Page 114 of What We Don't Say: Part Two

Dash looks at me. I set the fruit back in the fridge and close the door softly. “After his first heat, she was gone. His body remembers that even when the rest of him understands why. He mentioned that sometimes when he wakes up, he looks for her.”

Something changes in Dash’s face, as he glances toward the stairs again, where Theo’s low groan follows Callie’s breathless laugh, and his shoulders settle with a kind of recognition that does not need to be explained. “I don’t have a problem with him hanging off her every chance he gets,” Dash says. “I’d rather that than him trying to make himself small around me.”

“He won’t do that long,” Sloane says. He grabs a plate to rinse though he starts scrubbing it a little too hard, his hands slower than usual under the water. “He’s shy until he decides he isn’t. Then he’s impossible.”

Dash’s mouth curves faintly. “She smiles differently with him.”

The sound of the house seems to grow around the silence after that. Upstairs, the nest shifts with a dull thump, followed by Callie’s breath catching hard enough that Sloane closes his eyes. His scent deepens so quickly that mine answers before I can stop it.

Dash looks between us, then down at the towel in his hand, and there is enough restraint in him not to make the obvious comment too sharp. “Bigger,” he says instead, finishing the thought he began. “Her smiles are effortless with him. Like she isn’t checking whether anyone is waiting for her to apologize for being happy.”

Sloane’s purr slips out before he can lock it down. It rolls through the kitchen, as he shifts his stance a fraction. His hand drops to the edge of the sink, his fingers flexing once against the counter. When he opens his eyes, they are fixed on the stairs.

“Fuck,” he says quietly. “I can’t sit here listening to them.”

I let my gaze move over him, the set of his shoulders, the heat beneath his skin, the visible effort it takes not to follow the sounds upstairs. “You are not sitting.”

He huffs once, but the humor barely softens him. “You know what I mean.”

“I do.”

Another sound reaches us, softer this time, Theo’s voice wrecked and pleading around something I can't make out. Sloane’s breath catches on it, and the answering pull in me is immediate enough that I have to set both hands on the back of a chair and wait for my control to return.

Dash laughs under his breath, the sound dry at the edges and tired in a way that makes room for all of us to be ridiculous without turning us into a joke. He tosses the towel into the sink and reaches for the whiskey bottle on the sideboard like he already knows none of us is going to eat dinner now.

“I was going to offer a drink,” he says, “but the two of you look about three minutes from making that unnecessary.”

Sloane drags a hand over his face. “Callie is so fucking happy.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” Dash mutters.

I look toward the stairs again, listening past the obvious sounds to the shape of them. Dash pours two fingers of whiskey into one glass and then seems to reconsider the purpose of it. He takes a small sip himself, sets it down, and steps back from the counter. His gaze moves once toward the staircase, then to Sloane, then to me.

“Yeah,” he says. “I think this is goodnight.”

Sloane’s mouth tips up at one corner. “Running?”

“Choosing peace.” Dash picks up his phone and keys from the counter, then points the keys toward the living room without looking at the couch. “Don’t fuck on my couch.”

“It’sCallie’scouch,” Sloane says.

Dash pauses at the doorway and looks back at him. “That makes the warning stronger.”

I manage a smile, Dash’s expression softening for half a second, the guardedness thinning before he turns away. “Goodnight,” he says. Then, after a beat, with his voice lower and less dry, “Have fun.”

I grimace at that before twisting to see my Alpha, whatever control Sloane had been using to stand still beginning to fray the moment there’s no one left to witness it except me.

He reaches for me before I reach for him, his hand closing around the front of my shirt, pulling me in with enough force to make the dishes rattle on the counter beside us.

His mouth meets mine hard, and I kiss him back just as hard. Upstairs, Callie cries out again. Sloane breaks the kiss against my mouth, shuddering. “Shower.”

“Yes.”

I gladly take his hand and lead him up the stairs to the shower beside Theo’s room, their thickened scents only making it harder to focus. We strip quickly as I reach to turn on the water, Sloane not settling until he’s under the spray, his head bowed to my shoulder.

His breathing comes out in growly puffs of air, his need spurring me on until I lose my own control, gently gripping the back of his neck. I kiss him again, slower this time, and he opens for it with a sound that pulls the last of my restraint apart.

Steam wraps around us the moment the glass door closes. Sloane moves back under the spray, his cock already hard, heavy against his stomach, and when my hand brushes it he shudders hard enough that the sound escapes before he can stop it.