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I've thought a lot, in this chair, about what she is.

She's not safe. That's the first thing. I’m the safe one. I am quiet and careful and I think about things too long before I say them, and most of the time I don't say them at all because by the time I've worked out the right words the moment has already moved on without me. I am a man who bought a vanilla-lavender car freshener after leaving her apartment because I couldn't stand the loss of her scent and threw it out the next morning because it smelled like chemicals and nothing like her. That is the level of safe and boring I am bringing to this situation.

Cammie is none of those things. Cammie walks into a room and everyone in it is suddenly aware. She has opinions and she has volume. And she has this particular way of looking at you like she's already figured out something about you that you haven't figured out about yourself yet. The night I met her she pulled me in and kissed me like she'd already decided something important about me. Like I was the only one who hadn't caught up. She was right. I hadn't caught up. I'm still catching up.

The hospital keeps neutralizing her scent. Protocol, the nurses say. I hate it. Her vanilla-lavender is completely gone and I'm not her match so it shouldn't matter as much as it does.

Beck is her match. Piers is her match. When she comes home with us—if she comes home—she'll be surrounded by two men whose biology is already pointing directly at her, and whatever I am to her is going to have to exist alongside something that doesn't have to try. Scent matches don't have to. They just are.

I know this. And I'm still here.

I keep coming back to that. I don't have a clean explanation for it except that she's her, and somewhere in the last three days that has started to feel like enough of a reason. Maybe the only reason I need.

She might not want me. That's the honest version of this. There are two scent matches in the hallway, and then there's me. Finn Gaudreau, perpetually rumpled, pathologically quiet. The alpha who couldn’t even figure out how to ask her to dance until she tugged him on the floor and solved the problem for him. I am not the obvious choice. I am possibly not a choice at all.

But she lets me hold her hand. Every time she wakes up, she finds me first. And she asked me to stay. Not Piers. Not Beck. Not even Leith, who she met first. Maybe that's nothing. Maybe it's everything. I've decided I'd rather find out than spend the rest of my life typing messages I never send.

She squeezes my hand. It’s weak. I squeeze back.

"Am I leaving today?" she asks.

"Unless your labs change. Probably this afternoon." I pause. "Have you made up your mind about coming home with us?"

She looks down at our joined hands. "I don't want to be—" She doesn't finish. I know what she’s going to say. She doesn’t want to be an inconvenience. She thinks we should wait until things are more decided. To hell with that.

“You’re not,” I interrupt gently. “I’ve told you a hundred times. We want you there. All four of us want it.”

She swallows, and for a second it looks like she wants to say something else. Then the moment passes.

“Lark’s supposed to bring me some clothes so I’ll have something to wear when I leave here,” she says after a pause.

Good. I hope it's something bright pink or purple. Something more Cammie. I cannot stand this pale blue hospital gown for another hour.

Her phone rings on the table. I reach over and hand it to her. She answers on the second ring.

“Hey… Yeah, I was just telling Finn you were bringing me clothes.” Her voice is raspy but warm. “Something without a waistband, please. I’m still sore.”

She listens for a moment. Then her face falls.

I straighten in the chair, my alpha instantly on edge. Something’s wrong. I don’t push, just wait, thumb stroking the back of her hand.

“Yeah, I get that,” she says quietly. “Silas is probably right.” Another pause. “Oh, no, I can’t do that.”

She glances at me, then away. “Seriously, it’s okay. The guys have already asked me to come with them.”

That statement would give me hope if it weren’t for the fact that she looks like she might cry.

She listens for a while. “Okay… you do that. Call me when you’re done talking to them.”

She hangs up and lets the phone drop onto the blanket. Her expression is carefully blank in a way that makes my chest feel tight.

Before either of us can speak the door opens harder than normal. Cammie and I both look up. Piers, Beck, and Leith step inside. Leith in front, shoulders set, eyes on her.

"You're coming home with us," he says. "Don't bother arguing."

twenty-three

Camelia