Page 68 of What We Don't Say: Part One

Sloane pauses in the doorway, his gaze moving over Theo like leaving the room for thirty seconds might cost him something. Theo notices and lifts one hand toward him, his fingers opening and closing once in a small, tired request.

“Sloane,” Theo says.

That one word nearly undoes him.

Sloane crosses back, catches Theo’s hand, and kisses his knuckles. “Water, then right back. I promise.”

Theo lets him go.

In the shower, I hold most of Theo’s weight while he leans against me and lets the hot water run over his back. He answersgreen when I wash him. He answers yellow when the water hits too sharply at the back of his neck, and I change the angle until he sighs. When Sloane returns, he sits on the closed toilet lid with a glass of water and a clean towel across his lap, watching us like he’s memorizing every breath Theo takes.

Theo drinks with both hands around the glass.

“Callie home?” he asks after the third sip.

Sloane’s expression changes before he can hide it.

“She had to go to campus,” I say, keeping my voice even. “Early meeting. She’ll be back.”

Theo nods, but his lashes lower. He’s clean, safe, scented by all three of us, and still the first name he reaches for in the quiet afterward is hers. I hold that information without turning it into rejection. Alpha care worked because he trusted us; Calliope’s absence still mattered because she matters.

Idris

By late morning, Theo is showered, dressed, and soft-eyed between us. His hair is still damp where Sloane keeps touching it, and he’s wearing one of Sloane’s sweatshirts with a pair of loose pants I have to tie twice so they don’t slide off his hips. He walks on his own, but barely, with Sloane close to one side and me at the other, and every few steps he leans into whichever Alpha is closer.

Garrett is still on the call when we reach the dining room. I can hear his voice through the study door, low and clipped, thecadence professional enough that anyone else might miss the territorial strain beneath it. He’s shoved himself back into work shape, but his scent hasn’t settled all the way back under control.

Sloane hears it too. His jaw tightens, then he looks down at Theo and smooths one hand over his damp hair. “You need food, sweetheart. Then you can decide where to pass out.”

Theo leans into the touch, tired enough that his answer comes slowly. “Callie?”

“She had her meeting,” I tell him, pulling out the chair nearest Garrett’s usual place because Theo’s eyes keep tracking toward it. “She’ll be home soon.”

Theo nods, but he keeps glancing toward the front hall while Sloane gets toast and fruit onto a plate. I make tea, wrap a blanket around Theo’s shoulders when he murmurs warm, and watch him accept small pieces of food from Sloane’s fingers. Alpha care has worked. It’s working in the softened line of his shoulders, in the way he lets me adjust the blanket, in the way he lets Sloane press a kiss to his hair without bracing for the next demand.

The front door opens before he finishes the toast.

Theo’s head lifts first.

Calliope steps inside with rain in her hair, her blouse damp at the shoulders, and a dark smear of grease along one sleeve. She looks tired and windblown, her bag hooked over one shoulder and one heel not quite settled back on her foot, but her face changes the second she sees Theo wrapped in the blanket.

“Oh, Star,” she says, and every soft part of him reaches toward her voice.

Sloane is already moving. He crosses the room in three long strides, takes her bag before it can slide off her shoulder, and pulls her into his chest with one arm around her waist. She goes into him without hesitation, turning her face into his shirt for one breath while his hand moves over her damp back.

“What happened?” Sloane asks.

“Flat tire.” Calliope’s voice is muffled against him for the first two words, and then she tips her head back to look at him. “I’m fine. It was annoying, not dramatic.”

Sloane’s hand moves to the grease on her sleeve, then to the damp hair near her temple. “You changed it?”

“I started to.” Her mouth curves when his expression tightens. “Mara circled back before I got the spare all the way out, and campus security had a compressor. I had it handled, baby. It was a tire.”

I reach for my phone and find an empty pocket. The small wrongness of that hits before I place the phone upstairs on the dresser, abandoned when Theo whined down the hall. I don’t turn my sound off for Calliope. I don’t miss her calls at Blackline, in meetings, or in the middle of problems that should take my whole attention.

“Did you call?” I ask.

Calliope looks over Sloane’s shoulder at me, still relaxed against his chest. “Once. I was going to say I’d be late and ask if someone could text Mara in case my phone died. Then she pulled in behind me, so I didn’t need anything.”