I just haven't figured out what to do with that knowledge yet. The knowing and the understanding are different things. The knowing is easy, it sits there. The understanding would require me to look at something I'm not ready to look at.
So I don't.
I think about Drake instead. My sunshine alpha. The one who used to light up every room he walked into, who made everything feel brighter, easier, possible. Who has looked at me for the last three days like it physically hurts him to. He’s bleakin a way I've never seen him before. Like someone dimmed all the light and he doesn't remember where the switch is.
I did that to him.
Eli watches me like you watch a stranger you're not sure about. Eli who has always been the one who understood my reasoning, who could hold the complicated version of any situation without needing it simplified. Now he just looks disappointed and that's almost worse than rage. Rage at least means they still think you're capable of better.
And Jasper.
Jasper looks at me with his face carefully neutral and I have started to wonder, in the small hours when I can't sleep, exactly how long he's been looking at me that way. Whether he looked at me that way the first week or whether I just didn't notice until Vee was gone and Marie was leaving and there was nothing left to look at except the pack I have and what it's actually worth.
I need to find Vee.
That's the thing I come back to every hour. Every dead end conversation with registry contacts who give me nothing or every walk through the house where her door is closed. Her garden is overgrown and her coffee mug is still in the cabinet where she left it.
If I can find her and bring her home, the pack can start to heal. Drake will come back to himself, Eli will look at me how he used to, and everything that went wrong will have somewhere to go and someone to undo it.
I believe this.
I don't examine it very closely but I believe it.
Vee belongs with me. With us. She's pack even though—
The thought catches.
I've had her for five years. Five years in my house, my bed, my life, and I never claimed her. I told myself there was time. That the bond was there whether the bite was or not. That sheknew how I felt and she was secure enough in her place that the formality of it could wait.
But five years is a long time to tell someone they can wait.
I know this somewhere I don't like to look.
I pick up the pen and set it back down.
There's something I keep coming back to. It nagged at me through the whole heat, surfacing and submerging, and now that my head is clear it's louder.
Marie never tried to be claimed.
I should have pushed further on that. Would have, if I'd been thinking straight. An omega in heat with her pack, her scent match right there, and she never once tilted her head or pressed her throat toward us in offering. When we came near her neck she'd shift away. Cover it. Turn her face into the pillow.
I thought she was being respectful. Waiting for me to initiate.
I remember the moment Jasper talked me back from it.
We'd been going for days. I surfaced enough to think and the pull was so strong, so certain, and I had Marie in my arms, the paperwork was already filed and I thought:now. Do it now.
Then Jasper's hand was on my arm. We were by the door between rounds, him fully clothed, me barely, and he looked at me the way he'd been looking at me for days—neutral, careful, something I couldn't read underneath it.
"Wait," he said. "She lied about Vee. You found that out just before this started. Claim her now and you can't take it back. Wait until after. You need answers first. Make sure."
The words cut through the rut fog. I looked at him and I saw the sense of it.
"Vee deserves a conversation," he said. "If you're going to do this, she should at least know what happened first."
I'd agreed. Told myself it was the right call. That I was being a good pack lead, responsible, fair to Vee.
The truth is messier than that.
