Page 44 of What We Don't Say: Part Two

I roll the pill under my thumb until Idris' hand closes over mine, stopping the motion before I grind it into powder. He sits to my right, every line of him held in place by will and the kind of control that costs too much. Theo is curled in the chair on my other side with his knees pulled up, one of Callie’s sweaters gathered against his chest.

Idris' latest renewal bite sits fresh on Theo’s throat, mostly hidden by the collar of his shirt. Mercer has been documenting each renewal while the placement challenge drags on, but I still remember the first one most clearly: Theo choosing it with a shaking voice and no command dragging the choice out of him.

Garrett is still in our house. I can still see the blood from the night my fist split his mouth every time I look at him. He still breathes through rooms Callie was ripped out of, and I’m sitting at Blackline pretending a legal process is a leash strong enough to keep my hands clean.

“You need to take it,” Idris says quietly, his thumb pressing once against the back of my hand. His voice is pitched low for Theo, but the words are for me. “Your heart rate has been too high for three hours, and you’ve had two bond spikes since we got here.”

I stare at the pill. “When I take it, she’s gone.”

Theo’s breath catches. I feel the small sound more than hear it, and guilt cuts through me with enough force that I want to put my fist through the table. He shifts closer in his chair, socked feet sliding against leather, sweater clenched tight enough that his knuckles pale.

“She’s not gone,” Idris says, and there is no easy reassurance in it. He knows better than to make survival sound clean. “The medicine doesn’t change that.”

“It changes what I can feel.” My voice comes out scraped open, not loud enough to be useful and not quiet enough to be controlled. “Without it, there’s something. I don’t know where she is, but she’s there. I can feel the edge of her. I can feel enough to know she hasn’t disappeared from the world. With that in my blood, there’s nothing.”

Idris' hand tightens over mine. Theo makes another fractured sound and pushes himself out of the chair before either of us can stop him. He comes to my side and presses his forehead against my shoulder, right over the ruined, aching place where my bond to Callie used to sing instead of scream. His purr starts brokenly, a thin vibration that hurts him to give and still tries to soothe me.

I turn my face into his hair and breathe around the shape of Callie’s sweater between us. Cardamom. Peach blossom. The faintest ghost of honeyed pear caught in old fabric. It’s enough to make my eyes burn.

“I’m not taking it yet,” I say, and Idris closes his eyes like he knew that was where this would end. “After. I’ll try after.”

The door opens before he can answer. Zana comes in with a black drive in one hand, her coat still on, and her expression stripped down to professional cruelty. She has not slept enough. None of us have. Her hair is twisted at the nape of her neck, and one earring is missing, which would be funny in any other life. In this one, it makes her look more dangerous.

“Campus sent the exterior footage,” she says, setting the drive on the table. “Thirty minutes before Calliope leaves and thirty minutes after. Nothing inside the administrative office. Nothing from the hallway. Their legal department is holding interior cameras pending review, and I’m pushing, but this is what I have tonight.”

“Exterior only?” Idris asks.

“Sidewalk, main entrance, and a partial parking lot angle.” Zana takes the seat across from us and opens her laptop. “Before anyone starts, I want the legal reality clear. The restriction is still active. Until I get it stayed, lifted, or revoked, every inquiry about Calliope has to be surgical. They're already using language about unwanted contact, heat-space interference, and Alpha instability. The second one of you looks like you’re trying to reach her through a third party or intimidate campus into confirming her location, they will use it.”

I laugh once, and it comes out wrong. “I’ve called Halston twelve times.”

“I know,” she says, because I told her. Because I have told everyone everything that might matter and still can't make it turn into Callie. “They logged six of those calls.”

“They won’t even confirm if she works there.” I drag both hands through my hair and feel Theo flinch against me when my shoulder pulls wrong. I stop moving immediately, sick with myself. “The sister campus gives the same script. Halston doesn’t publish their faculty lists like every other school with a website and a superiority complex. Their department pages areall curated bios and dead links. I’ve checked adjunct listings, conference announcements, class schedules, staff directories, faculty senate minutes. Nothing. It’s like she walked into a fucking fog bank.”

“And if she’s employed there under restricted contact protocols, they may be keeping her off public pages for her safety or theirs,” Zana says. She sounds angry about it, which helps more than gentleness would. “Once the order is lifted, I can inquire directly without handing them harassment language. I can demand records. I can request employment confirmation through counsel. Right now, I can push around the edges and preserve evidence. That’s it.”

“That’s not enough,” I say, but there is no force behind it. Everyone in the room knows it’s not enough. Saying it doesn't change the shape of the wall.

Theo lifts his head from my shoulder. His eyes are too wide, the whites showing around dark irises. “The video?”

Zana’s mouth tightens. She looks at Idris, then at me, then back to Theo like she's trying to decide which truth will hurt him least. “It isn't graphic. The campus footage isn't the worst thing we are likely to see tonight. But it will show timing, and timing matters.”

Idris reaches across me and touches Theo’s wrist. “You can close your eyes at any time.”

Theo shakes his head. The movement is small and immediate. “I need to know.”

He says it like someone older than he was allowed to be. I hate Garrett so deeply in that moment that the hate becomes useless, too large to fit anywhere actionable. Idris turns the glass wall opaque, and Zana loads the drive.

The first screen comes alive with a static view of campus concrete, a main entrance with columns, a slice of parking lot beyond a row of young trees. The timestamp glows in thecorner. Afternoon light turns the pavement pale. Students move through the frame with backpacks and paper cups, ordinary lives cutting across the place where mine broke.

Zana scrubs forward, then slows. “This is approximately twenty-six minutes before Calliope exits.”

A black car pulls into a faculty lot space near the edge of the frame. Garrett gets out.

My body knows him before my mind finishes the shape. The way he buttons his jacket. The way he turns his head and scans the entrance. The calm. Fuck, the calm. He looks like an Alpha arriving to solve a problem, polished and contained and official enough that anyone watching would trust the direction of his hand.

A uniformed officer steps into frame from the sidewalk. They speak outside the entrance for less than a minute. No audio. No paperwork visible. No smoking gun. Just Garrett’s head inclined toward the officer and the officer nodding like this has all been arranged.