Vee
The apple tree is giving fruit.
I noticed it this morning—three small green apples in the lower branches, still hard, weeks from ready, but there. The tree is alive and producing. Mine. I stood under it for a full minute just looking at them before Rhys appeared at my elbow with a cup of coffee and the look on his face that means he saw me standing still and came to investigate.
"They're not ready yet," he said.
"I know," I said. "I just wanted to see them."
He handed me the coffee and we stood under the tree together for a while. That was enough.
The garden is nothing like the overgrown tangle it was when we bought the house.
Eight months of work. Finn researching soil amendments and companion planting with the focused intensity he brings to any project worth doing. Malcolm building the raised beds over a long weekend, covered in sawdust, refusing help until Rhys silently picked up the other end of a board he was struggling with and they finished it in half the time. Alex sourcing the seeds I'd marked in the catalog with tiny penciled stars.
It's mine now. Really mine. Deep beds, stone borders, lavender running along the south edge that smells like something good when you walk past it. The herbs I wanted. Thetomatoes that outproduced anything I'd grown before. And at the far end, the apple tree, which needed two full seasons before it decided to trust us.
Today the garden is full of people.
Jess arrived yesterday, declared the garden "criminally unfair," and I took it as the compliment it was. She's on a blanket near the lavender with a glass of wine, looking content in like she gets when she's somewhere that asks nothing of her.
Noah is here too. He arrived this morning with his pack—Jonah and the others, all of them piling out of two cars with enough food to feed twice our number. Noah greeted me with a hug so enthusiastic it lifted me off the ground and then immediately went looking for Finn, who he has been in consistent contact with the last time he came over and they discovered they both like the same viking shows.
Malcolm is at the grill.
He's been at the grill for forty-five minutes with the focus of a man who has decided this is his domain and anyone who questions his methods will be asked to leave. Finn hovers nearby offering unsolicited advice. Malcolm ignores all of it. The food smells incredible.
Alex is in one of the porch chairs with his feet up and a beer in his hand and the ease of a man who is exactly where he's supposed to be. He catches my eye from across the yard and the corner of his mouth moves.
I touch the claim mark on my neck. His. The first.
Four marks total, placed where I can show them off if I choose. Alex's on the left side of my neck. Malcolm's on the right. Rhys's lower, at the curve where my neck meets my shoulder, the one that makes people's eyes go wide when they see the sheer size of it and then who it belongs to. And on the other side, just below my ear, the small beta sized one in dark ink that I sat still for in a tattoo chair last spring—the mark I chose for Finnbecause he couldn't give me one and I wanted him to have one anyway.
He cried when he saw it. He'll deny this. He was having an allergic reaction to something, apparently.
I carry all four of them and I'm not subtle about it.
Rhys is across the yard talking to Noah's alphas.
I stop what I'm doing and watch.
It's not the careful, managed interaction of someone working through exposure therapy. It's just—a conversation. Jonah said something and Rhys responded and Jonah laughed. Then Rhys's almost-smile appeared and didn't go away. He's standing with his shoulders loose. Not braced. Not monitoring every exit.
He’s just present.
My breath hitches with tenderness. Not quite pride. Something mine. Like watching someone you love become more themselves than they were before.
He still sees Arden every two weeks. He probably always will. But the man standing across the yard having a normal conversation in a backyard full of unfamiliar alphas is not the same man who couldn't be in a room with strangers at one point. He's not healed exactly. He'd be the first to say that. But he's further along the road than he was and he's walking it on his own terms.
I watch him notice me watching and do the barely perceptible nod that meansI see you, I'm fine, stop hovering.
I look away.
Noah appears at my elbow. He hands me a fresh drink and follows my gaze to where Rhys is still talking to Jonah.
"Your pack is disgustingly devoted to you," he says.
"Yours is too."
