Page 96 of What We Don't Say: Part Two

I pause.

Every hand stills with me.

“Is this okay?” I ask, looking between them. The question feels small compared with the weight of four bodies arranged around mine, four claims and histories pressing close without anyone trying to push the others away.

Theo lifts his head from my knee. His eyes are bright, and the warmth in his scent has begun to sweeten again. “If it isn’t, the Alphas can fight about it later. This is about you.”

A little laughter moves through the room.

Sloane’s hand stays firm at my hip. Dash’s mouth returns to my shoulder. Theo curls closer with his fingers wrapped around my wrist, watching the lights. Idris tips my face toward his, his thumb tracing my jaw.

“You don’t need to want less to make this easier for us, princess,” he says.

Then he kisses me.

Sloane kisses the other side of my neck. Dash’s hand slides down my back. Theo presses his mouth to the inside of my wrist beside the bracelet, and I let myself feel every point of contact without trying to measure whether anyone is receiving an equal share.

I stay in Idris' lap with Theo tucked against one side of me and Sloane close on the other. Dash remains behind the chair, his hand moving through my hair while the bracelet rests warm against my wrist.

“Can we do something together?” I ask. “Something ordinary.”

Dash’s fingers pause, then continue their slow path through my hair. “I have a few movies we could watch.”

Theo immediately sits up straighter and begins pulling at my hand, already determined to relocate the entire room.

Calliope

I wake reaching across an empty side of the bed. The room is dark enough that the furniture has lost its edges, and a thin strip of hallway light reaches beneath the door, cutting across the floor without touching the bed.

Theo is curled against my side with one knee between mine and his face near my shoulder. His breathing is slow, his skin warmer than usual where his arm lies across my waist, and the temporary bite at his shoulder carries the faintest trace of Idris beneath the sweetness of his scent.

The rest of the bed is empty, and my hand begins searching before I am fully awake. I reach across the sheets behind Theo and find cooling fabric where Idris had been, then sweep my palm toward the other side and touch the edge of a blanket folded back where Sloane left it. Dash’s pillow remains near the foot of the bed because he climbed in last and settled wherever there was room, but his body is gone too.

I know I am in Dash’s house. The bedroom door is open, the hallway light is on, and Theo is breathing against me with his hand tangled in my shirt. None of those facts stop the cold that spreads beneath my ribs.

For one fractured moment, I am back in the old house after Theo’s first heat. The air is wrong, the door will not open, and my phone is full of words that sound like people I love deciding I no longer belong with them. Everyone has made a choice while I was somewhere else, and I have woken after the leaving is already complete.

My fingers close around the bracelet at my wrist. Four pale sections circle the dark metal, each one quiet in the darkness until Idris' begins to glow, steady and soft against my skin. Dash’s follows a moment later, and the sight tells me they are thinking of me even though it can't tell me where they are.

Theo’s section remains dark because his pendant is somewhere beneath the blankets. I can feel the chain shift lightly against his chest when he breathes, and I slide my hand into his hair as if touching him will keep the room attached to itself.

Sloane’s section stays dark.

I stare at it while my mind offers ordinary possibilities. He could be downstairs getting water, in the bathroom, or in the office with Idris because neither of them knows how to leave a security update alone once it reaches their hands. My body ignores every explanation and hears only the absence beside me.

I touch the moonstone at my throat and force myself to breathe. The pendant gives a faint vibration against my skin, reminding me that no Alpha command is pressing into my thoughts and Garrett is nowhere in the room.

Theo stirs when I push myself upright. His arm tightens around my waist, and he makes a quiet sound before settling again with his cheek against my thigh. I keep one hand in his hair while the other returns to the bracelet, watching the dark section that belongs to Sloane.

His light comes on so suddenly that my breath catches. It stays bright for several seconds, fades, then returns as though he has pressed his thumb to the paired band twice to make sure I see it.

The bond shifts beneath my ribs at the same time. It has remained faint since we found each other, damaged by silence and three months of believing the worst, but now it pulls with enough force that I know he has felt something change in me. No words cross the connection, only a sharp flare of alarm followed by Sloane reaching toward me with everything he has.

Footsteps move quickly through the hallway, and Sloane appears in the doorway wearing soft pants and the shirt he fell asleep in. His hair is disordered, his phone is still in one hand, and he stops as soon as he sees me sitting upright with Theo across my lap and my fingers wrapped around the bracelet.

“Callie,” he says, his voice low and roughened by sleep as he places the phone on the dresser. He remains near the doorway instead of crossing the room and asks, “Can I sit with you?”

I nod because my throat feels too tight for speech, and Sloane approaches slowly before lowering himself onto the edge of the mattress. He leaves a careful space between us until I reach for his hand, and when his fingers close around mine, he loosens them enough that I can decide how firmly I want him to hold on.