I sit with it. Just breathing.
My chest does that thing it always does with this scent. It unknots and calms. The low background noise of anxiety that I've learned to just live with goes quiet in a way that nothing else has managed.
I bring the shirt to my face without thinking about it.
Arden is quiet.
After a moment I lower it and find him watching me with his head tilted slightly. He has that expression he gets when he's interested professionally and personally at the same time.
"You really like those," he says. Not quite a question.
"Is it that obvious?"
"Little bit." The corners of his mouth move. "What do they do for you? If you had to describe it."
I think about it honestly. "They quiet my brain," I say. "Everything just—calms. Like turning down a volume dial I didn't know was on."
He nods slowly.
"And there's something else," I add. "Something I can't quite name. Like being recognized. Does that make any sense?"
"More than you know," he says.
I look at him. At the particular quality of his attention right now.
"Are you going to tell me?" I ask. "About the shirts. Where they're actually from."
He's quiet.
Then he says, "Yes. I think it's time."
I blink. After all theArden will explain latersand the careful deflections, I wasn't expecting it to be that simple.
"They belong to another alpha," he says.
I give him a blank look. Blink. "I figured that." I feel my old self surfacing, that version of me with teeth and claws who doesn't let things slide. "The shirt is enormous. It smells like a person. Thank you for the confirmation."
Arden laughs. A real one, short and surprised. "Fair enough."
"So who is he?"
Arden doesn't answer that directly. Instead he asks, "Do you want to meet him?"
The question lands differently than I expected.
I sit with it.
There are already so many of them. So many alphas I'm trying to figure out how to navigate, how to trust, how to feel about. Alex with his flag and his careful restraint. Malcolm with his intensity and his purr and his inability to keep a shirt on. Finn who is technically a beta and also somehow the emotional center of the whole operation. Chase who keeps showing up at critical moments. Jasper who I still haven't fully processed.
And now another one.
I look down at the shirt in my hands.
Bring it back to my nose.
The quiet descends again. Immediate. Complete.
I want to know who this belongs to.
