Jude nodded, offering a soft smile. “I guess we could use a little radical optimism.”
I sucked back every cool drop and refilled the glass again. Nathan appeared at my side, pausing me halfway through the second glass. “You’re going to make yourself sick by chugginglike that. We don’t need you hurling on top of all the other stress you’re going through. Come sit on my lap and take a breath.”
The urge to laugh won out. “We’re the same size. How am I supposed to sit on your lap?”
“There’s no rule about size.” Nathan crouched, wrapping his arms around my thighs and standing, effectively tossing me over his shoulder. I squawked, balancing myself with my hands on his hips. Alve and Jude stared at us with wide eyes. Nathan dropped me down on the couch before parking himself next to me and patting his knees.
Ridiculous as it felt, I climbed aboard. He hooked his arms around my waist and I looped one over his shoulders, letting my cheek rest against his head. His purr rumbled away, working at unravelling my tension. It might’ve been possible without Madison’s anxiety flashing like a strobe in the bond.
Even though I felt silly, this felt nice, too. It was easy to understand why being held like this was so comforting to omegas.
Poppy and Pepper, sensing an opportunity for attention, climbed onto us, fighting for space on my lap, as if me being on Nathan’s meant there was double the space for them because it was two laps stacked.
“How long before we can go over?” Alve asked.
Jude stood, hands on his hips. “Depends, I guess? How long do we think it’ll take her to tire out? She can only panic so hard if she exhausts herself.”
“At least an hour,” Nathan speculated. “She’s probably going hard right now, and if she’s not pacing herself on physical labor, she’ll need a break soon. Maybe we message every half hour, see when she finally looks at one?”
Alve nodded, sinking down next to us, and motioned for Jude to do the same.
“Should we have an ambassador?” Nathan asked after a while of silence.
“Like we send one of us in instead of all going?” Jude tilted his head.
“Yeah.” Nathan shrugged. “We don’t want her overwhelmed, but we want her to know we’re here for her. We could all go, but maybe we should send one in to test the waters?”
“Are you volunteering yourself?” I asked, playing with the ends of his hair to give my twitchy hands something to do while Jude pet the cats.
“I was thinking Jude would be best,” Nathan said instead.
“Me?”
“Yes, you. You’ve known her forever and she’s loved you the longest. We know how I approach things, but Jax and Jazz made it sound pretty serious, so my style is probably not the best to hit her with first.”
Alve got to his feet, all of us looking at him. “I need to do something. If we can’t go to her, then I’m going to do some retail therapy.”
He didn’t seem like the type to fall back on that, but he certainly had the money, if that was how he wanted to deal with today’s stress.
Alve turned his phone to us. “This will fit, won’t it?”
He showed us the biggest cat tower I had ever seen in my life. It would probably take up the entirety of the wall and had about ten different platforms and hiding spots.
Nathan laughed. “When you said retail therapy, I thought you were shopping for yourself.”
“I buy things for other people when I’m stressed. So, do we think it will fit or not?”
With a sigh, I peeled myself off Nathan’s lap, carefully transferring the cats to him and Jude. Alve had the right idea.While Madison was keeping busy, there was no reason we couldn’t do the same.
We dug out a tape measure, comparing the width of the room to the measurements on the website, determining the enormous cat habitat would indeed fit.
“A store twenty minutes away has one in stock,” Alve said tentatively, glancing at each of us one by one.
“Sorry, Pepperoni.” Nathan lifted Pepper, kissing her forehead before setting her on the couch arm. “We’ve got to go buy you a mansion.”
The mission felt stabilizing. Madison was still a blaring siren of pain, but at least this way, I could offer her something in return that wasn’t a mirror of her own distress.
Our first message to her when we arrived at the store remained unread, as did the one when we got back home with a dozen different boxes. Despite being so intimately connected to Madison’s suffering, I was building resilience to it as surely as we were building this ridiculous cat tower.
