"Why not?" Rowan asked, her voice small.
"Because we are currently standing in the wreckage of a crisis," I said. "We are high on adrenaline and cortisol and survival instincts. If we bond now, if we claim each other formally... it puts a pressure on this structure that I'm not sure it's ready to bear."
I walked over to the table. I placed my hands on the wood, leaning forward.
"A contract signed under duress is voidable," I told her, slipping back into the language she understood best. "I don't want this to be voidable. I want it to be ironclad."
Rowan looked at the three of us. She looked at the redANCHORmark still faintly visible on my wrist.
"So what is this?" she asked. "If it's not a Pack. If it's not a contract."
"It's an agreement to try," I said.
I looked at Juno, then Mateo.
"We agree to the intent," I said. "We agree that this is the goal. But we figure out the shape as we go. We don't force a Beta to try and be an Alpha or an Omega. We build a new structure. One that can encompass all our designations."
"No claiming?" Mateo asked, his voice rough. I couldn't tell if it was disappointment or relief I was hearing though.
"Not yet," I said. "Not until we're on solid ground. Not until Vance is done and the dust settles. We choose each other every day. Without the bond or biology forcing us to."
Rowan looked down at her hands. She twisted the ring on her finger. She was processing. I could almost hear the gears turning, the variables being weighed.
"So we're prototyping," she said finally. Looking up, a small, tentative smile touching her lips. "Beta testing."
Juno snorted, a laugh bubbling up through the exhaustion. "God, you're a nerd."
"It's an accurate term," she defended, though she was smiling too.
She walked over to me. She took my hand. Then she reached out and took Juno’s. Mateo stepped in and covered her hand with his immense one.
"We choose each other," Rowan said, testing the weight of the words. "No bite marks. No shared bank accounts. Just... us."
"Just us," I confirmed. "Trying."
"Okay," she whispered. "I can work with that. I can map that."
She squeezed my hand.
"It's enough," she said.
And looking around the room, at the three people who had somehow become the entire axis upon which my world turned, I realized she was right.
It wasn't a structure. It wasn't a guarantee. It was four people standing in a kitchen in the middle of nowhere, deciding that the world was burning down outside, but inside, we were going to build something fireproof.
It was, in fact, quite a lot.
TWENTY-NINE
Rowan
The dining table in the cabin had ceased to be a place to eat and had transformed into a forward operating base.
The transition from the emotional nudity of the morning to the cold, hard armor of strategy wasn't instantaneous, but it was jarring, which was exactly what we needed. We had defined the relationship; now we had to defend the people inside it.
I sat between Stephen and Juno, my laptop humming with the heat too many tabs open at once. Stephen was finalizing the legal hosting for the open-source documents, routing the servers through jurisdictions that Vance’s lawyers would need a machete to hack through. Juno was reviewing the script, crossing out adjectives with a ruthlessness that bordered on violent.
Mateo was the perimeter. He moved from window to window checking the sensors with a terrifyingly casual yet precise rhythm.Click. Slide. Snap.It was the metronome of our safety.
