Page 134 of What We Don't Say: Part One

The line goes dead.

A banking notification drops down across the top of the screen before I can lower the phone. The transfer is from the pack’s primary account. The amount is large enough to make my stomach heave, clean numbers and commas arranged like care, like severance, like the price of leaving quietly while Theo sweats through a heat in the house where I thought I belonged.

Dash says my name again. His voice is lower now, closer, but still careful. “You’re shaking. Let me call someone.”

“I have to go home,” I say, and this time I don't wait for him to answer.

Calliope

I get in the car with the paperwork on the passenger seat and the phone in the cup holder, screen still open to Sloane’s last message. Dash is outside my window, saying something I don't let myself hear. I back out too fast, then stop hard enough that the seat belt cuts into my chest because a student crosses behind me. For one second, I see myself as the officer described me: unstable, unsafe, a disruption in motion.

Then I drive.

The highway between the sister campus and home is too long. Every mile gives the evidence time to settle and my body time to reject it. Sloane wouldn't send me money like that. Idris wouldn't let my place become a legal paragraph. Theo wouldn't file a complaint because a café got loud and a mug broke. Garrett wouldn't tell me this if it weren't true. Garrett wouldn't stand beside a police officer with a bruise on his face and tell me I can't come home unless something has gone terribly wrong.

The thoughts circle until they stop being thoughts and become weather.

I call Sloane at every red light. Voicemail. I call Idris when traffic slows near the bridge. Voicemail. I try Theo once, then stop because the officer’s warning comes back, interference with a protected heat space, and shame burns so hot behind my eyes I almost miss my exit. When I turn onto the road that leads to the house, my hands finally steady because panic has narrowed into one clean need.

See them.

See Sloane’s face. See Idris’s eyes. See Theo in the nest and hear from his mouth what happened after he left campus. Everything else is paper. Everything else is sound. If I can get inside, truth will have a body again.

There are two police cars in the driveway.

For a moment, I can't understand what I'm seeing. The house is there, white siding and darkened sunroom windows, Sloane’s truck parked at an angle like he got out too fast and never cared how he left it. But the cruisers make it look like a crime scene. One officer stands near the walkway. Another is by the porch steps, speaking into his radio.

I park crooked at the edge of the drive and get out with the legal notice clutched in one hand.

“Ma’am,” the officer by the walkway says immediately. “Stop where you are.”

“I live here.” The words tear out of me. “My pack is inside. I need to see them.”

“You’re Calliope Monroe?”

“Yes.” I step around him, but he moves with me, blocking the path without touching me yet. “Yes, I’m Calliope Monroe. Sloane Rivera is my bonded Alpha. Idris Ward is my packmate. Theo Mehra is in heat, and I need to know he’s okay.”

“You can't enter the residence.”

“That’s my home.”

“Ms. Monroe, you were served a temporary protective heat-space restriction less than two hours ago. If you attempt to enter the property, you’ll be arrested.”

The word arrested barely lands. It belongs to another room, another woman, another life where official language still has power over instinct. I look past him to the house, to the darkened sunroom windows and the drawn curtains covering the room where Theo should be. Sloane’s truck is parked near the garage, close enough to make my chest crack open, and for one desperate second I expect him to come outside because he has to feel me. The bond is there, cold and strained but alive, and I throw everything I have toward it without knowing how to make it sound like a word.

Sloane.

Nothing comes back.

I never make it to the porch. The officer steps in front of me before I reach the walkway, and when I try to move around him, the second officer takes my wrist. Sloane would come. Idris would come. Theo would call for me if he knew I was here, if he knew I was standing outside the house with paperwork in one hand and every part of me trying to get back inside.

“Let go of me!” I’m crying now, hard enough that the house blurs. “Please. Just let me knock. Let me see them. Something is wrong.”

“Ma’am, step back,” the first officer says, putting his body between me and the path to the porch. “You can't approach the residence.”

“No.” I pull once, then again, but the second officer keeps hold of my wrist, careful and firm and impossible to get through. “Sloane!” I shout toward the house anyway, even though the windows are dark and the sunroom curtains are drawn. “Sloane, I’m here! Please!”

The second officer says my name like he learned it from paperwork before he learned it from my mouth. His hand shifts from my wrist to my forearm, and the first officer steps closer, both of them careful in a way that makes it worse than cruelty.