Page 36 of What We Don't Say: Part One

“Sloane and Idris can take the heavier parts of the transition,” Garrett says. “Calliope can stay close. She can still be Calliope. We just don’t want either of you overwhelmed before the house is ready for you.”

The words sound like something made to protect her. They fit with the packet on Miller’s tablet and the orientation rooms and the charts about heat stress. They fit with every counselor who has told me a steady head Alpha matters.

My thumb finds the hair tie hidden in my hoodie pocket under the scarf.

“Theo?” Garrett asks.

Her name presses behind my teeth, too warm for the call room and too large for the receiver. I want to ask for her. I want to ask if she moved away because I scared her. I want to ask if kissing her made the inch happen.

Footsteps pass outside the door, and I put the receiver back in the cradle before her name can come out.

Miller waits a moment before coming farther into the room. Her eyes move from the phone to the tote, then to the scarf still caught in my fist.

“Did Alpha Crane answer?” she asks.

I nod.

“Right away?”

I nod again, keeping one hand in my pocket around the hair tie.

Her face warms. “That’s a good sign, Theo. It seems like that pack really likes you.”

I nod because she’s smiling. I nod because Garrett answered. I nod because he knew about the hoodie and the sweater and the scarf, because he said Calliope was special, because he said she could still be Calliope.

Miller walks me back to my room and leaves the tote on my bed. The door clicks shut behind her, and I spread the pack’s things across the quilt before Bellwether’s lemon-clean air can swallow what they brought me.

Calliope’s scarf stays against my chest while I climb into the middle of everything. Sloane’s hoodie goes beneath my cheek, Idris’s sweater tucks against my back, and Garrett’s shirt rests near the pillow where I can reach it without moving.

Under the scarf, hidden in my fist, is the hair tie I took without asking.

Honeyed pear and vanilla tea cling to the elastic, warmer than the scarf, less careful, full of the café and her fingers and the word I couldn’t say into the phone. I hold it close enough that the band presses a line into my palm, and my mouth shapes her name where no one can hear it.

Idris

By the time Bellwether calls, the house already smells like butter, lemon, melted sugar, and the last of the dinner Sloane keeps trying to turn into Theo’s emergency grocery list. Garrett and I stand at the island with the security tablet between us, the final arrival route pulled up beside the visitor lockout schedule. The suite upstairs is ready. The cards are placed in the kitchen, sunroom, living room, and Theo’s room. The low-scent laundry is sealed in the linen bags. The food list has been checked twice by me and vandalized six times by Sloane.

Callie sits on the counter beside the cooling racks with a mixing bowl in her lap, one bare foot tucked under her thigh and the other hooked around the cabinet pull. Flour dusts the heel of her hand, the front of her sweater, and the curve of her jaw where she must have touched herself without noticing. She has already made lemon bars, two trays of shortbread, and something with honey folded into the dough because Theo liked honey mustard at lunch and Sloane apparently took that as a spiritual directive.

Sloane stands between her knees with the grocery list braced against her thigh, pretending to review it while he feeds her another bite from the plate he stole from the table after dinner. He lifts the fork before she can argue, waits until she opens her mouth, and smiles so openly when she takes the bite that my hand stills on the tablet.

“You added fries again,” Callie says around the food, reaching down with two floury fingers to tap the list. “That is the fourth time. He's one Omega, Sloane, not a county fair.”

Sloane circles something in the margin instead of crossing anything out. “He liked yours better than his, which means we need every possible fry shape until we discover whether it was the potato, the salt, the company, or your fingers.”

Callie’s cheeks go pink, and the spoon in her bowl drags too hard through the dough. Sloane catches her wrist before she can fling flour at him, kisses the inside of it, and lets her go only after she tries to glare at him and fails.

Garrett looks up from the security tablet with his sleeves rolled to his forearms and his tie gone loose at his throat. He has been here for almost an hour, checking camera angles and entry codes with me while Sloane adds nonsense to the list and Callie creates enough baked goods to survive a siege. He should look out of place in the middle of this much flour. Somehow, he only lookslike a man who has learned where to stand so he doesn't get hit by Sloane’s elbows.

“The arrival route is locked,” Garrett says, sliding the tablet half an inch toward me. “Bellwether confirmed the driver's name this afternoon, and I sent the gate code directly to the coordinator. The exterior cameras are set to alert only to unfamiliar vehicles between eight and noon, so the system won’t keep notifying us every time the van shifts in the drive.”

I check the route again, then the time block. “Interior cameras stay disabled in Theo’s room and bathroom. Hallway only, no audio. Kitchen and sunroom remain active until he asks otherwise.”

Garrett nods and marks the line complete. “Agreed. I also added a note that Andrea isn't the preferred transition counselor for tomorrow.”

Callie’s spoon pauses in the bowl. She looks from Garrett to me, then back to Garrett, her expression caught between surprise and the careful softness she has worn around him since his second apology after the first visit. “You did?”

Garrett sets the stylus down and gives her his attention. “Yes, sweetheart. She turned too much into performance. I should have caught more of it before she walked in here with a tablet and a list of practiced responses.”