“She will be,” Jack states, with confidence that is occasionally annoying and more often correct.
Archer is quiet. I look at him, because Archer’s silences need reading as carefully as other people’s words. “She should be ours,” he says, finally. “I know what I said. What I’ve been saying. But she’s—” He works through it. “She holds her ground. She doesn’t submit, she doesn’t pretend, she doesn’t censor herself around us the way other Omegas do. She just…” He looks up. “She justis.”
“That’s what I said,” Jack replies.
“I know what you said.” Archer looks at me. “I still think she’s carrying something that’s got real consequences. I still think we need to know what it is.” He pauses. “I’m saying it should be us dealing with it. When it comes.”
“It should be the pack,” Tristan agrees. “She doesn’t have one, but she has us.”
“Whether she knows it yet or not,” Jack says.
I look at all of them. The bond is running clean, not unanimous excitement, not uncomplicated agreement, but the frequency of four people who have looked at the same thing from their different positions and landed at the same place.
“She needs to choose it,” I state. “She has to come to it herself. We don’t push her there.”
Archer nods. Once, tight. The nod that means I see your position and I’ll hold it.
“Agreed,” Tristan says.
Jack opens his mouth but nothing comes out. Which isn’t like him.
“Jack?” I prompt.
“I wasn’t going to—”
“Whatever you were going to say, scale it back.”
He closes his mouth, then opens it again. “I was going to say I agree. Which I do.”
“Then we’re in agreement.”
Whatever’s following her will catch up with her eventually. We need to be in a good position by then so she lets us help her. If not, she’ll justrun again. And we won’t have any chance of finding her again, even with the partial bond she shares with Jack.
Lola comes back at eleven a.m., changed, carrying Tristan’s empty travel cup which she washed before returning. She hands it to him without comment. He takes it without comment.
I stand at the window and watch her settle back into the pack. The line I’ve held for seven years between what I feel and how I act is requiring more effort than it’s ever required before. I would love to go to her right now and kiss her. But that would be a very bad decision.
She senses me watching. She always does, and I’ve stopped being able to tell whether that’s pack instinct reaching her or just her. She looks over. I hold her gaze. I don’t look away, don’t manufacture a reason to redirect, don’t play casualness.
She looks away first. She always does, and I’ve stopped interpreting it as retreat. I’ve started interpreting it as punctuation.
I move through the afternoon with discipline. My wanting has to be secondary to what she needs, which is space and time and safety. I will show her that we can give her that without thinking about how much I want to kiss every part of her.
At two o’clock she needs the supply ledger for the stall and I have it nearby. I take it to her and hand it over. My fingers overlap hers on the edge of it and I don’t rush it.
Two seconds. Three.
She looks at the ledger.
I look at her profile.
She takes the ledger.
I go back to what I was doing.
One by one, we head back to the carnival to prepare for tonight.
At four, Jack does something catastrophic to the game alley prize display and she’s the first one trying to fix it. When I pass behind her and the space is tight, I put my hand briefly to the small of her back, guiding, and feel the whole length of her go briefly still.
