Page 81 of What We Don't Say: Part Two

Theo lifts his head from my chest.

His hair is wild, his face flushed and soft from sleepiness and pleasure, but his eyes sharpen when he sees Dash. He looks from me to the doorway, then back again, and something decisive moves through his small, exhausted body.

“Callie needs you,” Theo says.

Dash straightens slightly. “Theo, this isn't something you have to fix.”

Theo’s growl is immediate.

It isn't loud. It isn't frightening. It is the most offended sound I have ever heard from someone who can barely keep his eyes open. He pushes himself up on one elbow and glares at Dash like the man has missed an obvious instruction written on the wall. “Callie needs you,” he repeats, each word careful and stubborn. “The nest needs you too.”

Sloane lifts his head. For one second, pain crosses his face, complicated and honest, and then he moves. He shifts behind Dash’s empty space before Dash has even stepped into it, making room with his body in a way that says more than any speech could. Idris moves with him, steady and silent, the shape of the bed changing around the opening Theo has named.

Dash looks at me.

I reach for him. “Please come here.”

That is all it takes.

He comes to the bed slowly, like he still expects someone to tell him he has misunderstood. No one does. Sloane’s hand closes briefly around his forearm as he passes, not stopping him, only guiding him over the last awkward edge. Idris makes space behind Sloane, and Theo tugs at my hand until I am turned enough for Dash to fit in front of me.

Dash climbs into the nest and pulls me into his arms.

The moment his chest meets mine, something in me gives. I bury my face against his throat, and he holds me with both arms, solid and warm and shaking now that he has stopped pretending not to. Theo presses against my back, Sloane settles behind him, and Idris' arm comes around the outside of all of us, resting there like a roof.

Theo’s fingers creep over my waist, finding Dash’s shirt. He pats the fabric once, satisfied and sleepy, then tucks his face against the back of my shoulder. “Now it is complete,” he murmurs, smiling like he has fixed the whole world by dragging one more Alpha into the bed.

Mild laughter moves through the room, soft and exhausted and a little broken at the edges. It comes from Sloane first, then Dash, then me, and finally Idris lets out a breath that is close enough to laughter to count. Theo preens against my back, smug in the boneless way only a half-asleep Omega can manage.

I close my eyes with Dash’s heartbeat under my cheek, Theo wrapped around my spine, Sloane’s warmth at my back, and Idris holding the edge of us steady.

Theo

By Sunday morning, I know the shape of the place Dash keeps treating like it is temporary.

Callie has spent most of the weekend in the nest. She comes in with her hair damp from a shower and one of Dash’s shirts beneath her cardigan, lets Sloane curl around her back, lets Idris set water beside the bed, and lets me wrap myself around whatever part of her I can reach. Dash comes in when she asks now. He stays while we settle, holds her until her breathingevens out, then slips away before morning like the invitation has an ending he's responsible for deciding.

This morning, the heat under my skin is worse. It isn't my heat. Not fully. I know the difference between a spike and the real thing, even with everything Garrett ruined around the knowing. This is a low roll through my belly, a sweetening at the back of my throat, a tenderness in my skin that makes the sheet feel too rough and Callie’s warmth feel like the only thing in the house made correctly.

My scent has gone soft around the edges, thick enough that I can smell myself when I shift closer to her, Callie asleep beside me in Idris' shirt.

The sight of it makes me smile into her shoulder before I can stop myself. The black fabric swallows her, sliding low at one collarbone, wrinkled from where I have had a fist in it half the night. Her hair is spread across my pillow and Sloane’s, her cheek flushed from sleep, her mouth soft in the way it only gets when she has stopped guarding every breath. She looks warm. She looks kept. She looks like the woman I wanted for three months with my whole body and could not touch.

I press my face into the side of her neck and breathe until the restless heat in me settles by one careful inch. Her scent is still Callie, but now there is sleep in it, and my scent, and Idris' shirt, and the faint smoky sweetness Sloane left on the pillow behind her. She smells like us. She smells like a nest that has started learning her.

My hand slides over her waist before I think to be careful. She wakes with a tiny sound and blinks at the ceiling, then at me, eyes unfocused and drowsy. I am already smiling too hard. I can feel it in my cheeks, in the bright pressure beneath my ribs, in the way my whole body wants to roll on top of her and keep her under me until noon.

“You’re mine today,” I tell her, my mouth brushing the warm skin below her ear. “It is Sunday, and you are mine.”

Her smile is slow, sleepy, and so soft it makes the spike in me turn molten. “Is that so, Star?” she murmurs, her voice rough from sleep as her hand finds my hair. “I don’t remember agreeing to a full-day kidnapping.”

“You agreed by being here,” I say, and the words come out too pleased to sound stern. I hook my leg over hers, keeping her pinned only because she laughs under her breath and does not pull away. “Also, I have plans.”

Callie turns her head on the pillow, still half asleep, still beautiful enough to make my chest hurt. “Your plans usually involve stealing my clothes and pretending you don't know where they went.”

“That is a separate hobby.” I kiss the corner of her mouth because it is there and because I can, and the fact that I can still makes me a little dizzy. “Today is a Callie Day. You need breakfast first.”

The word breakfast gets me moving because if I stay in bed with her, I will never get out. My skin is too warm, my scent too sweet, my instincts too full of one bright, uncomplicated command. Keep her. Feed her. Put her where everyone can see she's here and wanted. I pull myself upright and tug gently at her hand, and when she groans into the pillow, I grin so hard my cheeks ache.