"So tell me."
"I'm flesh and blood, Vee. When my alpha instincts say you're mine—"
"You got jealous."
His eyes darken. "I saw you through that window with another alpha. My scent match. Months of keeping my distance and I nearly threw all of it away because he made you laugh. It didn’t matter that I knew him or that he was just trying to help. Chase silently talked me down when he pushed back in there. He stopped me before I said enough to make you realize and the whole case blew up in our faces."
I picture the gym. Alex through those doors, eyes dark, shoulders tense. At the time it felt like too much. Now it just makes sense.
"Jasper," I say again, turning it over. "He always kept me at arm's length."
"Yes."
"I thought he just didn't like me."
"He liked you." Alex says it simply. "He just couldn't let himself get close. It complicated things for him. I don’t know why, he never would open up to us."
All those moments I extended toward Jasper and watched him step carefully back. The times I thought I was reaching for a friend and finding empty space instead.
It should make me angry. Maybe it will later.
Right now I mostly just feel like what was blurry has finally come into focus. Like the shape of the last few months was always this and I just couldn't see it from the inside.
"Why didn't you just tell me?" I ask. "About any of it. When I was coming to your kitchen to bake and talk… why not just say what I was to you?"
He's quiet for a long moment.
"Would you have kept coming over?" he finally asks.
I open my mouth.
Close it.
Think about it honestly. If he had sat me down in that first week and laid it all out—scent match, registry flag, Chase building a case, Jasper inside my house—wouldI have kept showing up? Would I have kept baking in his kitchen and talking until late and using his house as the place I went when mine was too much to stay in?
After a beat I shake my head. "No."
"No," he agrees. "You would have pulled away. Decided you were only torturing yourself. And you needed somewhere to breathe. You needed a safe space to go when things got tough at home."
"You could have told me anyway," I say. "You probably should have."
"I know." He doesn't argue it. "We made choices. Not all of them were right. But we made the ones we thought gave you the best chance."
"Also," he says after a moment, his expression turning amused, "Ragon thought we were a weak pack. I have a beta as co-head." The careful neutrality gives way slightly underneath. "He never took us seriously and that's the only reason he let you socialize with us alone. He thought himself too far superior to me to steal "his" omega. If he'd found out you were our match he would have locked you in that house and never let you come near us again. It was safer for you not to know."
That's true. I know it's true the second he says it. Ragon's contempt for what he saw as Alex's soft structure was always obvious.
“The night Finn found me,” I say. “I could suddenly scent you fully. You weren’t muted anymore.”
Alex nods. “Because of the state of you before you left our house the last time. Marie’s heat was getting to you. We couldn’t wait for Chase anymore so we stopped taking blockers. We were going to come clean and get you out the next day if not sooner. I didn’t even know where we were going to go, we were just… going.”
“But then Finn found me in heat.”
“Yes. Plans changed.”
“One more thing. You don't smell like pine anymore. Malcolm doesn't smell like cedar. None of you smell how I remember. Well… you do. You smell the way I remember when you first moved in. It was muted from the blockers, but recognizable. Juniper, coffee, ink and rain. But when you came over for card night, it was different. You almost smelled like Ragon’s pack. Stronger too.”
Alex pauses, his lips tightening.
