"...not happening," Ragon snarls from the living room. "No alpha is getting near my omega unsupervised, I don't care what letters he has after his name—"
"That's the point, Ragon," Eli fires back, voice ragged. "He's a specialist. He has letters. Training. Tools we apparently don't. I'm a fucking medic and even I'm clueless."
I pad down the hall in my socks, instinctively light on my feet. They're so loud they don't hear me.
The living room is a battlefield.
Ragon stands in front of the TV, shirt rumpled, hair a mess. Eli's pacing like a caged thing, shirtless, scrub bottoms hanging low, dark circles carved under his eyes. Jasper is stationed near the bookshelf, arms folded, expression tight.
Marie is curled in Drake's lap, knees drawn up, eyes swollen. She looks like she's been crying for a while. Not the pretty, strategic tears. The ugly ones.
Everyone's scents are a tangled knot. Smoke and citrus and sharp antiseptic and salt. There's almost none of mine in it.
I hover in the doorway, unseen. I could turn around. Go back to my chair.
Instead I lean against the frame and listen.
"I talked to Arden last night," Jasper is saying, voice edged. "After he filed his preliminary report. He's willing to keep working with us. With Vee. He wants to give us actual tools instead of leaving us to flail our way into more damage."
Ragon's lip curls. "He insulted me in my own home and then tried to poach my omega. We are not inviting him back to—"
"For fuck's sake, no one is poaching anyone," Eli snaps. "He was making a point. You shut him down so hard the only way to shock you was to threaten what you value."
"I value my whole pack. Not some outsider's opinion. And I'm not letting another alpha take her into a room aloneand—"
"He wants one-on-one sessions," Jasper cuts in. "Yes. That's literally his job, Ragon. You don't sit in on my therapy, do you?"
"That's different."
"How? Because you don't think of me as vulnerable enough to need guarding?"
Marie lifts her head from Drake's chest, tear-streaked and furious. "Enough. Both of you, just shut up. That man is never coming back into this house. I don't care what he promised you."
Drake's arms tighten around her automatically, thumb rubbing soothing circles on her knee. "Hey, hey. Easy, honey."
Ragon's scent rolls toward her, softening around the edges. "No one's forcing anything on you, sweetheart. We're not letting him in here to make you feel unsafe."
Eli whirls on him so fast I can almost hear his vertebrae pop.
"That," he says, shaking, "is exactly the problem."
Ragon's brows slam together. "What?"
"You hear Marie say she feels unsafe and you go soft. You soothe. You accommodate. Vee begs you to stop and you punish. Marie tells us to shut up and you cradle her. Vee raises her voice and you drag her to her nest and—"
"Don't. Don't rewrite—"
"I'm not rewriting anything. I'm pointing out the pattern. Marie snapped just now. At me. At Jasper. You didn't roar. You didn't ban touch. You didn't order us not to comfort her. You soothed her."
Marie grimaces. Drake goes still.
Ragon opens his mouth. Closes it. For a second he looks more stunned than angry.
"That's not the same," he says, but it sounds weak.
"It is," Jasper says quietly. "The behavior is different, sure. The response is not. Marie lashes out, you see fragility. Vee lashes out—if she even did—and you see threat. One of them gets tucked into your chest. The other gets exiled from her own bed."
"I didn't realize. It's the scent match. The pull. It makes everything feel bigger. Louder. I didn't—"
