"I was talking about myself!" Finn yells back. Then stage-whispers to me, "I wasn't. I absolutely meant them."
"Verena. Vee."
"Vee. Nice to meet you. Your herbs are very sexy."
"Don't sexualize my basil."
He grins. "No promises."
His scent is still mostly nothing—clean and vague and wrong—but his presence feels easy. Curious. Not probing. It does something to my shoulders, makes them want to drop half an inch.
"You did all this?" he asks, gesturing to the garden.
"Yeah. Well. The beds were here. I adopted them."
He crouches down beside the nearest plant without touching it, respectful. "Basil, thyme, calendula... marigolds. Polyculture. Nice."
Suspicion flickers. "You know plants?"
"I know enough to pretend I know plants. My grandmother was big on gardening. She'd make me haul bags of soil and then lecture me about Latin names until I cried."
"Sounds nurturing."
"She also fed me pie. It balanced out."
He eyes the spacing and soil level. "You might want to loosen the dirt around the marigolds. They like room. And if you plant some chives over there, they'll help with pests."
"Youdoknow plants."
He shrugs, sheepish. "Knowing and doing are different. I still manage to kill the plants. But I read things when I'm anxious. Gardening blogs. Cookbooks. Registry law. Whatever's around.”
Registry law sends a tiny shiver down my spine.
"Speaking of anxious—" He hesitates, like he's realized that's not a great segue.
"What?"
He chews his bottom lip. "I was going to make a joke about 'meeting the neighbors,' but it feels weird when I know literally nothing about you except your name and your impressive basil."
"That's all there is. Name, basil, crippling neuroses. The rest is filler."
"Same. Except I also bring coffee."
My nose twitches. "You have a machine?"
"Industrial-grade. Malcolm—tall, broody, only alive because of caffeine—insisted. Alex—taller, bossier, smells like... eh..." He waves a hand, then grimaces. "Actually, never mind. You can't smell us properly right now, can you?"
I blink. "Not really. It's like someone put a filter over you. Registry thing?"
His mouth twists. "Temporary. We're on blockers while we settle in. New neighborhood, new territory, all the 'best practices for avoiding scent-based disasters.'" He air-quotes. "You know how it is."
I do. Unfortunately.
It doesn't stop my instincts from pawing at that weird emptiness, irritated they can't read him properly.
"Alex and Malcolm? Alphas?"
"Yeah. Leader and co-leader. I'm the resident beta gremlin."
