By the time she finishes I've forgotten what I was thinking about.
We turn down the frozen food aisle.
Finn and Malcolm have found the ice cream section and have already been arguing for what appears to be longer than the ice cream decision warrants.
"Rocky road," Finn says, with the conviction of someone defending a principle.
"Black cherry," Malcolm says, equally firm.
Vee wrinkles her nose at the black cherry in a way that's visible and immediate. Then she covers it, because she's polite, but I saw it.
They each grab a pint and put them in the cart.
I lean down toward her. "What do you like?"
She glances up at me with that shy smile. "I'm not complicated. Chocolate."
I wait until Finn and Malcolm have moved on to examine other options further down the case.
Then I reach into the cart, take their pints, and put them back.
I put three pints of chocolate in instead.
I lean back down. "That way if you need more, you can eat theirs too."
She looks up at me. Her face does the full version of the smile—the unguarded one, the open one—and then she giggles. The sound hits me in five different places simultaneously and none of them are the ones Arden would call regulated.
I don't care.
The checkout line is fine until it isn't.
We're almost done. Malcolm is loading the belt. Finn is reading the back of something he threw in the cart spontaneously. Vee is next to me talking to Alex about things I'm not tracking closely enough to follow.
I feel it before I turn around.
Alpha scent.
The pack from the aisle. They've come up behind us in the line—three alphas, their omega between them. Normal. Completely normal. They're not looking at us with anything except mild impatience at the length of the line.
My body doesn't care.
Every circuit fires at once. The space between them and Vee is twelve feet and shrinking as the line moves. Unfamiliar alphas. Behind us. Too close.
The growl comes up before I can stop it.
It's not a small sound.
The cashier freezes. The couple behind the pack takes a visible step back. The pack alphas go very still in the way alphas go still when they've registered a threat and are doing the math on their options.
Then Vee's hand lands on my chest.
Flat. Warm. Steady.
I look down at her.
She's looking up at me, and her expression doesn't have fear in it. Not of me, not of them, not of the situation. Just that calm, certain quality she has when she's decided something.
"Tell me what you put in the cart today that I didn't ask for," she says.
