the counter. I open the fridge and close it without taking anything out. I lean against the island and count the threads in my chest: Atlas, tight and dark. Bane, worried. Zero, sharp and still.
I should wait.
I make it eleven minutes.
Then I think—no.
No. Fuck that.
Fuck privacy and fuck distance and fuck the version of me who stands in kitchens waiting to be summoned. I am not a guest in this relationship. I am not a footnote to whatever's happening behind that door. If something is wrong—if something is wrong enough to make Atlas's bond go dark for days and make him walk past me without a word—then it's wrong for me too. It's wrong forus. And I'm done standing in rooms I wasn't told to leave, pretending I don't belong in the ones I wasn't told to enter.
Twelve minutes.
I go upstairs.
The door to Atlas's office is shut. I can hear the low murmur of voices through it—Bane's, mostly. A question. Atlas answering in the clipped tone he uses when he's delivering information and not opinions. Zero silent, which means Zero is probably furious.
