Page 34 of What We Don't Say: Part One

Now it lives in my pocket. I touch it during breakfast when the dining room gets crowded and again in group orientation when someone drops a binder and three Omegas flinch at once. I touch it when Andrea walks past without looking into my room. I touch it when I remember Calliope holding a fry between her fingers and waiting for me to choose whether I wanted it.

My mouth still remembers the salt. My body remembers the brush of her fingertips against my wrist while she wiped honey mustard from my thumb. The memory that makes me close my eyes is the kiss, the small press of my mouth to hers before I knew I was brave enough to do it, and Sloane’s purr rolling across the booth afterward, holding the air still while I waited for someone to tell me I’d done something wrong. Calliope didn’t tell me that. She said hi.

A knock sounds against my door just as I fold the hair tie back into my fist. I push it into my hoodie pocket before the handle turns, then sit straighter on the edge of the bed with my feet flat on the floor. Counselor Miller steps in with a white Bellwether tote hanging from her hand, my name printed on the tag in black marker.

She sets the tote on the foot of my bed instead of handing it to me. “This is one of the next steps,” she says, keeping her voice low enough that it doesn’t scrape over my skin. “Approved scent orientation. The Crane pack sent a few things from the house.”

My hand closes around the hair tie inside my pocket. Miller’s eyes flick there, but she doesn’t ask what I’m holding, and that makes it easier to keep breathing.

“You can open it alone, or I can stay,” she says.

I look at the tote, then at the chair by the desk, then back at the tote. My fingers lift from my pocket long enough to tap the blanket beside me.

Miller sits in the chair and sets her tablet facedown on her lap. She doesn’t touch the tote. She doesn’t tell me to begin. She only waits while I reach for the handles and pull the bag closer.

The first thing inside is folded so neatly I know it belongs to Garrett before I bring it to my face. Cold mint and polished leather rise from the dark cloth, clean and controlled, the scent of the man whose name sits at the top of every page in my placement file. My shoulders lower around it because this scent has a place in every rule I’ve been taught to trust. Head Alpha. Main contact. The name Bellwether uses when they need an answer.

I hold the shirt in my lap for a moment, then set it beside me on the quilt and reach back into the tote. The next item is larger, packed without the same careful folds. Sloane’s hoodie takes up half the bag, dark fabric worn at the cuffs and heavy with smoked cedar and brown sugar. The scent comes up fast enough that my breath catches, and I press the sleeve against my mouth before I can stop myself.

Miller stays quiet while I breathe into the fabric. Sloane’s scent feels like the café table and the kitchen island and the way he kept his hands where I could see them even though I could feel how badly he wanted to reach. It feels like the purr that moved under my skin after I kissed Calliope, the one that said I was still allowed to sit there with my shoulder against hers. I keep the hoodie against my face until my lungs stop trying to climb out of my chest.

Idris’s sweater is folded beneath it, heavier than the rest. Black tea and rain sit deep in the knit, cool at first, then broad enough that my spine straightens while I hold it. It doesn’t pull me forward the way Sloane’s scent does. It gives me a line to rest against. I think of Idris in the kitchen, hand braced on the chair, telling Andrea they had to be careful before anyone pushed me too far.

There’s a small packet tucked into the sleeve. Communication cards, fresh and laminated, held together by a silver ring. Yellow. Green. Red. White. The yellow one makes my throat tighten, but it also makes the room feel less closed, so I slide the ring around my thumb and let the cards rest against my palm.

The last thing in the tote is a scarf.

Blue.

My fingers stop on the fabric. For a second, all I can do is stare at the folded edge and the loose thread near one corner. Then honeyed pear and vanilla tea slip into the air, softer than the Alphas and quieter than the rest, and my body bends toward it before I decide to move.

Calliope’s scent rises from something I’m allowed to hold.

The scarf has been folded into the tote and sent through the proper hands, but the hair tie in my pocket is something I took because I didn’t know how to leave the café with empty hands. I lift the scarf carefully, afraid too much pressure will make the scent disappear faster. It smells like the space beside her throat and the cardigan sleeve I held in the kitchen, like the faculty café when she sat next to me and fed me fries from her fingers. It smells cleaner than the hair tie, less tangled in the sharpness of my own panic, but it’s still hers, and my eyes burn before I get the fabric all the way to my face.

“That one came from Calliope,” Miller says, as if I might need the words to believe what my body already knows.

I nod into the scarf.

“She sent a note too.” Miller reaches into the side pocket of the tote and pulls out a folded card. She looks at the front, then holds it out to me without opening it. “You don’t have to read it now.”

The card has my name on it in careful handwriting.

Theo.

I run my thumb over the letters until they blur. Then I open it.

I left the plant book in the sunroom. The dramatic one is still alive. — Calliope

A sound comes out of me, too small to be a laugh and too rough to be anything else. I press the card to the scarf, then hold both against my chest while the room shifts around me. The white walls are still white. The floor still smells like lemon cleaner. Somewhere down the hall, a cart wheel squeaks at the same place it always does, but the tote is open on my bed, and the house feels closer than it did this morning.

Miller’s face warms when I look up. “After scent orientation, you’re allowed one pack call. You don’t have to use it, but most Omegas find it helpful before final placement.”

My fingers tighten around the scarf.

“The approved number is in your packet,” she says, reaching for the folder on my desk and opening it to the front page. “The primary contact is Alpha Crane.”

Garrett’s number sits beneath his name in clean black type. I’ve seen it before on the file Andrea carried into the kitchen and on the packet Miller reviewed after lunch. I don’t have Calliope’s number. I don’t have Sloane’s or Idris’s. I have the pack contact Bellwether gives me, and the pack contact is the man whose shirt is folded beside me, cold mint and polished leather sitting close enough to count as safe.