Mason positioned his hands over the keys, and for a moment he was perfectly still, a statue carved from tension and restraint. Then he began to play. The music that poured from his fingers was nothing like I expected. Not classical, not technical, not showy. It was raw. Haunting. A melody that seemed to come from somewhere deep inside him, somewhere he kept locked away from the world.
I watched his hands move over the keys, large hands, scarred knuckles, fingers that could break bones but instead coaxed beauty from ivory and ebony. His eyes were closed, his expression unguarded in a way I'd never seen before. The mask of the pack leader, the eldest brother, the man in control, all of it stripped away by the music. When the last note faded into silence, neither of us spoke. The room felt heavy with something unspoken, something waiting to break free.
"That was beautiful," I finally whispered, my voice rough with emotion I didn't fully understand, my hands clasped tight in my lap.
"I wrote it for you." Mason's voice was quiet, his eyes still closed, his hands resting motionless on the keys. "After you ran. When I couldn't sleep, couldn't eat, couldn't think about anything but where you were and whether you were safe. I came here and I played until my fingers bled, and somewhere in the middle of all that pain, this came out." My chest ached at his words, at the image of him sitting at this piano in the dark, pouring his grief into music.
"Mason..." I breathed, reaching out to touch his arm, needing the contact.
"I'm not good at this." He opened his eyes, turning to face me on the bench, his dark gaze intense and searching, his knee pressing against mine. "Words. Feelings. Leo has his charm, Ethan has his logic, Caleb has his carvings. But me?" A muscle ticked in his jaw, betraying the emotion beneath his controlled exterior. "I was taught to lead, not to feel. To command, not to ask. And I don't know how to tell you what you mean to me without it sounding like an order."
"Just try." I said softly, my hand coming up to rest on his chest, feeling the rapid beat of his heart beneath my palm, so at odds with his calm facade. Something flickered in his eyes,surprise, maybe, or hope. He reached up and covered my hand with his, pressing it more firmly against his heart.
"I was four years old when David adopted me," Mason said, his voice low and rough, like the words were being dragged out of him against his will, his thumb tracing absent patterns across my knuckles. "My biological parents were young, poor, in over their heads. They gave me up because they couldn't afford to keep me. Sold me, really, David paid them enough to disappear and start over somewhere else. I was a transaction. A business deal."
I sucked in a breath, my fingers curling against his chest. "Mason, I didn't know?—"
"No one does." His hand tightened over mine, his jaw rigid with old pain. "David made sure of that. As far as the world knows, I'm his firstborn son, his heir, his golden child. But I remember. I remember being four years old and watching my mother walk away without looking back. I remember David's housekeeper carrying me into that big empty mansion and telling me this was home now."
"That's horrible," I whispered, my heart breaking for the little boy he'd been, my free hand coming up to rest on his arm.
"It was necessary." His voice was flat, controlled, but I could see the old wound beneath the surface, the way his eyes had gone distant. "David needed an heir. My parents needed money. Everyone got what they wanted."
"Except you," I said quietly, searching his face. He went very still, his dark eyes widening slightly, like no one had ever said that to him before. Like no one had ever thought to consider what he might have wanted.
"I learned early that what I wanted didn't matter," Mason said quietly, his thumb tracing circles over my knuckles, his gaze dropping to our joined hands. "What mattered was beingworthy. Being enough. Proving that David hadn't made a mistake when he chose me."
"So you became perfect," I said, understanding dawning, the pieces clicking into place. "The responsible one. The leader. The one who took care of everyone else."
"Someone had to." A ghost of a bitter smile crossed his face, there and gone in an instant. "Ethan was a mess when his mother abandoned him. Leo showed up angry at the world with a chip on his shoulder the size of a mountain. Caleb was traumatized and barely spoke. David was too busy building his empire to actually parent any of us. So I did it. I held us together because if I didn't, we'd fall apart."
"You were a child yourself," I protested, aching for him, my grip tightening on his arm. "You shouldn't have had to carry all of that."
"But I did." His hand came up to cup my face, his palm warm and rough against my cheek, his dark eyes holding mine with fierce intensity. "And I'd do it again. Because they're my brothers. My pack. I would burn the world to ashes before I let anything hurt them."
The intensity in his voice made my breath catch. This was Mason stripped bare, not the cold, commanding Alpha everyone else saw, but the man underneath. The one who had been carrying impossible burdens since before he could tie his own shoes.
"And me?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper, searching his dark eyes. "Where do I fit in all of this?" His dark eyes bore into mine, and for a moment I saw everything he usually kept hidden, the longing, the fear, the desperate hope he'd never allowed himself to voice.
"You were supposed to be the answer," he said roughly, his thumb stroking across my cheekbone, his touch reverent despite the harshness in his voice. "The Omega who would complete us.Who would give us a reason to be a pack instead of just four broken people pretending we had our shit together."
A chill ran down my spine at his words. "David planned this? From the beginning?" I asked, pulling back slightly, my stomach twisting.
"He planned everything." Mason's jaw tightened, old anger flickering in his eyes like embers refusing to die. "Your mother grew up with him…did you know that? They were childhood friends. Her family was old omega blood. Her mother, her sister — all omegas. Everyone expected her to present the same way."
I shook my head slowly, a sick feeling building in my gut. "She never told me any of this."
"She was a beta." Mason's voice was flat, matter-of-fact, but I could hear the undercurrent of something darker. "In an omega family, that made her... disposable. Her own mother and sister barely acknowledged her existence. And then your father—" His jaw tightened. "He left her for an omega. Left both of you. Suddenly she was alone, with a child to feed and no family who gave a damn about a beta who couldn't live up to their legacy."
My throat felt tight. I remembered fragments, my mother's silences, the way she never spoke about her family, the bitter twist of her mouth whenever someone mentioned omegas. I'd thought it was jealousy. I'd never realized it was grief.
"She went to David," Mason continued, his thumb still tracing gentle patterns across my cheek, a counterpoint to the harshness of his words. "She was desperate. About to be out on the streets with you. He was the only person she could turn to, the only one who might remember the girl she'd been before the world decided she wasn't enough."
"And he took us in," I whispered, the pieces clicking into place with horrible clarity. "Out of the goodness of his heart."
Mason let out a hollow laugh. "David doesn't have a heart. He has investments." His dark eyes met mine, unflinching."You were ten years old, and he took one look at you and saw potential. Omega potential. He'd been searching for years for the right one, someone to bind his sons together, to give us the soft comfort we needed. Four broken Alpha boys, and not a single gentle thing between us."
"So he gambled on me," I said, my voice shaking. "On a ten-year-old who might present as omega."
