I reach for the curtain.
Pull it aside.
The three of them are arranged across the small shop's seating area with the specific, unconscious spatial efficiency ofa pack that has been in enough rooms together to naturally distribute itself for maximum coverage. Finn on the low bench near the window, one ankle crossed over his knee, the bourbon-and-orange scent of him warm in the afternoon sunlight coming through the glass. Rowan leaning against the wall near the rack of formal items, dark and unhurried, his black-pepper-and-ink signature carrying its usual composed weight. Declan standing, cedarwood and leather and that Irish whiskey warmth that my scent receptors have apparently memorized and will now clock from three rooms away without being asked.
Three pairs of eyes.
Finn whistles—not the bar kind, not the performative kind men produce to make a point about women within earshot. The genuine kind, the spontaneous audible response of someone who registered something before their social filter could apply the brakes. He leans forward, blue eyes bright, and the grin is the full version.
Declan's mouth curves. Just slightly—the half-rotation I've catalogued enough times now to read as the real version rather than a social offering. His gaze moves over me with the specific, deliberate quality of attention that he applies to everything, which means it's not a sweep so much as a consideration.
Rowan has one eyebrow up.
On anyone else that reads as unimpressed. On Rowan, who I'm learning applies his eyebrow with the same precision a conductor applies a baton, one eyebrow raised means something is registering significantly and he is deciding what to do with the information.
"Well?" I say.
"Well," Finn says, with the measured gravity of someone making a formal pronouncement, "Lucky Charm has a whole other dimension we didn't have adequate data on."
"Don't," I tell him.
"I'm going to."
I turn to the standing mirror the shop has positioned near the changing rooms—a proper full-length, oval-framed thing that looks older than the store around it, the kind of mirror that has been reflecting people for long enough that it has opinions. I look at myself in it.
And then, because the afternoon light coming through the shop window is catching the yellow layers in a way that makes me feel slightly reckless, I twirl.
Just once. A slow rotation, watching the fabric follow.
"Wow," I say, to the mirror rather than the room. "I genuinely haven't worn anything like this in ages."
"From the masquerade," Finn says, "you looked like you'd come directly from a fashion editorial. Which means you've been hiding this whole—" he gestures generally at the dress, the hair, the current total effect, "—underneath bar shifts."
"That was entirely my best friend's doing." I face him. "Speaking of which—when we get to the next town, can I use a pay phone? Or a business line or something? She's going to be running scenarios about where I disappeared to and the scenarios will only get more elaborate the longer she doesn't hear from me."
"You don't have a phone," Declan says, with the tone of someone confirming a thing they already knew.
"It didn't survive last night," Rowan says, and the look he delivers alongside the statement contains a specific opinion about the phone's pre-existing condition that I'm choosing not to respond to.
"It had potential," I say.
The look doesn't shift.
"It had twelve months of borrowed time and then it made a decision," Rowan says. "Which is fair enough."
"The thing is," I say, and this is the practical part, the part where I try to navigate the next step without either being a burden or pretending I have resources I don't, "getting a new phone would genuinely help. For work, for Elowen, for Danny. If the town has any kind of Omega-consideration loan plan—small towns sometimes do, Danny mentioned the bank here has been flexible with Omegas on essential technology since the legislation push—I could potentially get something basic."
I watch all three of them frown simultaneously, which is the synchronized expression of a pack that has just heard something and wants to address it without stepping on each other's response. Rowan opens his mouth?—
The shop door at the back of the fitting area opens.
The woman who emerges is in her sixties, small and bright-eyed, with the particular energy of someone who has been running their own business for long enough that they've stopped distinguishing between working hours and their general state of being. She takes in the dress, takes in me, and her face does the thing that certain people's faces do when they encounter something they want to comment on and have absolutely no intention of restraining themselves.
"Oh," she says. "Oh, that is—yes. That is the dress."
"Thank you," I start.
"What a lovely pack," she says, pivoting to take in the three men with the frank appreciation of someone who has seen quite a few packs come through her shop and is upgrading her assessment of today's variety. "Shopping for their Omega—you don't see this as often as you should, if you ask me. Young men with the right instincts."
