Page 83 of What We Don't Say: Part One

His fingers slide between mine, clumsy and warm, and the fear I have been carrying for days goes so quiet I can barely remember the shape of it. I stroke my thumb over his knuckles and lean close enough that his lashes flutter.

“Hi, Star,” I murmur.

Theo’s mouth curves. “Callie.”

Garrett’s hand moves over Theo’s back, slow and steady. His face is calmer now, the dark thing I saw in him tucked away again beneath the familiar control. He looks at Theowith something softer than possession and harder than simple affection, and I let myself file the unease away because Theo is safe, Theo is warm, and Theo asked him to be here.

Idris sets the glass aside and draws the blanket higher over my hip. “Color, Calliope?”

“Green.” The answer comes easily. My body is tired, tender, and heavy in exactly the right ways, and Sloane’s arm around me feels like a promise that has learned how to breathe. “Very green.”

Sloane groans behind me. “Very green might kill me.”

“It didn’t.” Idris reaches past me and presses two fingers to Sloane’s forehead, pushing him back an inch when he starts to nose at my neck again. “Give her thirty seconds.”

“I can do thirty seconds.” Sloane lasts maybe three before he kisses my shoulder through the blanket. “That didn’t count.”

Theo makes a sleepy sound that might be a laugh, and the room loosens around it. Even Garrett’s mouth shifts, barely there and almost fond, as Theo tucks closer into the space between us with his body still anchored by Garrett and his hand still in mine.

Theo’s fingers stay tangled with mine while Sloane’s arm remains heavy around my waist. His breathing has nearly matched mine when Garrett adjusts the blanket near Theo’s shoulder.

Garrett shifts after a while, careful not to disturb Theo too much. “He’ll be raw for a while,” he says, voice low enough that it almost belongs to the blankets. His gaze is on Theo’s hair, not on me. “Keep him warm.”

The words touch the edge of my mind, but Sloane’s mouth is already at my temple, warm and lazy, and Theo’s fingers tighten around mine before Garrett finishes speaking. Idris looks at me, not sharply, not worried, only present.

“I’m okay,” I say, though no one has asked. My voice sounds soft and sleepy even to me, and Sloane’s lips curve against my skin.

“Yeah, baby,” he murmurs. “You are.”

Sloane

By the time coffee starts, I’ve already put the same mug under the machine twice. The first cup sits forgotten beside the sink, cooling untouched, and the second is halfway full before I realize I’ve made it for Callie instead of myself, with the splash of cream she likes and the spoon resting across the top because she always forgets she’s stirred it and goes back in for another pass.

My hands keep wanting something to do. Mug, counter, drawer handle, the hem of Callie’s sweater when she passes close enough for me to hook a finger into it and tug her backagainst my chest. She lets me do it the first three times, and on the fourth, she laughs under her breath and presses her elbow lightly into my ribs.

“Sloane,” she says, but she’s smiling when she says it. Her hair is still a little tangled from sleep, and there’s a crease on her cheek from the blanket Theo dragged over her in the nest sometime before dawn.

“What?” I tuck my mouth against the side of her neck, only for a second, only enough to feel her pulse trip beneath my lips. “I’m helping.”

“You’re hovering.” She turns enough to give me a look, soft and amused and too knowing for how little coffee she’s had. Her hand comes up to touch my wrist where it’s resting against her stomach.

“I’m admiring.” My voice is too rough for a joke, and she hears it because she always hears me. The concern in her eyes makes my whole body want to curl around her until nothing in the house can get through. “I’m fine, baby.”

Callie hums like she believes half of that and has decided to be kind about the rest. “Coffee first. Then whatever Alpha crisis you’re pretending isn’t happening.”

Across the kitchen, Theo sits on one of the island stools with both hands wrapped around a glass of water Idris made him drink. He’s wearing one of Callie’s sweaters again, the soft blue one that slips off one shoulder and makes him look smug every time my eyes catch on it. He keeps glancing between Callie and the mug I made her, then down at his water like he’s pretending he isn’t tracking every time she moves.

Idris stands near him, one hip against the island, black tea and rain banked low in the room while he checks Theo without making a show of it. Two fingers brush Theo’s wrist. A palm settles briefly between his shoulder blades. A murmured “breathe” lands whenever Theo’s chest starts moving too fast,and Theo responds every time, pliant and loose from last night’s care, though his foot still hooks around Callie’s ankle when she comes close.

That should settle me, and it almost does. Last night keeps flashing through me in pieces that won’t smooth out into memory: Theo on his knees in the middle of the nest he built, Callie laughing when he ordered her into place, Garrett settling on one side of him because Theo asked, Idris watching the whole room like he could hold every pulse in his hands.

Theo looked at Callie while Alpha heat rolled through him hard enough to shake the floor under my knees. He wanted all of us, but he kept finding her, and my rut-edge still hasn’t figured out how to stand down from the sight of it. The pack worked, and every possessive, protective, half-feral part of me woke up this morning with one command burning under my skin: keep it exactly like that.

Garrett enters while Callie is reaching above her head for the honey. I move before I think, stepping behind her to get it down because she’s already stretching onto her toes and because I want my hand at her waist again. She gives me a look over her shoulder, amused and fond, and I kiss the corner of her mouth before setting the jar on the counter.

Theo watches us with wide eyes, then hides his smile in his glass of water. Garrett’s gaze catches there for less than a second, moving from Callie’s mouth to my hand at her waist, then to Theo’s face, then to the sweater hanging off Theo’s shoulder.

Nothing changes in Garrett’s expression. He looks like he always does in the morning: calm, clean, controlled, with his dark hair still damp from the shower and his robe tied with the kind of precision that makes me want to wrinkle it on principle.