Page 201 of Slashed Bonds

“I’m good.” It comes out steadier than I feel. “Um. We’re at this equipment store. The one for Omegas specifically, downtown, but they have Alpha gear too, and cameras, and um…”

I trail off again.

And I understand, standing there, why.

I haven’t asked anyone for anything in five years. That’s the thing in my throat. I rely on myself. I’ve relied on only myself since the day I understood that relying on four other people was how I ended up on the ground, and the muscle for asking has atrophied, and I’m standing in a store trying to use it and it won’t lift.

Foreign. The word’s foreign. Like a language I spoke as a kid and lost.

He waits.

He doesn’t fill it. He doesn’t prompt again. He waits on the line like a man with the whole afternoon, like whatever’s happening in the room he’s in can wait too, and the waiting is what gets me through it.

“And um.” I take a breath. “They have this deal on gloves. Buy two, get two. And I think the three of you need new ones, because Knox went on a chewing spree last week and I know he got into your bag, and Killian’s, and I wanted to pick them up…” Faster now, the nerves running ahead. “But maybe that’s weird? For all of us to have matching gloves? Like a… um…”

The more I talk the worse it gets.

“You know what, never mi⁠—“

“Purchase them, Mori.”

Softer. His voice has dropped out of the Malice register and into the other one, and the softness is a floor under me, and the spiral stops where it is.

“Anything you see that benefits our pack, you can purchase.” A pause. “And anything you like, for yourself.”

Our pack. He said it like a fact. Like a thing already on paper.

“You have my card? From your green friend.”

“Green friend?” It takes a second. “Oh. You mean Viper.”

“She didn’t introduce herself.”

“How did you even know she was coming to see me and Maddie?”

A breath on the line that might be a laugh. “Your friends have an intriguing aesthetic. They’re not difficult to notice when they arrive.”

I smirk. At a wall of sticks.

“I’ll take that as a compliment instead of an insult, thanks ever so much.”

He chuckles then.

An actual one, low, and it does something to the back of my neck.

“Buy whatever you need, Mori. I mean it. Clothes. Snacks. Underwear.”

My face goes hot. I turn toward the display so Maddie can’t see it from the counter.

“Nice lingerie?” I mutter.

“Anything you desire.”

He says it flat and sure. Not flirting. Stating.

“O-okay.”

This feels so damn strange. Standing in Meg’s store with my arms full of black foam being told by a man on the phone that I can have anything I desire, and the strangest part is that I believe him.