I click on the legal status tab to reveal the judge's preliminary ruling from this morning. "The trial's set for a month from now. They've officially charged him with felony stalking and attempted murder with a deadly weapon. The judge set the bail at fifty thousand dollars."
Reid lets out a growl, andhe slams his hand against the wood of the desk. "Fifty thousand? That's nothing. He'll be back on the street the second that seventy-two-hour hold's over if he's got any connections at all."
Dameon looks at Reid and his eyes full of a dark frustration. "I hate that we're stuck behind a screen. I want to be there the second he steps foot on a public sidewalk."
Reid shakes his head and looks at the monitors. "We have to stick to the case file and wait for him to make a move."
I start a script that'll refresh the legal portal every thirty seconds. "I've got the case file pinned to my center monitor. If there's a change in his bail status or if a lawyer's assigned, I'll know the second it's logged. It's the only window we have until he's released."
The threat of Roman Vane feels like a localized storm that keeps us grounded while everything else falls apart. We might be fighting over the lies we told Zora, but the wolf at the door's a reality we can't ignore.
"We keep this file open," Reid says, and his voice carries an absolute authority. "We watch every update. He doesn't get near her again."
I look at the dark corner of the monitor where her vitals usually scroll in a steady green rhythm. The dashboard's empty and the sensor's reporting a lost connection. My hand hovers over the mouse, wanting to click over to the camera feeds in her apartment, but I pull my hand back. We're trying to respect the boundaries she set, even if the distance feels like it's killing us.
The sun sets over the city when a plain white moving truck pulls into the loading bay. It is not a high-end company. It looks like the only outfit that would take a last-minute job on a Sunday evening. I watch the security feed on the main monitor, andmy chest feels like it's being crushed. Zora didn't wait a single day. She didn't even give us the night to explain why we did it. I watch the men in mismatched uniforms moving through her penthouse with a rough efficiency that makes my stomach turn.
Reid stands behind me and his hand's gripping the back of my chair. He looks at the screen with pure agony in his eyes. "She's leaving it all behind."
They ignore the expensive velvet nest platform and the designer furniture we bought to fill the space. They're only interested in the small stack of cardboard boxes she's been packing since the Heat broke. There are about a dozen of them, filled with the personal things she brought with her when she moved in.
Micah walks into the hub, and his eyes are red. "I can’t believe this.”
We watch as she gets in the elevator with the last load of boxes and the movers. We move as one. There is no discussion or hesitation as we sprint for the door. We reach the lobby just as the elevator chimes and the doors slide open. Zora emerges from the lift and she looks like a stranger. Her golden-blonde hair's pulled back into a tight bun. She doesn't look left or right as she walks toward the entrance. She walks with a determined stride that tells me she's never coming back.
Reid steps into her path and holds out his hands. "Zora, please. Don't do this. We can move you to a different floor. We will turn off the cameras. I will give you the keys to the entire building if you just stay."
Dameon moves to her side, his shoulders hunched with desperate tension. "We can fix this, Zora. Just give us a chance to talk."
Micah reaches toward her but stops before his fingers can brush her arm. "We have to protect you. You aren't safe out there on your own yet. Roman could get out on bail."
Zora doesn't even slow down. Her steps carry her straight toward the glass doors, and for a second I think she might stop to scream at us. Those brown eyes stay fixed on the street outside. Reid's nothing more than a ghost in the hallway as she moves past him without a single flinch. One final stride takes her out of the glass doors and into the humid air of the downtown streets without a single look back.
I watch her disappear into the back of a black car and it feels like the oxygen's been sucked right out of my lungs. The lobby's too large and quiet now. The movers finish up and the truck pulls away with the dozen boxes that hold her entire life.
We stand here in a line, none of us willing to be the first to walk away. Reid's the one who finally turns around. He looks like he's aged a decade in the last hour, but there's a hard light in his eyes that tells me he isn't giving up. "We're going up. We're going to figure out where she went and how we fix this."
We follow him into the elevator as a unit. We aren't done trying to keep her safe, even if she hates us for it. I step out onto the thirteenth floor after the doors slide open. I walk into the nesting room while the others move through the rest of the apartment. The fairy lights are still there, but they're dark. The velvet platform bed sits bare because she didn't want the comfort we provided. I look at the bedside table and I see a small matte black object sitting in the center of the wood.
I pick up the biometric band. Leaving the building wasn't the only thing she did; the connection is severed now. With her gone, we're left in a place that has no purpose. I sink onto the edge of the velvet platform and hold the band against my chest. We came so close to having her and our dream for the last fifteen years, but now it has slipped through our fingers, and it’s our fault.
Thefluorescentlightsofthe clinic hum with a sterile persistence. Today, they make the pounding behind my eyes feel more like a rhythmic stabbing. I sit at my desk, staring at the glowing screen of my laptop. The digital medical charts for the residents I saw this morning are open in a dozen different tabs, but I haven't typed a single note in twenty minutes. I know I need to update the files. The resident in unit 402 is recovering from a minor procedure and needs a specific post-op protocol logged, but the words are blurring into meaningless shapes.
It has been two weeks since her Heat broke, and she moved out without a goodbye; not that I blame her. Every nerve ending under my skin vibrates with a high-pitched frequency that I can’t turn off. It is the bond rejection. We knotted with her and our inner Alphas are screaming for the completion that never came. We should be working toward marking her as our Omega, keeping the bond healthy with sex while we wait for her to be ready.
Instead, I am sitting in a rolling chair and trying to remember how to breathe while my heart rate sits at a steady hundred beatsper minute. I checked my vitals ten minutes ago. Tachycardia, mild tremors, and an elevated cortisol level. I am a doctor who can’t even regulate his own pulse.
I look at the door and wonder how the others are holding up. I know they are suffering just as much as I am. Dameon has been in the gym for hours, trying to sweat off the frustration through physical exertion. Reid has retreated into the management of the building’s logistics, his eyes hollow and distant. He is trying to manage his way out of a heartbreak. Theo is likely still in the camming hub, staring at the empty feeds.
We are all falling apart because the Omega we chose has decided she doesn't need a pack. Is sh feeling the same grinding ache? Biology says she should be. Omegas have evolved to crave the safety of the bond even more than we do as Alphas, but Zora has spent her entire life proving she can survive things that would break anyone else.
A banner notification pings at the top of my screen, cutting through the list of digital prescriptions I was supposed to be reviewing. My heart skips a beat. It isn't a livestream alert. It is a notification from her channel: New Video Uploaded: The Sunflower Mission.
I click the link. The page loads and her face fills the screen, and the air in the clinic feels even thinner than before.
Zora isn’t in the penthouse anymore, and the change is jarring. She is sitting in a room with white walls that look thin and poorly insulated. There is a scuff mark near her shoulder, and the lighting is harsh and overhead. She looks raw. There are dark circles under her eyes, and her golden hair is pulled into a messy bun that looks like it was done in a hurry. She is in a plain white t-shirt that looks two sizes too big. She looks like the girl I remember from the home, stripped down to her essentials and vibrating with a nervous energy that makes me want to reach through the screen.
She looks into the lens, and I feel a pang of longing so intense it makes my breath hitch. "I know I have been gone for two weeks and that I'm not looking my best right now, but I think it is time I was more honest with all of you and that means looking real. I have moved out of the Nest apartment and I am starting over from scratch. I have some savings I have gathered over the years, and even though I am not some rich Alpha influencer, I can make this work on my own. I love this channel and the community we have built, but I want to do some good with it. I want to build something that matters."
