Everyone looks at him.
"She's right," he says again. "This is hers to decide. Not ours." He looks at me. "I don't like it. I want to be clear about that."
"I know."
"But I understand it." He reaches for his phone. "I'll call Chase."
Chase picks up on the second ring.
Alex explains. Chase listens without interrupting, which is one of the things about Chase. He processes before he responds, never wastes words on reactions that don't serve the conversation.
"The registry won't love it," Chase says when Alex finishes. "They've flagged him against omega contact. But if Vee requests the meeting and it happens in a controlled environment—at the registry, supervised—they'll probably allow it."
"Can you set it up?" Alex asks.
"Give me a few minutes."
Alex puts the phone face down on the table.
We sit.
Rhys's hand finds mine under the table. He doesn't say anything. He just holds on, his thumb moving in that slow circle across my knuckles that means he's managing.
"I'll be okay," I tell him.
He looks at me. "I know," he says. Like he's decided to believe it even if it costs him something.
The phone buzzes.
Alex picks it up. Listens. His expression doesn't change much except for the added tension around his eyes. "Tomorrow morning. Nine o'clock." He looks at me. "Ragon confirmed immediately."
Rhys growls.
Low and involuntary, the sound of a man whose instincts have just received information they don't like.
"He wants to see her," Malcolm says flatly. Like the fact itself is an offense.
"Of course he does," I say. "That doesn't change anything." I look at Rhys. His jaw is set. I squeeze his hand. "It's one conversation. In a registry office with Chase there. And then it's done."
He doesn't look convinced.
But he nods.
***
We go to bed later than we mean to.
The conversation winds down slowly, like conversations do when nobody wants to be the one to end them. Eventually tiredness wins and we migrate upstairs in the loose collective way of people who haven't yet established whose room is whose but have stopped pretending it matters.
My room is the biggest.
Everyone ends up there.
It's a process. Malcolm takes one side immediately with the confidence of a man who has decided this is where he's sleeping and the logistics are someone else's problem. Finn disappears and comes back with every spare blanket in the cabin, which he deposits on the bed with the focused energy of a man solving an engineering problem. Rhys stands in the doorway assessing the situation with the expression he gets when he's calculating spatial arrangements.
"I can go to my room," he says.
"Get on the bed, Rhys," Malcolm says.
