She'd asked for more. Tilted her head back and offered her throat like a gift. That moment would live in my memory forever. The exact second our fierce, stubborn Omega had stoppedfighting and started surrendering, not because we'd broken her, but because some part of her wanted to yield.
"She's still asleep?" Caleb's deep voice came from the doorway, soft so as not to wake her. His massive frame filled the space, one shoulder leaning against the jamb, his ice-blue eyes fixed on Ava's sleeping form.
"Fourteen hours and counting," I replied without looking away from her face, my voice low, my hand resting on the mattress near her hip. "Ethan says it's normal. The heat took a lot out of her."
Caleb moved into the room, his massive frame somehow silent despite his size. He settled on the edge of the bed, the mattress dipping under his weight, his scarred face soft with something like reverence as he gazed at our Omega.
"She purred," Caleb said quietly, his deep voice barely above a whisper, his massive hands clasped between his knees. "Before she fell asleep the last couple of times. She was purring."
"I know." The memory made my chest tight, my throat thick with emotion. That soft, rumbling sound, the unmistakable sign of a contented Omega. She'd tried to stop it, embarrassed, but her body had refused to obey. And when we'd joined her, our purrs harmonizing with hers...
I'd never felt anything like it. Pack. Real pack, the way it was supposed to be.
"What happens when she wakes up?" Caleb asked, voicing the question we'd all been thinking, his ice-blue eyes finally lifting from Ava to meet mine.
"I don't know." I reached out, brushing a strand of hair from Ava's face, feeling the silk of it between my fingers. She stirred slightly but didn't wake, her lips parting on a soft sigh. "The heat made her compliant. Made her body override her mind. But the heat is over now. When she wakes up..."
"She might hate us again," Caleb finished heavily, his scarred face tightening, his jaw clenching with the weight of that possibility.
"She might." I watched her breathe, the slow rise and fall of her chest, the flutter of her pulse in the hollow of her throat. "Or she might remember how it felt to stop fighting. How peaceful it was to just... belong."
"And if she doesn't?" Caleb pressed, his deep voice rough with concern, his massive hands tightening where they clasped together.
I was quiet for a long moment, considering. "Then we start over. We've broken through once. We can do it again."
Caleb nodded slowly, his scarred face thoughtful, processing my words. "She asked about my scars. During the heat. Wanted to know how I got them."
"What did you tell her?" I asked, finally looking at him fully, noting the vulnerability in his ice-blue eyes.
"The truth." His massive hands clenched in his lap, knuckles whitening. "She cried, Mason. Not from fear or anger. She cried because she remembered being twelve years old and asking if they still hurt."
Something shifted in my chest. Ava had always been different—had always seen past the surface to something deeper. Even as a child, she'd looked at Caleb's ruined face and seen the gentleness underneath. She'd looked at Leo's chaos and seen the wounded boy beneath the jokes. She'd looked at Ethan's coldness and recognized it as protection.
And me? What had she seen when she looked at me?
"She's going to be angry," I said finally, my voice heavy with certainty. "When she wakes up. She's going to remember everything she said, everything she did, every time she begged us to bite her, to knot her, to claim her. And she's going to be furious."
"At us?" Caleb asked, his brow furrowing, deepening the scars that crossed his face.
"At herself." I finally looked away from Ava, meeting Caleb's ice-blue eyes, holding his gaze. "That's worse. She can direct anger at us, she's been doing it for weeks. But anger at herself? That's going to tear her apart."
Caleb was quiet, processing, his massive chest rising and falling with a heavy breath. "What do we do?"
"We're patient. We're gentle. We don't let her retreat into shame." I looked back at our sleeping Omega, at the marks we'd left on her skin, the evidence of our claiming written across her body. "And we remind her that everything she felt was real. The heat didn't create those feelings. It just stripped away the walls she'd built to hide them."
"You think she'll believe that?" Caleb asked, doubt coloring his deep voice, his ice-blue eyes searching my face.
"I think she'll fight it with everything she has." A small smile curved my lips despite the heaviness of the conversation. "That's who she is. She doesn't know how to do anything without fighting. But eventually, she'll get tired. And when she does, we'll be here."
Ava stirred again, a soft whimper escaping her lips. Her brow furrowed, some dream or discomfort pulling her toward wakefulness. I reached for her instinctively, my hand settling on her hip, my thumb stroking soothing circles through the blanket. She settled immediately, her face smoothing, her body relaxing into the touch.
Caleb made a low sound in his throat, surprise, maybe, or wonder. "She responds to you. Even in her sleep."
"She responds to all of us." I kept my hand on her hip, grounding her, keeping her calm. "The bonds are strong. Stronger than I expected, after everything. Whatever walls she builds in her mind, her body knows the truth."
"The truth?" Caleb repeated, tilting his head, the morning light catching the silver threads in his dark hair.
"That she's ours." I said it simply, without arrogance, because it wasn't a boast. It was just a fact. "She's been ours since she was fifteen years old and presented in that house. She was ours when she ran, when she hid, when she fought us with everything she had. And she's ours now, lying in this nest, covered in our marks, full of our scent."
