"Malcolm was right."
"He said you'd know what was in my heart."
"He was right about that too." Alex stands. "Are we done?"
"Are we?"
"We're done." He crosses to the counter and pours two mugs of coffee. Then sets one in front of me. "I need you to look at something Chase found in the registry filings. He thinks there's a discrepancy in the wellness check records that could help Vee's case."
I stare at him. "You're just—moving on? Just like that?"
"There's nothing to move on from." He takes a drink of his coffee. "You had a feeling you were ashamed of. You told someone about it. The person you were ashamed of disappointing just told you it doesn't change anything." He looks at me over the rim. "What else is there?"
I pick up the mug. The coffee is exactly how I take it, because Alex notices things too.
"Nothing," I say. "There's nothing else."
"Good. Now look at these filings."
We work at the kitchen table for the next hour. It's normal. It's completely, entirely normal, in the same way that only happens after something has been resolved so thoroughly that it doesn't need to be referenced again.
The knot in my stomach loosens. Not dramatically, but slowly, over the course of an hour of shared silence and paperwork and coffee, the way tension leaves a body that's finally been given permission to let it go.
***
Vee finds me that evening.
I'm on the porch with a book I'm not reading, watching the tree line go dark. She comes out and drops into the chair beside me and pulls her knees up.
"Hey," she says.
"Hey."
"You've been weird this week."
"I haven't been weird."
"You've been avoiding Alex, reorganizing every cabinet in the kitchen, and you alphabetized the bookshelf yesterday. Twice." She looks at me. "That's weird even for you."
I close the book. "I talked to Alex today."
"I figured. You seem less... compressed."
"Compressed?"
"Like you’ve been holding your breath for days. Now you look like you're breathing again." She studies me. "Want to talk about it?"
I look at the trees. The last of the light is going. Inside the cabin I can hear Malcolm laughing at something and Rhys's low response that might be a word or might just be acknowledgment.
"I'm scared," I say.
She waits.
"I'm scared that you're going to realize you don't need me." It comes out before I've decided to say it. "That you have three alphas who can purr for you and knot you and scent bond to you and do all the things an omega needs biologically, and I'm just... the guy who organizes the fridge."
Vee is quiet.
"Finn," she says. "Look at me."
