Bastion grins. “That’s why the Council sent you, huh? Secret maid service.”
I roll my eyes, but it’s not mean. “They sent me to keep you from dying. Cleaning is just a bonus.”
Bastion nods, then glances at his phone. He doesn’t check it, just sees it on the desk and sighs. “You see who called?” he asks.
I hesitate. “Dealer. Who is that?”
He looks away, jaw tight. “Nobody. Just a friend.”
I don’t believe him, but I don’t push. Not yet.
Bastion swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands, slower than usual but steady. “Thanks,” he says, softer this time.
“For what?”
“For not running away,” he says. “Most omegas would have bailed by now.”
I shrug. “Maybe I’m not like most omegas.”
He looks at me, and there’s a new respect in his eyes. “Yeah. Maybe you’re not.”
Bastion leaves to find the bathroom, and I flop onto the bed, arms wide, staring at the ceiling. I breathe in the scent of pine and honey, and I let myself relax for just a second.
When Bastion comes back, he’s already pulling on a hoodie, wincing as the fabric snags on his bandages.
“You’re not supposed to be up this long,” I say.
He shrugs. “I hate being still. Makes me feel like I’m dying.”
I hand him a protein bar from the care package and sit next to him on the bed. We eat in silence, watching the last of the daylight bleed through the blinds.
After a while, Bastion says, “You know the Council’s going to make a big deal out of this, right? The accident. The press. Everything.”
I nod. “Let them. You made it out alive. That’s the best headline.”
He grins, then goes quiet. “You ever think about leaving? Just… starting over somewhere else?”
I think about Eloise, about my parents, about the finishing school and the promises I made to myself when I was a kid. “No. I like it here. Even when it sucks.”
He laughs. “You’re insane, Grey.”
“Maybe. Or maybe a bit too stubborn.”
Bastion finishes the protein bar and leans back, his eyes already heavy again. “Wake me up if the house catches fire.”
“Deal.”
I watch as he drifts off again, this time with a smile.
CHAPTER 15
Ranier
The hardest thingabout being in Emery Grey’s room isn’t the color, or her scent all over the place, or even the lighting which cycles in slow-mo from bright pink to acid blue depending on the fairy lights she’s mood-mapped for the day. It’s the way every single object in here feels like it might leap up and start talking.
The art on the walls is the worst culprit. She has gigantic canvases where sugar-shock color and spiky geometry fight for dominance, painted with a kind of violence I wouldn’t have believed possible from a girl so small. Some of them are portraits, some are abstract. All of them have eyes, and none of them look away. Emery has a way of seeing right to the heart of someone. It would appear her art is much the same.
Wyatt perches on the edge of the bed with one of Emery’s spiral notebooks open across his knee. “You know, I never understood her thing for the blob style,” he says. “But this… this is, like, legitimately good.”
