My mates.
The word settles and I press my hand flat against my sternum. My mates. All four of them here in this car. A fifth somewhere in Silverpine, and the pull leans toward something just out of reach.
The nursery sits at the end of Ferris Road with a hand-painted sign above the gate and terracotta stacked three deep along the front wall. Midday light sits flat across the car park, pale and cool. A wheelbarrow full of pansies waits beside the entrance. Someone's propped the door open with a brick.
Kev pulls into a space near the entrance and kills the engine. For a second nobody moves. Then Ezra opens his door. We get out into the cold, Espie taking my hand immediately, and the alphas arrange themselves around us. Kev and Lex falling into place on either side of us, Ezra close at Espie's back and we cross the car park.
The warmth hits at the door. Humid and dense, the kind that sits in your lungs. Then the scent. Wet soil and green things and underneath it all, layered and sweet, flowers. Hundreds of them. Every surface crowded with color, terracotta and ceramic and plastic lining the shelves from floor to ceiling, a handwritten chalkboard at the far end listing what's in season.
Espie stops just inside the door and breathes it in slowly, her eyes closing.
“I love this smell,” she says. “So fresh. Untainted.”
I lean in and kiss her. “I like this scent next after yours.”
She ducks her head. A delicate flush creeps up her neck, pink against her skin.
The alphas are watching us instead of the exits now. Lex clears his throat. “Why don't we go this way?” He gestures toward a long row of flowering plants, purples and whites and deep reds crowding the shelves.
We follow him in. The place is full for a Tuesday. Baskets over arms, children underfoot, an older woman in an aprondeadheading something at the end of the aisle who looks up and smiles when we pass.
Families move through the aisles around us. A small girl crouches in front of a display of succulents, poking at the fat leaves with one finger. Espie falters. A man laughs somewhere behind us. Loud. I close my eyes for a second and lean into Espie.
Kev moves to my left, his hand at my hip. Lex moves in at my right. Ezra pulls Espie properly into his side. They close around us, and I breathe inside the space they make until the tightness eases.
“What did you have in mind, Espie?” Lex asks, leaning down.
“Agapanthus,” she says. “For the pots on the patio. The blue ones. They'd come back every year.”
That's all our alphas need. They spread out through the aisle like it's the only thing that matters. Ezra finds them first and calls Lex over. Lex disagrees about something — the size of the pot, maybe, or the number of stems — and they have a low, serious argument about it while Kev retrieves a cart and begins loading plants into it. Espie watches them with her lips pressed together.
“They're going to buy all of them,” she says.
“Yes,” I agree. “They need to do this for us. Let them buy whatever they want.”
We wander while the alphas work. Espie stops at a dwarf lemon tree and holds the pot up so I can smell the leaves. We agree it belongs near the kitchen door. She finds a climbing rose for the back fence and holds the tag toward me, and I nod, and it goes on the cart. I suggest an apple tree for the corner of the garden where the afternoon sun sits longest, and she lights up, and that goes on a separate cart that Ezra retrieves.
Two carts, then a third.
Kev pulls a potted hydrangea off a shelf and holds it up at Lex. Lex shakes his head. Kev puts it back. Kev doesn't have to ask. Lex already knows what Kev's going to say. Eight years together shows in the way they move around each other. Ezra crouches to read a plant label. Lex argues about drainage. Kev gets soil on his sleeve.
My shoulders loosen. Then something deeper does too. Easy. Unclenched.
Espie crouches in front of a display of pots and stops at a row of violet ones with a fluted glaze edge. She picks one up and turns it in her hands, tilting it so the glaze catches the greenhouse light.
“Aubrey.” She holds it out to me. “These would look beautiful on the patio. With the agapanthus in them.”
“I agree. Let’s get ten of them,” I say.
She glances at the price tag and pulls back, just slightly. “I don't know. They're expensive.”
Lex eases the pot out of her hands. “Did you say our omega wanted ten of these?”
“Ten. With the agapanthus,” I confirm.
“On it. I saw more of those in the last row,” Kev says, and he's already gone.
Espie catches Lex's forearm. “You don't have to. Really. The price—”
