"I'll get the first aid kit," Ethan said immediately, already turning on his heel, his movements quick and efficient.
"I don't want your help," I snarled, but my voice came out weak and broken. I tried to pull away from Caleb and failed. "I don't want any of you touching me."
"Too bad," Caleb replied, his arms tightening around me like steel bands, his ice-blue eyes meeting mine without a shred of apology. "You're bleeding. We're fixing it. You can go back to hating us after." He lifted me like I weighed nothing, because to him, I probably didn't, and carried me to the bedroom. The nest was still there, rumpled and ruined and smelling like sex and Alpha, but he bypassed it entirely, setting me down on the edge of the bed that wasn't covered in the evidence of my violation.
Mason approached slowly, his bare feet silent on the hardwood floor, his honey-brown eyes fixed on the blood still trickling down my neck. He moved like I was a wild animal he didn't want to spook, his hands held slightly away from his body.
"Red—" he started, his voice soft and careful.
"Don't," I cut him off, the word sharp as a blade. I glared at him with all the hatred I could muster. "Don't call me that. You don't get to call me that anymore." He flinched, his golden features twisting with hurt. But through the bond, I felt no remorse. Only love. Only certainty that he'd done what was necessary.
"Okay," Mason said quietly, swallowing hard, his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat. "Ava. Can I look at the wound? Please?"
I wanted to say no, wanted to fight. But the adrenaline was fading, and in its place was exhaustion so profound I could barely keep my eyes open. So I just sat there, silent and seething, while Mason examined the damage I'd done to myself. His fingers were gentle as they probed the torn skin, his brow furrowed with concentration.
"It's not deep," Mason said finally, his voice strained with barely contained emotion. Relief flickered through the bond,relief that I hadn't done worse damage. "The marks underneath are still intact. You just tore up the surface skin."
"Good," I said hollowly, staring at a point past his shoulder. "Maybe I'll try harder next time."
Four sharp spikes of alarm through the bonds. Four Alphas suddenly, intensely focused on the threat I posed to myself.
"There won't be a next time," Ethan announced, striding back into the room with a first aid kit in his hands. He crouched in front of me, his green eyes meeting mine with that intense, unwavering focus, his dark hair still mussed from sleep but his gaze razor-sharp. "We'll be watching you more closely now."
"You mean I'll have even less privacy than the zero privacy I already had?" I snapped, my hands clenching into fists on my thighs.
"If that's what it takes to keep you safe, yes," Ethan replied calmly, opening the first aid kit with practiced efficiency, his tone leaving no room for argument.
I laughed, a bitter, broken sound that scraped my raw throat. "Safe. You think I'm safe? You violated me. You forced bonds on me without my consent. You crawled inside my head and made yourself at home. Now you want to protect me?" I leaned forward, ignoring the sting as Ethan started cleaning the wound with an antiseptic wipe. My eyes burned into his. "You're the thing I need protection from."
Silence. Four faces staring back at me, Mason with his wounded golden-boy expression, Ethan with his clinical calm, Leo with his uncharacteristic seriousness, Caleb with his stone-carved intensity. Four bonds pulsing with love and possessiveness and absolute conviction that they'd done the right thing.
Not a shred of remorse among them.
"We know," Mason said finally, his voice heavy, his honey-brown eyes never leaving my face. "We know you see it that way."
"Don't," I said, holding up a hand, and he stopped mid-thought. "Don't tell me you're sorry. Apologies are for accidents. For mistakes. What you did was deliberate. Calculated. You knew I wouldn't consent, so you waited until I couldn't refuse. That's not something you apologize for. That's something you own."
More silence. Ethan finished cleaning the wound and started applying bandages, his touch clinical but gentle.
"You're right," Ethan said quietly, smoothing down the last piece of medical tape. He sat back on his heels, meeting my gaze without flinching, his green eyes calm and certain. "We knew you wouldn't agree. We did it anyway. Because we believed, we still believe, that this is what's best for you."
"What's best for me," I repeated, staring at him with disbelief. "You think being bonded against my will is what's best for me?"
"I think spending the rest of your life alone, miserable, slowly destroying yourself with suppressants and isolation—that's worse," Ethan replied evenly, his green eyes holding mine without wavering. "I think the life you were living was killing you. I think we saved you."
"You saved me," I said, the words tasting like ash on my tongue. "By taking away every choice I had."
"Yes," Ethan confirmed, rising to his feet in one fluid motion. No apology in his voice. No shame. No doubt. Just that absolute certainty that made me want to scream. "Sometimes love means making hard choices. Sometimes it means knowing what someone needs before they know it themselves."
"That's not love," I whispered, shaking my head. "That's control."
"Maybe," Ethan acknowledged, looking down at me with an unreadable expression. "But it's all we have to offer. Whether you accept it or not, you're stuck with us now. You can spend the rest of your life fighting us, hating us, trying to tear yourself apart, or you can try to find some way to live with what we've done."
I stared at him. At all of them. Four men who had destroyed my life and called it love. Four men who felt no remorse for what they'd taken from me.
"I'll never forgive you," I said, my voice flat and cold. I looked at each of them in turn—Mason with his false gentleness, Ethan with his calculated certainty, Leo with his mask finally cracked, Caleb with his brutal honesty. "I'll never stop hating what you did. If you think time is going to change that, if you think I'm going to wake up one day and be grateful, then you're even more deluded than I thought."
I stood on shaking legs and walked past them, past the ruined nest, to the window that wouldn't open. The snow-covered mountains stretched out before me, beautiful and remote and utterly unreachable.
