Page 128 of What We Don't Say: Part One

“I understand enough.” Garrett steps closer. “You need Calliope in that room because you promised her she would never be extra, and now you’re willing to drag an Omega’s heat around that promise rather than admit there are moments when she can't be the center.”

The hallway goes too quiet.

I hear Theo breathe in the sunroom. I hear Idris shift beside me. I hear my own pulse in my ears, and beneath all of it, I feel the bond mark in my chest ache like it has been struck from the inside.

“She isn’t extra,” I say.

“No one said she was.”

“You did.” My voice is rough now, scraped down to the bone. “You’ve been saying it for days.”

Garrett’s temper slips.

There is no bark. No shouted word. Nothing I can repeat later as proof. The pressure hits without sound, dense and furious, an Alpha pulse shoved through the hallway so hard it sinks into my teeth. My body snaps still before I choose stillness. My shoulders lock. My breath catches halfway in my throat. For one awful second, I’m not standing my ground. I’m standing because the shape of his authority has pinned me there.

Across from me, Idris goes rigid.

He felt it too.

The pressure dissolves almost as fast as it came, leaving my skin crawling and my jaw aching. Garrett breathes once,smooths his expression, and looks at me like I’m the unstable one.

“You’re too emotional to think clearly,” he says.

My fist moves before thought catches up.

The punch lands hard against his mouth. Garrett’s head snaps to the side, and the sound of it cracks through the hallway loud enough that Theo whimpers from the nest. Idris grabs me from behind before I can follow the hit with anything worse, one arm across my chest, the other catching my wrist. I fight him for half a second, pure instinct, pure rage, until Theo makes another small sound and the noise guts me.

Garrett turns back slowly. Blood darkens the corner of his mouth. The polished concern is gone now. For the first time all day, he looks furious without bothering to dress it up.

“You need to fucking get yourself under control,” he says.

I’m breathing hard enough to shake against Idris’s hold. “You used your Alpha on me.”

Garrett wipes his thumb across his mouth and looks at the blood like it belongs to someone else. “I told you to control yourself, and you responded by throwing a punch in the hallway while Theo is half a room away from another spike.”

“That isn’t what happened,” Idris says, and his voice is quiet enough to be dangerous.

Garrett’s gaze cuts to him. “Then you’d better decide what did happen before you let him back into that nest. Theo is injured, heat-close, and emotionally raw. Calliope still isn’t answering. Sloane is violent in the hallway, and you’re standing there trying to make this about my tone.”

My chest heaves against Idris’s arm. He doesn’t let go. I hate that he’s right to hold me. I hate that Garrett made him right.

Garrett’s phone buzzes.

The sound is small, ordinary, almost swallowed by Theo’s uneven breathing from the next room. Garrett looks down. Histhumb moves over the screen once, and his expression changes. The anger folds away, not fully, but enough for purpose to take its place.

“Calliope needs help,” he says.

Everything in me goes still for a different reason. Idris’s arm loosens around me, but he doesn’t move away.

“What?” I ask.

“There’s an issue at campus.” Garrett slips the phone into his palm as if the message belongs there. “The incident report is being escalated, and someone’s involving administrative security. She reached out because she needs legal support before this turns into something formal.”

I stare at him. Callie hasn’t answered my calls. She hasn’t answered Idris. She hasn’t answered the message Theo left with his voice shaking around her name. My phone is sitting in the nest with her contact still open, the last text delivered and unanswered.

But she texted Garrett.

“Why would she text you and not us?” I ask.