Page 61 of Stream Heat
She just stared. “You built all this today?”
“Already had the blueprints. Just tweaked for your specifics.”
Her attention drilled into the specs. “You know this costs a fortune.”
“Pack Wrecked LLC picks up the tab. It’s business. Consider it a workplace accommodation.”
Her lips twitched, half a smile. “Sure. Business.”
I closed the documents, turned the chair. “Can I ask you something?”
She nodded, wary.
“What do you want? Not what you’re supposed to want. Not what looks smart. What do you actually want?”
She curled up in the spare chair, voice so quiet that I almost missed it. “I want to stop hurting. I want my body back. I want to compete without worrying about collapsing on stream.”
“And the pack bonding?”
Her scent shifted, honey-amber smoothing out the spikes. “I want to stop running from what's right just because it terrifies me.”
There it was. The true answer. Naked and unadorned.
“For what it’s worth,” I said, and my voice came out a little rougher than I meant it to, “we’re not exactly fighting it either.”
She glanced up, startled. “What does that mean?”
“It means I redesigned the house for your comfort. It means Reid modulates his voice to help you calm down. Jace tracks your sleep by audio triggers, Theo paces his energy so it doesn’t overwhelm you, and Malik’s fine-tuning your entire diet by smell alone.” I let it settle in. “We’ve been acting like a pack since you walked through the door, Quinn. The only thing stopping us from making it official is the asking.”
She was silent for a long time. Finally, she dropped the thing we all knew but didn’t want to talk about. “I’m scared of needing you.”
I didn’t push closer, just leaned in enough to offer what she needed if she decided to take it. “Needing isn’t weakness. Biology doesn’t know what pride is. Or logic, or strategy, or content calendars.”
She almost smiled, exhaling a half-laugh. “Dr. Levine said something like that. About adapting to survive.”
“Smart doctor.”
“Absolute bastard, but yeah.” She studied the upgrades. “Would this stuff help even if I…if we don’t…?”
“It helps regardless,” I promised. “Pack just makes it easier.”
She nodded. Slow, heavy. “I should let you get back to work.”
At the stairwell, I stopped her. “We’re here. Whatever you pick. Not going anywhere.”
She gave me a real smile, even if it was tiny. “Thanks, Ash. For…everything.”
After she left, my focus came back, sharper than before. I finalized the environmental systems, double-checked every medical accommodation, every comfort built into the infrastructure. Because whether or not Quinn chose the pack, she deserved to recover without the world fighting her every step.
And if she did choose us? I wanted to hit the ground running.
I added rush to every supply order. Made a new checklist, every item circled three times as I triple checked to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. If Quinn was going to heal, I was going to make damn sure nothing stood in her way.
That was pack. We solved problems. We adapted. We protected our own.
Even if our own was still deciding whether to call us hers.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
