Two Number Fives

Todd

We drifted into small things then—the kind of shop-lobby knowledge that saves hours over a month. I showed her how to read the grease-pencil marks on windshields to tell where a truck was in the queue, which foreman to call for refrigeration units, the quickest way to get an answer from Accounts when customers fought about deposits. She told me which vendors called too early and which ones lied about it. I listened more than I spoke. It’s a Gamma’s first discipline: know the landscape, then move through it so lightly that the ground doesn’t remember your weight.

A few times, a word tried to slip—Luna. Pack. Even just we. I swallowed each before it reached air. She wasn’t a secret to be kept from, but a boundary to be honored. There’s a difference. We’ve broken humans by failing to recognize it.

“Do you like it?” I asked at one lull, nodding toward her screen. “The rental work?”

Her answer surprised me by being immediate. “I like being good at things,” she said. “And I’m good at this. But long term? I want HR.” She grimaced. “I know it’s a big jump.”

“Not as big as you think.” I considered, then added, “People who know where the friction is make the best policy. You already know where it rubs.”

The words lit something in her expression—one of those small interior flares you pretend you didn’t see out of respect. “That’s nice to hear.”

“It’s true.” I drained the last of my water. “I’m taking lunch in a bit. If you want anything from the place down the street, text the shop line. I can grab it.”

“I’m okay,” she said, but there wasn’t a wall in it. “Thanks.”

“Standing offer.” I stepped back. “Alright. I’ll leave you to it.” I lifted a hand in a half-salute and turned toward the shop. The door swung closed behind me and I let out a breath, not because of stress but because of the precarious care of it. When something matters, you carry it like glass until you learn how it wants to be held.

In the aisle between bays, the noise swallowed me—impact wrenches, shouted part numbers, the underlying bass of a diesel at idle. I walked like I had a purpose because I did. In the far corner, Jacek looked up from a conversation with a foreman and met my eyes across twenty yards of noise. How’d it go? he mouthed.

I tipped my chin once. Good. He nodded, satisfied, and went back to work.

A minute later, the faintest thread tugged in my mind—Remy’s voice down the link, cool and steady. First contact?

Made, I sent back. Quiet. Solid. She’s good clay.

There was a pause. She’s herself, he corrected gently.

I smiled. Fair.

Thank you, he added, and the gratitude wasn’t a thing you often got from an Alpha out loud. I took it and kept moving.

Near the timeclock, Sean intercepted me. “How bad did I screw it up?” he asked, sheepish.

“You didn’t,” I said. “You just stepped on the porch before you knocked. Now you know better.”

He blew out a breath. “Got it.”

“Good. Do me a favor? Spread the word—second shift, third, the lot crew: neutral language around rental.”

“Already on it.”

I clapped his shoulder and headed for the small break table where I kept a battered notebook. I flipped it open and wrote three lines:

H.W. — prefers straight talk.

Code: “check the twenty-three” if she needs backup.

Ask about HR path — later.

The Gamma’s job isn’t just muscle and patrols. It’s memory. The little things you notice and keep so the big things can be built on something solid.

When I returned through the lobby, she was on the phone with a customer, brow furrowed, voice even. She looked up, caught me walking by, and gave a brief nod of thanks. I returned it and kept moving. No need to hover. The point isn’t to make a human feel watched. It’s to make her feel accompanied without realizing it’s happening.

Back in the shop, I let the noise swallow me again and thought about history. When Percy was Luna—Remy’s mother—the Gamma at the time used to stand at her shoulder at public gatherings not because she needed a guard but because the pack needed the symbol: force at the periphery, gentleness at the center. After she died and Kale refused a second Luna, the Gamma drifted toward enforcement only. We kept the gears turning. We forgot what the posture felt like. Maybe we’d get to remember.

As I reached for my radio, a line of old words moved through me—the pledge I made at nineteen under a winter moon, palm cut, blood on snow: I will take the force that would tear us and make it guard us. I will stand between the sharp and the soft. I will make a house where our Luna can breathe. I hadn’t spoken it aloud in years. Saying it now would’ve felt like tempting the Moon to test me. Keeping it inside felt right. Promises like that are better when you wear them, not when you wave them.

Lunch time rolled around, and my stomach reminded me it existed. I swung by the rental counter again, slower this time, not inserting myself, just passing. She was stapling a contract, hair slipping forward across her cheek. Without looking up, she said, “Hey, Todd?”

“Yeah?”

“What’s the best place nearby for a sandwich that isn’t sad?”

I grinned. “Corner deli on Maple. Order the Number Five, tell them no onions unless you want to be miserable.”

She bit back a smile. “Thanks.”

“I’ll be back in twenty. If you want, I’ll grab you one.”

She hesitated. The pause wasn’t suspicion. It was the polite calculus of whether accepting help means you owe something.

“Turkey on wheat?” she asked finally. “No onion.”

“You got it.”

I didn’t pump a fist or howl at the ceiling. I just walked out into the cold with my jacket zipped and the small warmth of a first yes in my pocket.

This was the Gamma’s purpose. Not shiny. Not loud. It’s the quiet architecture of trust—one brick at a time, placed so carefully you barely hear it set. When the time comes—if it comes—for her to know exactly who we are, she will already know we are something that holds.

And if the Moon decided that if would never turn to when, then I’d still have done right. Because a human in our house deserves safety whether she wears a title or not.

I texted the shop line from the sidewalk—Back in 20. Sean replied with a thumbs-up. Jacek added a wolf emoji because he can’t help himself. I shook my head and kept walking, breath fogging in front of me, hunger tucked behind my teeth.

Upstairs, I could feel Remy through the link like distant thunder—the kind that promises weather but not disaster. He was a man settling into a new gravity. The pack felt it, too. Floors steadied. Voices were a touch lighter. You don’t realize how much a house strains under a missing beam until the carpenter finally slides it home.

I pushed open the deli door and let the bell announce me. For once, I allowed myself the thought clean and whole: Welcome home, Luna. Not said to her. Said to the work. Said to the purpose I’d been carrying folded for years.

When I stepped back into the cold with paper bags in hand, it felt like a beginning you don’t mark with fireworks. You mark it with lunch. With showing up. With not slipping.

Above me, the upstairs windows flashed winter light. Below, the lobby door waited. I took the steps two at a time, steady as a metronome, and didn’t look back.