Page 70 of What We Don't Say: Part Two

Every few breaths, he looks at me as if he's afraid blinking will make one of us disappear, and I press my wrist against his hand because I can't bear for him to think he has to choose which broken piece of this pack to hold.

Idris lowers himself onto the floor beside us with the kind of care that makes the room feel less likely to shatter. He does not crowd her. He sits close enough that his warmth reaches her back, close enough that if she leans, she will find him, while keeping his hands open on his thighs until Callie’s shoulder brushes him by accident.

Only then does he lift one hand, slow and visible, and rest it at the nape of her neck. His jaw works like he's chewing through glass, but he keeps every ounce of dominance leashed because the wrong edge in any Alpha voice tonight could send her out of her body.

Calliope’s breath hitches, ragged and wet, and the sound tears straight through the center of me. She isn't crying the way I thought she would when I imagined finding her. She's vibrating with three months of things she has had to hold alone, and the first pieces come out so thin I have to bend my head closer to hear them.

“The letter,” she whispers against my chest. “Sloane, there was a letter. It had the pack seal. It said I was a liability. It saidthe hierarchy was shifting and there was not a place for a Beta anymore.”

The growl starts before I can catch it.

It rolls up from somewhere deep and animal, and Callie flinches so sharply my whole body goes cold. I smother the sound at once, pressing my mouth into her hair and forcing my hands to loosen where they have gone tense across her back.

“He lied, Callie,” I say, and I keep my voice low enough to be a promise instead of a command. “Every word of it was a lie. I never signed a letter. I never saw a seal. I would have torn the house apart before I let anyone write that about you and call it truth.”

She does not look up. Her fingers trace the buttons of my shirt as if she's trying to confirm each one belongs to something solid. “There was a call. I heard your voice. You told me Theo’s heat changed everything. You said you could not look at me without feeling guilty for what I was taking from him. You sounded so sure.”

The air leaves my lungs in a sharp, ugly burst. Kade told us what Garrett used. I read the wordsvoice synthesisin a report and thought I understood the violation. I didn't understand. Not until Callie says it from my lap, not until I hear that my voice, the one I used to love her with, the one I used to murmur against her neck in the dark, became the blade that cut her out of her own home.

My hand lifts toward her face, then stops before I touch her. “Sweetheart, I need you to hear me, but you don't have to look at me to do it.” When she stays tucked against me, I press my cheek to her hair and give her the truth where she can take it or leave it. “I didn't make that call. I never said those things. I was in that house screaming for you in every way I knew how, and when the bond went dark, I thought something had happened toyou. Then Garrett put a different story in front of us, and I lost time trying to find the seam in it.”

“The key didn’t work,” she says, and now the nightmare has opened enough that she can't stop the pieces from falling out. “I went back. I ran to the door, and the key would not turn. Then the officer came. He said you called. He said you wanted me arrested for trespassing because I was a danger to the Omega.”

Theo makes a sound against her shoulder. It is small and brutal, and his hand tightens on my sleeve until his nails bite through the fabric. Idris closes his eyes for one second, only one, and when he opens them again, his scent sharpens. He still doesn’t move closer. He keeps his hand steady at Callie’s neck, a careful weight instead of a claim.

“I didn't know you were outside,” I say, and the words taste like blood. “I didn't know the key failed. I didn't know anyone used my name with the police until after you were already gone. Garrett waited until Theo’s heat had crashed and the house was full of panic, and he used all of it to keep us looking in the wrong direction. That isn't an excuse. It is the shape of the trap I failed to see.”

Callie’s eyes finally fill. Two heavy tears slide down her cheeks, but her voice stays eerily flat, the way it gets when something inside her has gone too far away to reach safely. “There was money in my account. Five thousand dollars. Like a payoff. Like a clean break. Then a message from your number said we would talk about the bond removal after the heat. It said it would be kinder to do it legally.”

The bond removal. The procedure.The permanent damage Garrett knew would terrify her because he understood exactly how to turn biology into a threat. Cutting the bite out of her wouldn’t just remove my mark. It would injure the way she feels our pack, ruin the parts of her body that learned to answer mine,and leave her with a silence so complete that even standing in front of her might never reach the places I once touched.

My forehead lowers to hers because I need one point of contact that does not take more than she gives. “I love you,” I whisper, and the words come because nothing else is simple enough to survive this much damage. “I love you, Callie. I love you. I love you.”

I keep saying it, into every pause because she spent ninety days believing those words had been emptied out and handed back to her as legal waste. When her breathing catches, I give the words again. When Theo shakes against her side, I give them to him too, because Garrett made my love sound conditional and I need the first repair to be the simplest truth I own.

“I don't know what to believe,” she sobs, tears streaming down her cheeks, her hands fisting in my jacket while her body folds around the hurt. “I believed the lie for so long, Sloane. I woke up every morning and reminded myself that I was extra. I was useful until I was not useful. I made myself believe it so it would hurt less, but it never hurt less. It never stopped.”

I pull her closer because she presses closer first, and my arms overlap with Theo’s around her. We are a mess on Dash’s floor, all damp clothes and shaking hands and grief that has nowhere clean to go. The bond is there, flickering like a candle in a draft, weak and jagged but alive enough that I can feel the faint pulse of her through the scarred place in my chest.

“You were never extra, Calliope,” I say. “You were never the part we could cut away and keep breathing. Garrett used my name to make you believe you were disposable, and I will spend the rest of my life correcting that without making my love another thing you have to carry.”

The edge slips in on the last few words. She cringes, a small instinctive pullback that punches all the way through me. I feel the instant her body expects force to follow feeling, theinstant my anger reminds her of his commands instead of my protection.

I loosen my hold before shame can freeze me. My hands go flat against her back, fingers spread wide enough for her to feel every place I am not gripping. I drop my voice until there is nothing in it but the man who loves her and the apology I have not earned the right to finish.

“I am sorry,” I murmur into her hair. “I am so sorry, sweetheart. I am not commanding you, and I am not deciding for you. If you want distance, I will give you distance. If you want me outside, I will go outside. If you want me close, I will stay close only as long as you keep choosing it. No one gets to decide for you again, Callie. Not Garrett. Not a paper. Not a law. Not even me.”

She looks up at me then. Her eyes search my face with a precision that hurts to sit under, looking for the hidden thread, the soft hook, the place where an Alpha’s want might dress itself up as her need. I stay still and let her look. I let her take the measure of my voice, my hands, my scent, my grief. I let her decide whether there is anything safe enough to touch.

“I was outside the door,” she whispers, and the words destroy me differently than the others because this one has a picture. “I was hitting the wood with my fists. I was calling your name. Why did you not hear me?”

That is the knife.

I see it as if Garrett has forced the memory into my own head. Callie on the porch of the house we were supposed to make safe for her, rain on her face, hands striking a door that should have opened for her before she ever lifted them. Callie calling my name while I sat close enough to exist in the same house and far enough away to be useless. I can blame pheromones, panic, Garrett, Theo’s crashed heat, every poisoned piece of the trap, and none of it changes the fact that she called and I didn't come.

“I didn't hear you because I trusted a man who had learned exactly where to stand so his lies looked like care,” I say, and my throat feels raw around every word. “I let him stand too close. I let him turn concern into delay and delay into proof. I will never forgive myself for that. I know telling you that does not give you back the night you spent outside that door.”

Idris' hand moves from her nape to her shoulder, his thumb stroking the bone through the thin fabric of her shirt. “We thought we were fighting confusion,” he says, voice low and controlled in a way that costs him. “We thought we were managing a heat crash, a bond shutdown, and a legal mess. Garrett was erasing you in pieces while making every missing piece look like your choice.”