The kitchen is quiet. Vee is outside with Rhys. Malcolm went for a run. It's just us. Alex probably engineered that.
"How much did you hear?" I ask. Might as well start with the part that's been eating me alive.
"Enough."
"Enough meaning—"
"All of it.” He says it flatly. "I was on the porch for most of the conversation. I came out to check on you two and you were already talking."
My throat closes.
"The relief," I say. The word comes out rough. "You heard the part about the relief."
"Yes."
I look at the table. At a knot in the wood I've memorized from staring at it during meals. "I was relieved when you got the flag, Alex. You sacrificed everything for Rhys, you went toprison, and my first reaction was relief that we'd never have an omega because I was afraid of not being enough."
"I know."
"That's not—" I stop. "That's not who I want to be. That's not the kind of pack brother I want to be."
Alex is quiet. Then he leans forward, forearms on the table.
"Do you remember what happened after I got arrested?"
I look at him.
"You came to see me on the first visiting day. You drove four hours because the facility was in the middle of nowhere and you sat in that plastic chair across from me. You brought my entire quarterly tax filing because you'd been doing the company books while I was gone and you wanted me to check your math."
"Your filing system was a disaster. Someone had to—"
"You drove four hours to show me spreadsheets, Finn." His mouth twitches. "You came every visiting day without fail. You kept the company running with Malcolm even though you had a full time job. You kept Malcolm from spiraling. You sat with Rhys when nobody else could be in the room with him. You held everything together while I was gone."
"That's just—"
"Don't say 'that's just what I do.' I know it's what you do. That's my point." He holds my gaze. "You think I heard you say you were relieved and I thought less of you?"
I can't answer that.
"I thought:of course he was relieved. He was twenty-three years old and terrified that an omega would walk into this pack and confirm every fear he'd ever had about being a beta among alphas." He says it steady. "Relief was the honest response. You think I'd rather you'd lied about it?"
"I should have been angry for you."
"You were. Later, when it mattered." He pauses. "A moment of relief doesn't cancel out years of showing up Finn. It doesn'tcancel out the spreadsheets or the visiting days or the fact that you're the reason I had a company to come back to."
I stare at the table.
"Finn. Look at me."
I look at him.
"You are enough," he says. "You've always been enough. Not despite being a beta. Because of who you are. The pack works because you're in it.Iwork because you're in it. I wouldn’t have made you co-head if I didn’t believe it." He pauses. "And Vee is not going to wake up one day and wish you had a knot. That's not how she sees you, that's not how any of us see you."
I want to argue. The instinct is strong—to list the biological deficits, to catalog what I can't provide, to build the case against myself like I build every other case. With evidence. With precision.
But Alex is looking at me with an expression that doesn't leave room for argument. Not the pack lead face He’s just Alex, the man I've known since I was nineteen. The one who handed me a set of keys to a startup office and said "I need someone who notices things."
"Malcolm told me to cut myself some slack," I say. "The night in the garden."
