"Twice in the last hour."
"I know." I heard it both times. I will probably hear it in my sleep for the rest of my life. "I'm not going in."
Finn nods. He doesn't argue. He knows where that line is. He's always known.
The hallway light flickers above us as we sit in silence, punctuated only by what filters through from her room. Every morning I woke up in this house next door and knew she was just a few feet away and I couldn't do a damn thing about it. All those months of watching her get smaller and quieter while we waited for Chase to build something strong enough to matter.
We waited too long.
I knew it when Jasper's reports started to change tone. I knew it when Ragon destroyed her nest and she went silent in a way that was different from her earlier silences. I should have pushed harder. Found another way.
I press the back of my head against the wall and stare at the ceiling.
The door opens.
Malcolm slips out. He looks like the wreckage of a man—hair destroyed, shirt somewhere inside the room, moving on nothing but will and instinct. He pulls the door shut behind him and leans against the wall across from me.
Her scent follows him out.
Vanilla and wildflowers and underneath it the thing that belongs specifically to an omega in heat. My vision blurs. The rut that's been simmering at the base of my skull for six hours threatens to tip into something I won't be able to manage.
I close my eyes. Count backwards from ten.
Name it. Acknowledge it. Decide what to do with it.
When I open them Malcolm is watching me. His eyes hold a look that says he understands exactly what this is doing to me.
"You okay?"
"Fine."
"You don't look fine."
"I'mnotgoing in there."
"I know." He runs a hand through what's left of the order in his hair. "I wasn't suggesting you should."
Finn disappears down the hallway toward the bathroom. Malcolm slips back into the room with her. The door clicks shut.
I'm alone with her scent still hanging in the air.
My hand curls into a fist at my side.
I look at the knuckles. The old scarring there. I look at it sometimes and think about the night everything changed. The choice that set all of this in motion. The reason we are here in this house in this particular way—close enough to smell her through a door, too far away to do anything about it.
I made the right call that night.
I'd make it again without hesitation.
For him.
Always for him.
But sitting on this floor at two in the morning listening to her suffer ten feet away… it costs me every hour I stay.
And the hours bleed.
I don’t know how many it’s been before a sound comes through the door.
