"I mentioned it in the group chat. That's different from actually—she's her. Rowan. The bartender." A low whistle. "You didn't mention she was the one I?—"
"I didn't know until you said it just now."
A beat of silence in which I can feel the conversation recalibrating around new information.
"Okay." Finn—it's Finn, that's the name from the bar, the one who went to his knees on a bar floor for my number—"okay, walk me through how this happened. Because you took a different road on the way back?—"
"Her car was on the side of it."
"And you stopped."
"It was raining."
"Rowan." The name said with the specific intonation of someone who has known a person long enough to communicate in shorthand. "You don't stop for random cars."
"I do when it's 4 AM and pouring." A pause. "The collectors got to her apartment."
Finn's response is not words. It's a sound from somewhere low in his chest—the kind that doesn't require translation.
"Those fuckers—" He stops. Recalibrates. "The pack situation?"
"Left her the debt. Clean exit, her name on everything." Rowan's voice is even, but there's something underneath the evenness that wasn't there in the car. "Went to Cambridge. She's been here trying to work through it."
"In this?" Finn's voice has gone flat in a way that's the opposite of his usual warm ease. "She's been living in this and working triple shifts and no one?—"
"Small town. She doesn't have a pack behind her."
"Obviously." A pause, and then: "You know what I keep thinking about? The legislation thing. I was listening to conversations at the bar—new rules for licensed properties, Omegas can't get proper help from services without pack documentation. They literally penalized her twice. Once when the pack left her the debt, and then again structurally, because the system doesn't recognize her without one."
"Fun," Rowan says, which from him communicates a very specific opinion about the state of things.
"You don't give a fuck about rules anyway."
"I give a fuck about workable solutions."
"Typical." There's a warmth in Finn's voice now even through the frustration—the specific affection of someone who finds a familiar quality reassuring even when the context is grim. "Okay. Game plan. It's almost five and this town is going to be awakeand nosey by seven. Small places talk and her business spreads fast if we're not careful."
"Declan."
"Declan can handle discretion, yeah. But there's still the packless issue. Even if we sort the immediate—car, apartment, somewhere to sleep tonight—she's going to hit walls everywhere she goes trying to get proper help. Contractors won't take a single Omega's deposit seriously without a pack co-signer on anything substantial."
Rowan's response is quiet enough that I don't catch it.
Finn says: "You're already thinking about something."
"I'm always thinking about something."
"The specific something you're thinking about right now."
"Let's get her somewhere warm first."
A hand on my shoulder, gentle, two brief pats. "Mila." Finn's voice, directed at me now, at the appropriate volume for someone who might be asleep. "Hey. We're going to?—"
But I'm drifting.
I know I'm drifting and I can't stop it, the way you can't stop a tide by wanting it to. The cold and the exhaustion and the specific emotional weight of everything that's happened in the last twelve hours have compounded into something that my body is not negotiating with any further. I hear my name again from somewhere further away than the room. I try to respond.
And then a scent reaches me.
