The door opens.
Leah.
Small. Thin. Filling out in ways that mean someone has been feeding her, but still thin. Brown hair to her shoulders. Her eyes have changed. Not hollowed-out anymore. Bright and alive.
My legs are already swinging over the side of the bed, feet hitting the floor. She's crossing toward me and I'm reaching for her even as my knees go soft and unreliable beneath me.
She catches me. We sink onto the bed together, a controlled collapse, and it doesn't matter that I can't stand. She's here. Alive and real. Shaking just as hard as I am as we clutch each other.
Her scent wraps around me, and underneath it are three currents I don't recognize. Warm. Male. Layered in the specific way of alphas who've been sleeping close to someone for months, pine and cedar and something darker, woven through Leah's scent.
Three bonding bites mark her throat, healed to silver. Three sets of teeth. Three claims. I stare at the way the light catches the scarring. The girl I was before Haven would have looked at thosebites and thoughtchosen. Loved. Safe.She would have wanted them.
“Espie.” Her voice cracks on my name. She pulls back just enough to look at my face, and then her mouth twists and she drags me back in. “I thought you were dead. I thought —”
“I know.” The word scrapes out of me. “Me too.”
She makes a sound against my shoulder. Her fingers lace through mine, thumb moving back and forth across my knuckles.
“We looked for you. We did everything we could to find you but he’d… moved you and—”
I nod. It’s all I can do so I don’t cry. “I know you would have.” I’d caught a glimpse of her in the dark cinderblock corridors as Wallace moved me again. A glimpse of her was all I’d needed to be horrified and relieved at the same time.
“When you were brought here, the nurses wouldn't let me in. Said you were in withdrawal, said you needed rest, said —” She stops. Swallows. “I’m happy you’re better.”
My throat locks up. I squeeze her hand until her breath catches.
“My alphas found me,” she says, after a moment. Softer now. “Ronan, Gabriel and Jax.”
After a moment she looks down at our joined hands. “I couldn't be touched for weeks after. Flinched at footsteps, at the sound of a door.” She pauses. Comes back to herself. “They never pushed for anything. Just — waited. They're still waiting, for things I'm nowhere near ready for.”
Sera waits.The thought arrives uninvited.That same particular patience. The kind that makes me want to know what it's waiting for.I shut that down.
“Gabriel cooks,” Leah continues. Her voice goes warm. “Jax reads to me. Terrible stories. They’re absolutely dreadful. He does the voices and everything. I laugh even when I don't wantto, which I think is the point.” The smile softens. “And Ronan just sits. Sometimes all night. The pain never goes away, but they make it better.”
“Are you happy?” I ask.
She smiles, and it's real, it reaches her eyes. “Absolutely happy.”
Leah got lucky and I’m glad.
The door opens quietly behind her. Cedar and blood orange drift into the room before Sera does. She pauses just inside the doorway like she’s checking whether she’s interrupting something important, and Leah eases away from me enough to look over her shoulder. Something passes between them. Recognition. Understanding.
Sera doesn’t come closer. She just leans against the wall near the door, giving us space even while her attention stays fixed on me, that same careful watchfulness she always carries now.
Leah squeezes my hand. “It can be good. I know you don't believe that. I know everything they put us through was designed to make sure we never believed it. I'm not saying trust any of them. Just… don't close yourself off before you know who your alpha really is. That's all I'm asking.”
She hugs me, telling me she’ll come back soon, and to call her if I need a friend to talk to.
“Leah is important to you,” Sera says.
“Yes.” Small word. All I have.
“I'm glad she found you,” Sera says. Her voice is quiet. Something careful in it. “I'm glad you have someone who understands.”
That's what she says. NotI wish it were me.Notlet me be that for you.Just glad that I have it.
“Why?” The word comes out before I've decided to say it. “Why would it matter to you?”
