Page 82 of Omega’s Forward

He’s in a polo shirt with the crest on it, holding a coffee. Then his eyes drop to the carrier.

Whatever the man’s face does next, he’d deny it.

“That him?”

“This is Sam.”

He bends down and studies my son with the expression I’ve seen him aim at game film. Sam, asleep, gives him nothing, because Sam is a professional.

“He’s got Gordie’s chin,” Sacco says at last.

“That’s not necessarily a compliment.”

“No,” he agrees. “Good chin, though.” He straightens up, and I watch him decide to say the rest. “I called you some things last year. In rooms you weren’t in. I was wrong about most of them.”

“Most.”

“I’m a work in progress.” He steps back into the elevator with his coffee. “Keep the team,” he says, as the doors start to close. “Whatever they’re telling you upstairs. This thing goes right the next few years, and it’ll be because of that idiot captain of yours and that Swedish kid, and Gordie’s grandson should be in the building for it.”

The doors close on him before I can answer, which I suspect was the plan.

The announcement goes out at six. By seven the group chat has, I’m told, produced eleven variations of a joke about job security and one long voice note from Marchetti that no one has been brave enough to play.

*

Brody cooks that night. He does it with Sam parked in the bouncer on the counter, receiving a full tactical briefing of how the games are going.

I watch them from the doorway for longer than I’ll admit.

My alpha. My son.

The window over the sink is open to the summer evening and the whole room is woodsmoke and that new third scent that took up residence five months ago.

We put Sam down together. It goes to two verses of the tuneless nothing-song tonight; the moose supervises.

And then it’s just us on the landing in the half-dark, and my heart is going like I’ve climbed all six flights of a building I don’t live in anymore, because I’ve been carrying a decision all day and it’s time.

“Come here,” I say, and take his hand, and walk him to our room.

He comes easily. He always comes easily; it’s one of the first true things I learned about him — all that mass and menace, and he has never once used an ounce of it to take anything I didn’t offer.

He sits on the edge of the bed where I put him and looks up at me, and I stand between his knees and put my hands on his shoulders.

“I want you to claim me. Properly.”

He goes completely still. Under my palms, everything stops.

“Everett.”

“I’m sober,” I say. “I’m not in heat. I’m not postpartum-delirious, my hormones are as settled as they intend to be. I’ve thought about it for longer than I’ve thought about anything in my life.”

His hands come up and frame my face.

“You’re sure?”

“That’s the only time you get to ask.”

“Say it again anyway.”