I look at her.
"Do you know what I think about when I can't sleep?"
"No."
"I think about the night you texted me. When you saw my light on from across the yard and asked me if I wanted to come bake cookies." She pulls her knees closer. "Nobody in that house had noticed I was awake. Nobody checked. Nobody cared enough to bother. But you did."
"That's just—"
"If you say 'that's just what I do' I'm going to throw that book at you."
I close my mouth.
"It wasn't just what you do," she says. "It was the first time in a long time that someone noticed I was struggling and did something about it. And you didn’t use a purr or a knot or biology. It was just you. Just a person, seeing another person,and showing up." Her voice has gone rough. "That's not nothing, Finn. That's everything."
I stare at her.
"I don't need you to be an alpha," she says. "I have three alphas here. I have more alpha energy in my life than any one person should reasonably have to manage. What I need is you. The person who color-codes the fridge, argues about card games. The person who makes me laugh when I forget I'm allowed to."
"Vee—"
"When I'm overwhelmed by alpha pheromones and I need somewhere to just breathe? You're that place. When I want to have a conversation that isn't loaded with biology and instinct and the constant pull of the bond? You're that person." She holds my gaze. "You're not the gap in this pack, Finn. You're the thing that holds it together. And if you can't see that, then you're the least observant person I've ever met."
I laugh. It comes out slightly broken and slightly wet. I push my glasses up to buy myself a second.
"That's a contradiction," I say.
"I know. I'm making a point."
"It's a good point."
"I know it is." She reaches over and takes my hand. Her fingers are warm and small and they fit between mine in a way that they wouldn’t if I were an alpha. "You're enough, Finn. You were enough before I got here and you'll be enough for as long as you want to be."
I look at our hands.
"I want to be," I say. "For a very long time."
"Good." She squeezes once. "Then stop reorganizing my spice cabinet."
"Ourspice cabinet. And the cumin was behind the paprika."
"The cumin can go wherever it wants."
"That's anarchy."
"That's flexibility."
"Those are not the same thing."
She laughs. The real one. The full one. The one she's been giving more and more freely as the weeks pass and the old Vee comes back piece by piece.
I hold her hand and listen to it and think:this is what enough sounds like.
Just a woman laughing on a porch because the person next to her said something that made her happy.
I'll take it.
I'll take it every single day for the rest of my life and never once call it less than.
