"You set three fires," Felix says without looking up from his aggressive vegetable mutilation.
"Small fires. Barely worth mentioning."
"The warehouse almost exploded."
"Almostis the key word there."
Carlisle laughs, that bright, sharp sound that makes my insides do stupid things. "Our little arsonist."
The casual possessiveness in that 'our' makes something warm unfurl in my chest, even as another part of me notices how Felix's shoulders tense at the word.
Bane and Elias wander in, drawn by food or pack bonds or whatever mystical force makes alphas congregate in kitchens. The space fills with their scents, their presence, their easy banter that Felix doesn't participate in.
He's here but not here. Present but absent. Going through the motions while his mind is clearly elsewhere, probably on whatever made his laptop ping.
"Felix made enough salad to feed an army," Archer observes, looking at the massive bowl of greens.
"I got distracted," Felix says, but I know that's bullshit. Felix doesn't get distracted. Felix is focus personified. Felix could perform surgery during an earthquake without breaking concentration.
We sit down to eat, and it should be perfect. The food's incredible, the conversation flows easily, and I'm surrounded by alphas who've spent the last three days proving exactly how much they want me.
But there's a Felix-shaped hole in the warmth, even though he's sitting right next to me.
He eats mechanically, responds when spoken to directly, even manages something that might be a smile when Carlisle makes a particularly dark joke about his latest knife acquisition. But I know him. I know every micro-expression, every tell, every tiny sign that something's eating at him from the inside out.
The laptop sits on the side table across the room like a loaded gun.
"This is amazing," Elias tells Archer, and there's genuine appreciation in his voice. "Where did you learn to make this?"
"Youtube," Archer admits. "And a lot of trial and error."
"By error, he means he once gave Bane food poisoning," Carlisle adds helpfully.
"That was not my fault," Archer protests. "He ate chicken that had been sitting out for six hours."
"You said it was fine."
"I said it was probably fine. There's a difference."
They bicker like brothers, like family, like pack. And I want to enjoy it, want to sink into this warmth and belonging, but I can't stop watching Felix. Can't stop noticing how he's slowly retreating even while sitting still.
His phone buzzes. He glances at it, and something flickers across his face too fast for me to catch.
"I need to make a call," he says, standing abruptly. "Excuse me."
He's gone before anyone can respond, leaving his barely touched plate and that fucking laptop behind.
"So," Archer says carefully, "he has Internet access. I'm guessing that was Carlisle's doing?"
"Actually, no," Carlisle says, leaning back in his chair. "Though I do like to live dangerously."
"It was me," Bane says with a grunt. "He's helping me track down the people who put a hit out on us." When he sees the others looking at him like he's grown another head, he looks pointedly at Archer and adds, "What was all that about building trust?"
"I'm not complaining," Archer says, holding up his hands. "Just surprised."
"They're not prisoners anymore," Bane says, looking at me as he speaks. "If we're going to be a pack, it's about time we start acting like it."
His words make my heart do an annoying little flutter, but the butterflies in my stomach won't calm down either. Pack. I want us to be that, more than I ever imagined, but with Felix drifting further away from me, I'm scared of what that means. And I know better than to think grasping at him will do anything but push him further.
