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“How do you explain Finn, then?” Leith asks, voice flat.

Beck opens his mouth, clearly ready with something sharp, then thinks better of it. He takes a long pull of black coffee instead and resumes pacing, shoes squeaking against the floor.

“Finn’s safe,” Beck mutters. “Familiar. No overwhelming scent-match bullshit while she’s coming out of surgery and doped up on painkillers.”

He’s talking too fast again, mumbling under his breath about concussions and the dangers of activity after surgery, refusing to sit even though he looks like he might fall over any second.

“Beck,” I say quietly.

He doesn’t stop.

“Beck.”

This time my voice carries the alpha weight. He slows, shoulders tight, but finally turns to face me.

“You need to sit down,” I tell him, hoping that I push enough reassurance through the command. “She’s stable. The suppressant has been given. And Finn’s with her. Pacing a hole in the floor and mainlining caffeine isn’t going to get you back in that room any faster.”

Beck stares at me for a long second, jaw working. Then he lets out a humorless laugh and drops onto the couch across from me, elbows on his knees. “Fine. I’m fine. She didn’t reject me. Us. Whatever.”

Leith doesn’t comment, just keeps watching Cammie’s door like he can will it open through sheer stubbornness. He hasn’t moved from that chair in six hours. Not once. The man is a statue when he decides something’s important enough to guard, and right now Cammie matters more than comfort, more than food, more than anything. I tried an hour ago to get him to eat something or at least stand and stretch. He looked at me like I’d suggested he set the hospital on fire, then went right back to staring.

His phone lights up again. He’s been on it most of the night, checking updates from his police contacts. Every so often he’ll mutter, “Fucking female alpha,” in a low tone that somehow sounds more dangerous than shouting. Then he growls at the screen like it’s the reason he doesn’t have the answers he wants. I don’t blame him. The bitch who pushed Cammie into traffic is still out there, and every hour that passes without an arrest makes my own alpha restless.

I drag a hand down my face and glance at the closed door again.

Finn’s the one in there with her. The nurse asked him to go back in after Cammie got her suppressant. Intellectually, I get it completely. Finn is familiar. Safe. His scent doesn’t hit her like a freight train the way Beck’s and mine do. She woke up confused, hurting, and overwhelmed. Of course, she reached for the one person who already felt like comfort instead of chaos.

That doesn’t make it stink any less. I’m pack alpha. She’s my scent match. And yet when she needed someone steady at her side, she chose Finn. Not me. Not Beck. Finn.

I exhale slowly, forcing the ugly twist of ego back down where it belongs. This isn’t about me.

If Cammie is already reaching for him, trusting him, it could be the bridge we need. The complication of her only matching two of us is messy enough. The last thing this pack needs is Finn feeling like the odd man out while Beck and I hover like possessive assholes. Maybe her choosing him first is the universe’s way of balancing the scales. Maybe it’s exactly what we need to start fitting together instead of pulling apart.

I rub my thumb over the edge of my phone. Three new messages from the Nantucket contact sit unread. They came in sometime between when I left for the hospital and when I was kicked out of Cammie’s room. I don’t open them. That problem can wait.

twenty-two

Finn

I've barely left this room in three days. The only times I stepped out were when the nurses needed the space or Cammie needed privacy. Even then I waited right outside and came back the second they let me. I can feel Beck and Piers getting more frustrated every time I walk back through the door. I get it. I'm not her scent match. I don't have the claim they do. But I keep coming back anyway, and I've stopped pretending I'm going to stop.

Leith doesn't seem bothered. He stands out in the hallway like he's been assigned guard duty, which knowing Leith, is exactly how he sees it.

Cammie's slept through most of it. Between the pain meds and what her body is doing to heal, the awake moments have been short. She invited the others in a few times when she was more alert. Beck and Piers rushed in every time and stayed as long as she'd let them.

I watched her with them. She somehow managed to be entirely herself while handling the pull of the scent match, wounded and exhausted, from a hospital bed. When Piers grumbled that she needed to finish the food on her lunch tray, she told him he could have it if it was so important it not go to waste. Piers is not used to anyone telling him no. The look on his face was actually comical.

She thinks I’m here because I have to be. Because two of my packmates are her scent matches. I can tell by the careful way she looks at me. But that’s not it. I’m here because I want to be. I'd made up my mind to text her the day she was hurt. I can’t stop thinking about that. Wondering if my waiting is what put her here. Would she have gone on that date with the Overstreets if she had known I wanted to introduce her to my pack?

I lean forward when she starts to stir. Her eyes open slowly, still that specific shade of blue that I noticed the first night. She finds me right away, same as always. It’s like she checks for me before she's fully conscious that she’s doing it.

"Finn," she says. "You're still here."

"I'm still here," I say, and reach for her hand. She lets me take it.

She looks wrong in this room. That's the only word for it. Wrong. Cammie is a woman who needs color. For god’s sake, she has a bright orange couch she chose deliberately. This hospital room is beige and fluorescent and wholly without personality. She was meant for somewhere else entirely. Some place where every color can wash across her skin and paint her with the same vivid shades she brings to the world.

I want to see her in color again. Bright clothes. Pink lips. Ridiculous earrings swinging at the side of her head. Now she’s pale, even more so against the white sheets. Her skin’s been scrubbed free of makeup. There’s no color, none of the noise that makes her her. She looks like a pretty coloring book picture before anyone’s had a chance to fill in all the spaces with their crayons.