"Gray came from Gold House."
"He did."
She's quiet for a moment. "How."
"Leo."
She closes her eyes briefly. "Of course." A pause. Then, very carefully controlled, "Is everyone alive?"
I laugh. I don't mean to. It just comes out — startled and genuine — and Lumi's mouth does the thing where it's not quite a smile.
"Everyone is alive," I say.
"Good." She uncrosses her legs and recrosses them. "I ask because when Stone came down from the mountain and we — when we first—" She stops. "Neal walked in."
I stare at her.
"He didn't knock," she says. "He never knocks. He thought I was in medical distress."
"What did you do?"
"I told him I was fine." A pause. "He didn't fully believe me for about three weeks. He kept asking if I needed anything." Her mouth does the thing again. "He was very concerned."
I press my hand over my mouth. Lumi watches me with amused patience while I get myself together.
"The alpha thing," Lumi says. "Tell me how it feels. Not institutionally. In your body."
I think about it.
"Like I stopped being slightly wrong," I say. "Like something that was always slightly misaligned just — settled. And now I can feel the pack. Not just the bonds individually, I can feel the whole thing. The shape of it. Who's okay and who's not." I pause."And then there's RJ, he’s just something my alpha nature does without asking me. I know where he is. I know when something shifts in him." I pause. "It's loud sometimes. Like a room where everyone's talking at once and one person is in the hallway and you can still hear them through the door."
"That's accurate," she says. "An alpha's bond sense is broader than a standard mate bond. You're not just connected to your mates — you're responsible for the field. You'll feel the whole pack. All the time."
"That sounds exhausting."
"It is." She says it plainly. "And it's also the thing that makes you what you are. The pack feels you too. Not just the bonded ones — all of them. RJ feels you. Somewhere in whatever's left of his conscious processing, he knows you're here."
The fence. His thumb moving over my marks through the chain link.
"I know," I say.
A pause. Then I look at her.
"What about you," I say. "The omega thing. What does it feel like — having all of them bonded to you? Carrying all of that?"
She pauses.
"Like being the eye of something," she says. "Not the storm. The eye. Everything moving around you and through you and you're the still point that makes it possible." A pause. "It can actually feel lonely sometimes. Even when you're never alone."
I look at my wrist. Four arcs. The wanting that monitors RJ without my permission.
"Yeah," I say. "It is."
She looks at me steadily. "The reclassification is going to take time. Gavin's board is going to ask things that don't have precedent. You're going to be studied." A pause. "I want you to know that I'll be there. Not as staff. As someone who has been exactly where you are."
"You're an omega," I say. "That's different."
"The biology is different. The experience of being a thing nobody has a protocol for—" She looks at me. "That part is the same."
