Reid bursts into the clinic a moment later. He looks like a man who has just watched his last lifeline snap. He slams his hand against the doorframe. The sound echoes through the medical wing. "She found the link. I used the Pan-Global account. I thought the encryption was solid."
Dameon appears behind him. His eyes are dark with a bitter, dangerous light. "I told you she was not going to take it, Reid. You tried to buy her again, and she just spit on you."
"I was trying to keep the roof from falling on her head!" Reid’s voice cracks with a desperation I have never heard before. "The structural reports on that strip mall are a nightmare."
I stare at him. "She would rather die than have you save her.” My voice sounds flat and hollow even to my ears. I look at my cousins and I see the truth mirrored in their faces. We are dying. The rejection has reached a fever pitch. Reid’s hands shake.Dameon looks like he is about to put his fist through a wall. My heart rate is climbing into a dangerous range.
We can’t keep doing this. We can’t keep watching her waste away while we rot in this luxury prison. The pain is no longer a dull ache. It is an aggressive force that is tearing us apart from the inside.
I close my laptop and stand. "We have to go to her." My legs feel heavy, but the resolve is finally there. "Not as shell companies, managers, or as the Nest. We have to go as the men who are being torn apart by the rejection just as much as she is."
Reid looks at me, his face pale. "She will call the police. She made that clear."
"Then let her," Dameon rumbles. His jaw is set. "I would rather be in a cell than feel like this for another minute."
I grab my medical bag and pull out my phone to send a text to Theo. Just being near her will be enough for all of us to get stronger, and for her to stop withering away.
The drive to the residential district passes in a silence heavy with a desperation that makes the air in the car feel like it's running out. Every mile closer to her location feels like a pressurized weight lifting off my lungs. It is replaced by the sharp, stinging realization of what we have done to her. Her new apartment is in a brick walk-up that has seen better decades. It's a cramped, older building that smells of wet pavement and cat piss. We stand on the narrow landing of the third floor. Reid raises his hand and knocks on the door of unit 3B.
Footsteps approach, slow and uneven. When the door opens, Zora stands there. My medical instincts flare so hard I have to clench my fists to keep from reaching for her. Her brown skin is ashen. She looks sallow and drained of the natural warmth that usually radiates from her. Her brown eyes are sunken. She leans against the doorframe for support, her fingers trembling where they grip the wood. She looks at us, and for a second, I see her own pain mirrored in the way she winces. She is feeling the rejection just as much as we are. Her body is withering because of our idiocy.
Reid doesn't wait for her to speak. He sinks to both knees right there on the cracked concrete of the landing. "Zora, please. We are not here to ask for anything. We are here to beg you to use us."
Dameon and Theo follow suit, dropping to their knees in a line. I join them. It is a total surrender in the middle of this tiny landing.
"We can not function," I admit, my voice raw with the truth of it. "The bond is failing because it is incomplete, and it is destroying all of us. I can see your pulse in your neck. You are as exhausted as we are. You are trying to build this sanctuary while your body is at war with itself, and we can not stand to watch you fall apart because of the mess we made. You need to be strong for this project. You need to be strong for those kids."
Zora grips the door handle, her knuckles prominent against the dark metal. "I told you to stay away. I do not want anything from you."
Reid looks up at her, his face a mask of pure, unadulterated need. "Then do not take anything from us. Take it for them. Take it for the children. You have a vision for that strip mall that could take years at the rate you are going. You are fighting contractors who do not respect you and a city that is burying you in paper because they do not think an Omega belongs in a planning office.Use us as labor. Use us as tools. We do not expect anything in return. We will stay in the shadows. We will do whatever you need, no matter how menial, just so we can be near enough for the pain to stop."
Zora scoffs and wipes a hand across her tired eyes. "The city planning office treats me like a child. Every time I walk in there with my permits, the Alphas at the desk look right through me. They lose my paperwork. They tell me my zoning requests are incomplete without even looking at the files. I have the money for the first phase, but no one will listen to me. I am a joke to them."
Dameon looks at her with a desperate light in his eyes. "We are not your Alphas here. We are your workers. We will follow your orders. We will not touch you. We just need to be in your orbit so you have the strength to finish this project. You can not build a home for orphans if you are too weak to stand."
Zora looks down at us. I can see the calculation behind her exhaustion. She is smart enough to recognize the reality. The pull between us is a physical pressure, a magnetic force trying to stabilize her system as much as ours. She looks at her own trembling hands and then back at Reid.
"You will do exactly what I say?"
Reid nods, his forehead almost touching the floor. "I will handle the zoning. I will sit in those offices until they sign every permit. I will be whatever you need me to be."
Zora steps back, opening the door wider. "Get inside. If the neighbors see this, I will never hear the end of it."
We follow her into the apartment. It's small, filled with boxes and stacks of blueprints. It smells like her, a heavy scent of wild honey and warm vanilla that usually makes my head swim. The sweetness is currently frayed with the sour edge of stress. She turns to face us, her arms crossed over her chest to hide the way her shoulders shake.
"I am accepting this strictly as a professional arrangement." Zora keeps her eyes fixed on Reid. "You are not my pack. You are my crew. You work for me. You do exactly what I say, when I say it. If you try to take control or manage a single thing without my approval, you are gone. I don’t care if the rejection kills me. I will not let you take my autonomy again."
Reid stands, but he keeps his head bowed. "We understand. We are yours to use."
"Good." Zora points to the blueprints on the table. "This is not a project that will be done in months. This is a massive repurpose. It will take at least a year of hard work to get the first wing open. Reid, you are on zoning and the city planning office. I want those permits for the parking lot landscape approved by next month. Theo, I need you on the fundraising platform and the digital security for the center. Dameon, the demolition for the laundromat section is behind schedule because the crew I hired walked off the job. You are the new foreman. Micah, you are here to keep everyone upright, including me. I have work to do, and I am not losing another day to this ache."
As we move toward the table, the crushing weight in my chest settles into something manageable. The pain isn't gone, but the proximity is already coloring her skin again, bringing a hint of warmth back to her brown cheeks. We are not her pack yet, and maybe we never will be. But we are finally useful to her. For the first time in weeks, I can see the light of her mission burning bright enough to guide us all out of the dark.
Thesledgehammerhitstheconcrete with a bone-jarring thud that vibrates all the way up my spine. Dust plumes into the stagnant air of the old laundromat section, coating my skin in a fine, yellow-gray grit that mixes with the sweat already soaking my tank top. This is the only way I know how to exist right now. If I stop moving, if I stop breaking things, the bond rejection feels like it is going to cave my chest in.
I'm the foreman of this wrecking crew, but I haven't spent a single minute looking at a clipboard today. I do the heaviest lifting myself, hauling rusted steel pipes and jagged chunks of flooring until my lungs burn.nIt distracts me from wanting to give in to my instincts. Every hour I spend in this gutted strip mall is a lesson in restraint. I'm here to build her sanctuary, and if that means I have to be the one who clears the rubble, I'll do it until my hands are raw.
I stop to wipe my forehead with the back of my arm. I look toward the center of the former grocery store. Zora stands near a cluster of support beams, her golden-blonde puffs covered by a yellow hard hat that looks slightly too large for her head.She isn't alone. A man in a clean safety vest and a white hard hat stands beside her, gesturing aggressively at the blueprints spread across a folding table. He’s the city inspector, and even from here, I can hear the condescending edge to his voice as he explains why her proposed layout can not work around the primary support pillars.
