She told me in the context of everything else—all of it, the whole unsparing inventory—and the refusal to take the easy route wasn't performed, wasn't positioned to seem admirable. It was just her actual position, stated as a fact she'd already resolved and wasn't revisiting. The stubbornness of it is either integrity or damage and possibly both, but either way, it's the opposite of the pattern I've spent years learning to recognize.
Her scent.
It's quieter now than it was in the car—the honey and vanilla that had arrived in the Cadillac's interior with the soft, warm quality of something genuine had flattened considerably since we walked into this apartment.
The lime zest, which I'd caught as a brief, sharp undercurrent in the car and had filed as interesting, is completely absent. Her body processing grief and exhaustion by shutting down the broadcast.
I know what that looks like in a scent signature.
It looks like someone who is running on the last reserves.
"She's not picking up."
Mila frowns at the device in her hand—and I look at it properly for the first time and cannot entirely suppress the response.
"Does that phone work when it's raining?"
It is, objectively, the least tactful thing I have said all evening. The question comes out before the filter that usually governs my communication can intervene.
The corner of her mouth moves—just the corner, just slightly, the expression of someone who has found something faintly amusing despite everything—and she says:
"Sometimes."
I make a sound.
It might be a laugh.
I'm choosing not to confirm.
"You can use mine." I hold it out.
"She won't answer an unknown number." Mila shakes her head, still looking at her own phone. "She gets calls all day from people who want things from her. She has a system. Unknown numbers go straight to voicemail, and she checks them on her own schedule."
I lower my phone.
The friend is wealthy, then.
An Omega with money who has chosen a small town because this is a place she’d rather be than the things her circumstances could provide.
Which is the same logic that has this Omega working triple shifts in the rain to avoid asking for help she doesn't want to owe.
I can respect that.
I notice, then, the things I should have noticed earlier.
She is wet.
The rain coming through the ceiling has been falling on her since we walked in—not dramatically, not one of the main streams, but the ambient moisture of a room that has been open to a rainstorm for however many hours the ceiling was compromised, and she's been standing in it. Her jacket is damp at the shoulders and her hair has that particular quality of hair that's absorbed moisture without being soaked—the waves going heavier, the champagne blonde darkening slightly at the crown.
And the eyes.
The dark circles have been there all evening but they're more visible now that she's stopped performing the composure—the specific bruising of someone who has not slept enough for a sustained period, the kind that doesn't come from a single late night but from weeks of inadequate rest compounding into something structural.
"Take a power nap," I say. "I can wait outside until my pack arrives."
I watch her process this.
"Your pack?—"
