The kitchen had stayed bright long past its proper hour. The radio murmured from the top of the fridge, nowhere near the news, while the wind worried at the open crack above the sink. Diego sat at the table with one hand around a cup gone cold. His split lip pulled when he swallowed, and his ribs hurt where the Gamma had put him down, but neither hurt enough to matter.
Lucía sat beside him in her scrubs, her hands folded near her untouched tea. Marisol moved between the range and the table in her faded dress, putting food down where nobody wanted it and filling cups when they had not asked. Tomás was hunched forward across from Diego, too quiet for himself. Diego’s friend sat at the end of the table, looking at the door whenever the house settled. Mateo slept down the hall. They all kept their voices low for him.
They went over the same few facts until the words lost shape. Elena had been taken from the hearing. The Alpha had taken her north, into Highland, into his own house. It had been lawful. That was the worst piece of it. A court would not bring her back, and neither would a petition or any law Diego knew the name of. Their whole lives had been lived under people who could take what they wanted. Today it had been Elena.
"My daughter is in Highland tonight, and I cannot speak to her."
Marisol stood with one hand on the back of an empty chair. Then she crossed herself once, quickly, and set a plate of food in front of Diego. He did not touch it. Around her, the talk of the Alpha went on in low, rough pieces, but she said nothing else.
"Please. Do nothing." "I have watched men go after werewolves and not come home. Mateo is down that hall. All of us are here. Do not give them a reason to come here."
Lucía did not look at him when she said it. She kept her eyes on the tablecloth, smoothing one corner flat with her thumb. But he heard what sat under every word: love, and fear for their son. She was asking him to stay alive. She was asking him to leave Elena where she was.
"I was with her this morning. I watched her walk into that hall with her folder, and then I watched him carry her out." "I cannot sit here and do nothing while she is gone."
"Neither can I."
Diego looked at Lucía then. Her face had gone still, the way it did when fear had reached all the way through her. He wanted to tell her he understood. He did understand. But Elena had been in reach today, and he had not got to her. The thought sat in him like a tool driven wrong.
"If we all do nothing, it never stops." "Next time it is another house on this street. Something has to be done."
Nobody answered him straight away. Marisol filled Tomás’s cup. Lucía’s hand stayed on the tablecloth. Outside, the South Side carried on under the raw dark, doors opening and closing, cars passing on the street, people getting through an ordinary evening.
Late into the night, nobody went home. The kitchen stayed full around Diego, and the silence at the table changed shape. It was no longer helpless.