Page 112 of What We Don't Say: Part One

“Yes.”

“Then why the fuck does paper get to stand between me and my mate?”

His voice cracks on the last word, and for a moment he looks younger than I’ve ever seen him. Furious, terrified, half-feral with the need to get back to her. I understand it too well. My own hands want to close around Garrett’s throat, and that desire is exactly why I keep them at my sides.

“Because paper brings police,” I say. “Paper brings Council intervention. Paper gives him language for your anger before we get language for what he’s doing. If you go through that door and confront him right now, he’ll make the confrontation the evidence.”

Sloane turns away, hands locking behind his neck. He bends forward and breathes like the room is too small for his lungs. “I can’t just stand here.”

“You aren’t. You’re going back to the sunroom. You’re going to put your hands on Theo and Calliope where Garrett can see you do it gently. You’re going to let Theo ask for her without making the room shake. You’re going to make it impossible for Garrett to claim Calliope destabilizes him every time Theo reaches for her.”

He laughs once, but there’s no humor in it. It comes out shredded. “You’re asking me to act calm while he rewrites our fucking family.”

“I’m asking you to make calm into a weapon.” I move to the desk and pick up my phone, then set it back down withoutunlocking it. There’s no message I can send yet that won’t create more exposure than protection. “Tonight, we document quietly. We don’t leave Calliope alone with him. We don’t let Theo get isolated in hallways. We watch what happens when Garrett speaks, and we write down exactly what changes after.”

Sloane turns back. “And if he corners her?”

“Then you interrupt before he finishes the sentence,” I say, and the simplicity of it finally gives his rage a path that doesn’t lead straight through Garrett’s door.

He stares at me, chest still moving hard, and I watch the plan take shape in him. It doesn’t satisfy the Alpha. It gives the man somewhere to put his hands.

“Theo’s heat is too close,” I say. “The spikes are coming faster. He needs us steady more than he needs us righteous.”

Sloane’s jaw flexes. “Callie needs us to stop letting Garrett make her vanish.”

“Yes.” I let that sit between us because it’s the part that burns. “So we stop letting it happen. Carefully. In front of him when we can. On paper when we must. Without giving him the explosion he’s waiting to file under unstable.”

The house makes a small sound around us: a pipe settling, a door easing somewhere upstairs, Calliope’s voice murmuring through the gap in the study door. Theo answers her, too low for me to catch the words, but the fact of his voice steadies something in the room.

Sloane hears it too. His whole body turns toward the sound.

I open the study door before restraint can start feeling like surrender. “No one leaves Calliope alone with him,” I say, keeping my voice low enough that it stays inside the room. Sloane’s answer is the smoke of his Alpha rising behind his teeth, but he nods, and when we step back into the hall, he moves toward the sunroom instead of Garrett’s office.

Calliope

The night before clings to me after dawn.

Sloane had pulled me into bed with both hands and a softness that scared me more than urgency would have. He’d kissed me like he was trying to memorize the shape of my mouth, my throat, the bite he’d left in my shoulder months ago when he promised me I’d never be extra to him. Every touch had carried that promise again. Every breath against my skin had sounded like he was saying stay, even when his words kept giving me permission to go.

“If the job is right, baby, we’ll make it work,” he’d whispered against the bond mark while the room stayed dark around us and Theo slept in the sunroom with Idris close enough to hear him breathe. “You want it, we figure it out. You need it, I go with you. I don’t care if it’s one state over or on the other side of the country.”

I’d held the back of his neck and tried to answer without crying. “You love this house.”

“I love you.” His mouth had moved over my shoulder again, rougher that time, his arm locking around my waist like the sentence had made him more afraid instead of less. “A house is wood and glass. You’re my heart.”

Later, when Sloane finally slept with his face pressed against my shoulder and one arm still heavy across my middle, Idris had stayed awake behind me. He’d slid close without asking me to move, his chest firm against my back and his hand spreading low over my stomach as if he could hold the pieces of me Sloane’s desperation had shaken loose. His mouth touched the side of my neck, then the curve of my shoulder, slow and deliberate enough that my eyes burned in the dark.

“You’ll text when you arrive,” he’d murmured against my skin.

“I will,” I’d whispered, and his arm had tightened like he’d heard everything I hadn’t said.

“And when the interview ends.” Idris had turned me carefully until I faced him, Sloane still warm and heavy at my back, and his thumb had traced the line of my jaw before he kissed me. It hadn’t been frantic. Idris kissed like he was making room inside the fear and expecting me to breathe there with him. “Bring every version of you home tomorrow,” he’d said when he let my mouth go. “Nervous, brilliant, undecided, excited. I want all of it.”

Morning makes that feel both closer and farther away.

The house has shifted fully into preparation by the time I come downstairs. Warm laundry moves constantly between the machines and the sunroom, and every trip seems to carry another blanket, cooling cloth, or piece of clothing Theo has chosen for the nest. Idris’s protocol binder lies open on the island beside an untouched mug of tea, while the refrigerator and pantry are packed for the heat.

Theo’s heat hasn’t started, but it’s close enough that the house seems to be listening for it. The pre-heat spikes have been coming faster, each one leaving his skin hotter and his eyes a little too bright before he settles again. Idris has made the sunroom softer and cooler twice since sunrise. Sloane has paced the living room so many times it’s made everyone a little more antsy.