“Doesn't factor.” He sets the pot on the cart and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, easy and unhurried. “Not when it comes to you.”
I lean down to her ear while Lex moves off. “I told you so. It makes them feel good, doing things for their omegas. That's not manipulation. That's just how this works.”
Her eyes go wide. She darts a look at Kev returning with an armful of violet pots. “Is that actually true?”
I bump her shoulder. “Ask me again when you want the apple tree in a hand-thrown ceramic pot instead of plastic.”
She catches on a beat later and ducks her head, laughing quietly. I'm going to spend the rest of my life making her do that.
We drift further into the nursery, following the smell of cut greenery toward the herb section. I smell the rosemary before I spot it. Sharp and resinous, cutting through all the sweetness. Small starts in black plastic pots. I pick one up and press my fingers to the stem and the scent comes off it immediately.
“This reminds me of my kitchen,” I say. “Liam at the stove. Mateo with flour dusted up his forearms. He’d sing while he kneaded the bread. He was pretty tone deaf but I still liked hearing him…”
I keep holding the rosemary. The leaves are sharp under my thumb.
“You miss them,” Kev says.
He's beside me. I didn't hear him come. His voice is quiet and his eyes hold the grief.
“Every day,” I say.
“Shall we get this too, then?”
I hold the rosemary harder. My arms have gone heavy. “That would be nice.”
“It's tougher than it looks.” He touches a leaf and pulls me in with his other arm. “We’ll put it on the patio by the daybed, if that suits you. The sun will hit it in the mornings.”
I nod. There's something burning behind my eyes and I focus on the sharpness of the leaves under my thumb until it passes.
“Have you been to their graves?” he asks. He tries to gentle the question.
“I only knew they were dead when I overheard Axel's men talking about it.” The words come out flat. Far away. “They'd cut the brakes on their car. And they laughed when they said it. I heard them laugh.”
Kev wraps around me, hauling me tight against his chest. “Oh, love.” His hand cradles the back of my head, holding me there. Lex and Ezra close in from either side until I’m surrounded by heat and scent and solid bodies, pinned safely at the center of them, and I bury myself against Kev’s shoulder and breathe.
“I will never take them from you,” he says into my hair. “Knowing we wouldn't have you if they'd lived — I hold both of those things. They were yours and they mattered and we will honor that. Always.” His lips press to my temple. “When you're ready, I'll take you to them.”
I press my eyes shut and nod and hold on.
“Aubrey?” Espie's voice, small. Lex and Ezra part and she comes through, her brows pinched. I open my arm and she tucks herself against my side and we hold each other.
“There's never a good time for these memories,” she says.
“No,” I say. “But they're ours.”
Lex cups the back of my neck. “Every part of you that loved them made you who you are now.” He says it quietly.
Espie is quiet for a moment. Then: “I wish Sera knew that too. That she doesn't have to earn her place with us.”
“She will,” Ezra says. “And when she comes home I'll make sure she hears it until it sticks.”
“We could keep her in the nest until she believes it,” Espie says.
“Indefinitely,” Kev agrees, and the word comes out so dry that Espie laughs, startled, and the air in the aisle shifts, just slightly.
We stay in the aisle, taking up the space. Nobody says anything. Nobody moves to leave.
But then cold moves down my spine, vertebra by vertebra. The odor sticks in my throat, chemical and off, fake alpha wrapped around something that was never alpha to begin with. My stomach twists hard. Espie presses against my side, tenseenough to shake, a quiet whine rumbling deep in her throat while she scans the aisle in frantic sweeps.
