I start turning over every interaction I ever had with Jasper in that house. Every careful deflection. Every sympathetic look across a room that never became anything more. Every time he almost did something and then didn't. The shape of his restraint, which I always interpreted as personal but which was apparently also strategic.
He couldn't bond into Ragon's pack even if he'd wanted to. He already had one.
"He didn't help me much," I say and it comes out dry and a little bitter around the edges. "For someone who was supposedly there to help me."
"I know." Arden doesn't argue it. "Something was going on with him. I can't speak to all of it, but I can tell you that it's eating him alive." He holds my gaze. "He wanted to help you. He genuinely did. And he did help, Vee, even if it didn't feel like it from where you were standing. His evidence has been crucial to Chase's case. Without his recordings, without his reports, we don't have what we need for the hearing."
I think about that.
"Later," I say. "I'll think about it later."
Arden nods. He knows what that means. He's heard me say it enough times by now.
He leads me to the living room.
It's a good room. There’s a deep couch, warm light. Bookshelves on two walls, the kind that look used rather than decorative. It smells like a home, like Arden and Chase and underneath everything that strange, layered burnt wood scent that my chest keeps reaching toward.
"Sit," Arden says.
I sit.
He stands in front of me. His expression has shifted from professional to wary.
"I want to prepare you," he says.
"Okay."
"He's large." He says it plainly. "Larger than anyone you've met. And the scars—" He pauses. "They're significant. His face, his arms. You'll see them."
I think about the size of the shirts. How the hem falls to my thighs, the shoulders drooping past my elbows. Whoever fills those shirts is a very large person.
"He's not dangerous to you," Arden continues. "I need you to hold onto that when you see him. Whatever your instincts tell you in the first second, he isnotdangerous to you."
"But he is to others," I say.
"In certain circumstances, yes. Alphas he doesn't know. Situations he can't control." Arden is quiet. "He's been alone Vee. He's always thought of omegas as something beyond what he could have. He expects them to be frightened of him and he's made a kind of peace with it but it's—it's a wound. How you react to him matters to him more than he'll show."
The image of it settles in me somewhere unguarded.
I nod.
Arden disappears down the hallway.
I stay on the couch in the quiet house and listen.
At first, there’s nothing. Then there’s the low sound of Arden's voice, too far away to make out words. Then a response. Deeper. Rougher. The voice of someone very large keeping it quiet.
My heart rate picks up.
I press my hands flat against my thighs and breathe.
The voices get closer.
Arden appears first at the end of the hallway. He's looking back, saying something, his expression calm and encouraging.
Then the figure behind him.
My heartbeat spikes.
