"Come."
One word.
His voice holds no command, carries none of that alpha pressure that forces obedience. Instead, the single word hangs in the air between us—gentle yet unmistakable. Dominant and quiet and somehow the most honest thing anyone has said to me in weeks.
Hopeful.
My omega doesn't deliberate.
I stand up from the couch.
I cross the space between us and put my hand in his.
His hand swallows mine completely. It’s warm and steady. He wraps his fingers around mine with a carefulness that doesn't match the size of him, like he's very aware of the difference and is being deliberate about it. He draws me closer, guiding rather than pulling, and then I'm close enough that his scent surrounds me completely.
I stop thinking.
Everything I've been carrying—the fear, the anger, the grief, the love that won't stop hurting, the registry, the hearing and Drake and Ragon and the five years I spent getting smaller—all of it stops. Not gone, but quiet. Like it moved to another room and closed the door.
There is only this. His warmth seeping into me. His scent filling up every part of my lungs. The rightness of it shatters me.
I sob.
It comes from somewhere deep. Not a pretty cry. The real kind; the kind that comes when something you've been holding up for too long finally gets to put itself down. I cry into this stranger's chest and he doesn't flinch or pull back or make it about him. His arms come around me. One hand guides my face toward his neck, toward his scent gland, so that I'm breathing him in directly, and the crying intensifies for a second and then starts to ease.
His purr starts.
It's not like Malcolm's. Or Alex’s. It’s not smooth and steady and easy. This one is ragged. It stutters and catches. Like something inside is damaged, like the mechanism doesn't work quite right anymore. But it's deep and low and resonant and it goes straight to every broken part of me and says something without words.
You're okay. You're here. I've got you.
I don't know how long I cry.
Long enough that Arden apparently finds a place to sit because when I finally surface, he's on the couch with his legs crossed and his expression doing that careful professional warmth thing.
I pull back from Rhys's chest slowly.
Look up at his face.
He's watching me with those warm brown eyes and the remains of the smile he was fighting earlier. I can see it more clearly now. What his face might have looked like before. What it still looks like underneath, if you know where to find it.
I say his name.
Just to say it. Just to hear how it sounds.
"Rhys."
He smiles.
It stretches the scars around his mouth. Pulls the skin in ways that look like they should hurt but he doesn't seem to notice. The smile is a little crooked and entirely genuine and it is one of the most unexpectedly beautiful things I have seen in a long time.
I smile back. I can't help it.
"Vee," Arden says from the couch. "How do you feel?"
I take stock. The residue of crying. The warmth still seeping in from where Rhys's arm is still loosely around me. The quiet where the anxiety used to be.
"Better," I admit.
