"I need to be alone," I said without turning around.
"Ava—" Leo started, taking a step toward me, his voice softer than usual, stripped of its playful edge.
"I know I can't actually be alone," I interrupted, still facing the window, my breath fogging against the cold glass. "I know you're all in my head now, feeling everything I feel. But I need you to at least pretend. I need you to leave this room and close the door and give me the illusion of privacy. Can you do that? Can you give me that one small thing?"
Silence. Then, through the bonds, a wordless communication between them. A decision being made without me, as always.
"We'll be right outside," Mason said finally, his voice resigned. I heard him move toward the door, the others following. "If you need anything?—"
"I won't," I said flatly. Footsteps. The soft click of the door closing.
Then I was alone. As alone as I would ever be again, with four heartbeats pulsing in my skull and four presences hovering at the edges of my consciousness.
I pressed my forehead against the cold glass and let myself fall apart.
Four marks. Four bonds. Four Alphas who would never let me go.
This was my life now.
Forever.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CALEB
The smell of her blood nearly broke me.
I stood outside the bedroom door, arms crossed, back against the wall, listening to the soft sounds of her crying. Every instinct I had screamed at me to go back in there. To hold her. To make it better. To do whatever it took to stop those broken sounds coming from my Omega's throat.
My Omega. Finally.
Three years I'd waited. Three years of watching from the shadows, of guarding her without her knowledge, of memorizing every detail of her life while she remained completely unaware of my existence. Three years of wanting so badly it felt like my chest would cave in.
Now she was mine. Ours. Claimed and bonded and marked. And she'd tried to tear my brother's bite right out of her own flesh. I closed my eyes, replaying the moment I'd burst through that bathroom door. The blood streaming down her neck, her fingers curved into claws, raking at her own skin. The wild,desperate look in her green eyes as she screamed at us to get out of her head.
It had taken everything I had not to lose control completely.
The others didn't understand. Not really. Mason loved her with that golden, obvious devotion of his, the kind of love that wanted to be seen, to be acknowledged, to be returned. Ethan loved her with his mind, with plans and calculations and the absolute certainty that he knew what was best. Leo loved her with chaos and charm, always pushing, always teasing, always trying to make her smile.
But me?
I loved her like breathing. Like my heart beating. Like something so fundamental to my existence that removing it would kill me. I'd known it from the first moment I saw her. Ten years old, skinny and scared, standing in the doorway of the Harper mansion with her mother. She'd looked up at me with those big green eyes, and something inside my chest had clicked into place.
Mine, my Alpha had whispered. Ours. Protect.
She was too young then. A child. I also knew, with bone-deep certainty, that I would destroy anyone who tried to hurt her. So I watched. And I waited. And when she left the Harper house at eighteen, I followed.
The others thought I was the muscle. The enforcer. The one who handled problems with his fists while they used their words and their plans. And I was all of those things. But I was also the one who knew her best. I was the one who watched her sleep. Every night for three years, I sat in the shadows outside her apartment. I watched her lights go on and off. I tracked her movements through the thin curtains. I learned her schedule—when she woke, when she ate, when she showered, when she finally collapsed into bed after another exhausting day of work and school and pretending she was fine.
I knew when she cried. Knew the way she curled into herself when the loneliness got too heavy. Knew the nights she couldn't sleep, when she'd sit by the window staring out at nothing, her face pale in the streetlight, her scent drifting down to me tinged with sadness.
Those nights were the hardest. I wanted to climb through her window, to gather her into my arms, to tell her she wasn't alone. That she'd never be alone again if she'd just let me in. I couldn't. Not yet. Ethan had his plan, his timeline, his careful calculations. Mason wanted to do things the right way, to court her properly once her suppressants failed. Leo was impatient but willing to wait.
And me, I was good at waiting when it came to her. She was the only thing that seemed to make me feel calm. When she had been gone I had felt like I was going crazy without her. Now that she was back…I felt like I could breathe again.
The bedroom door opened, and Mason stepped out. His face was drawn, his usual easy confidence dimmed but not defeated. Through the pack bond, I felt his pain. not at what we'd done, but at seeing her suffer. A temporary suffering. She'd come around.
"She's not okay," Mason said quietly, leaning against the wall beside me, his golden hair still mussed from sleep, his honey-brown eyes troubled but resolute.
