My gut clenches at the thought. Of Kennedy, forever trapped within the body of a feral omega.
We don’t know if she’s stillthere.
“Or if it can heal her,” Max breathes. He steps up beside me, his fingers brushing Kenny’s cheek. “We could bring her back?”
I shake my head when Abrams opens his mouth. He closes it. “Max… if we do this, she might not come back. This isn’t going to be an easy road.”
“But it’s still a road,” Theo says roughly. He edges closer. “It’s a possibility, Oz.”
A difficult one. Abrams doesn’t have to say it. There are many ways that this could fail, and only the slimmest possibility of anything good.
We could lose her anyway.
“She might not be able to come back,” I murmur. They all stiffen. “We might be condemning her to a lifetime of this. We have to consider that. She’s not able to speak for herself.”
Trapping her forever – keeping her alive, in a horrific existence inside her own mind. Assuming she’s in there at all.
We haven’t seen a single sign.
“I’ll leave you to talk it over.” Abrams gets to his feet. “If you want to move forward, then we’ll need to put a plan to the board. Her set-up, her care, the access you receive as her mates – we’ll likely need to fight for all of it. It’s never been done before. And there’s no guarantee of success. We all need to understand that before we begin.”
I’m not afraid of a fight. Not for her.
I’m not going to fail her again.
I stare at her closed eyes again as Abrams leaves.
Show us something, baby. Tell us you’re in there.
Tell us what to do.
Then - Theo
Frowning,Ijumpdownfrom the bleacher, kicking at a rock. “She’s late.”
Oscar’s nose is buried in his textbook. He perches on the end, lifting it just enough to scan the empty field. “She’ll be here.”
In front of us, Max is on his back with his hands behind his head. His sleepy words drift over. “Do you ever wonder why we have bleachers around the field when the whole school would only fill a few rows?”
Jake snorts from where he sits next to Oz, his own textbook abandoned in his lap. “If that.”
But he glances down the field too. “Maybe we should go and look for her.”
“I’ll go.” The back of my neck prickles with heat. “I need some water, anyway.”
Grabbing my bottle, I start walking up toward the main building, dodging the flagpole and weaving my way around to the water station beside the yard.
My feet slow at the commotion, then speed up. Significantly.
Shoving through the small crowd, I follow the sound of yelling. Specifically, female, enraged,familiaryelling.
“You’re a two-piece son of a damn whore!” The redhead in front of me squares up against an angry-looking eleventh grader, standing between him and a smaller kid sprawled on the floor. His bag is ripped, books scattered everywhere and some of the pages ripped.
The alpha she’s facing off with is more than a foot taller than her.
Bobby Delavine.Asshole.
Kenny clearly agrees, because her hands shove forward, sending Bobby stumbling back. “You like picking on people smaller than you, dickface? Do you? You look like a horse slam-dunked you in the face and then gave you his teeth because hefelt bad.”
