"Like you remembered you have color."
I blink.
"Oh."
He reaches out, fingers hovering near my arm, waiting for permission.
I close the distance.
His hand lands warm and sure around my wrist. "You smell different. Lighter."
"Cardamom. And not being the worst thing in the room."
"You were never—"
"I know. Even if it doesn't feel like that all the time."
He squeezes my wrist. "Come on. Tell me everything. I want to hear about Finn's emotional support coffee machine."
We walk down the hall together, shoulders brushing.
For the first time since the punishment, the house feels slightly less like a cage.
I still don't go near Ragon if I can help it. Drake still smells more like Marie than himself. The ban might be lifted on paper, but some of the damage is still very much there.
But Eli is back in my nest.
The neighbors' kitchen feels like a place I'm welcome.
And for a few hours today, my omega instincts were allowed to be exactly what they're supposed to be: soft, generous, full of sugar and wanting to feed people—without being punished for it.
Chapter 14
The new (natural, not on paper) sleep schedule doesn't have a pattern so much as a constant: Marie's nest is never empty.
My body keeps track even when my brain pretends it doesn't.
I wake up with Eli's chest at my back, his arm banded around my waist, his scent soaked into my pillow. That part is new, and good, and my omega instincts cling to it like it's their last chance. But even with him wrapped around me, some reflex in my head runs a roll call every night.
Marie's room: occupied. Always. Drake: almost always with her. Ragon: there about every other night, whether Drake is there or not. Jasper: ghosting around his own space. Me: Eli. Only Eli.
You'd think that would be enough.
Sometimes it almost is.
Eli's weight in my nest, the way he tucks his chin on top of my head, the low hum in his chest when I press my cold feet between his calves—all of it saysmineandsafein ways my nerves are still relearning.
But underneath, another part of me—older, bruised and twitchy—keeps a quiet tally of who is choosing where, and how often.
I try to ignore it.
It's easier when I'm busy.
So I'm in the kitchen in the late afternoon, doing what I do best: chopping and stirring and pretending cooking is a love language that everyone is still speaking.
The pot on the stove is full of simmering stew, steam fogging the window. Bread dough rests in a bowl on the counter, a tea towel over it like a little blanket. The oven preheats. My hands move on autopilot—carrot, onion, celery, precise cuts—and the rhythm calms the part of my brain that's always waiting for something to go wrong.
Voices filter down the hallway.
