"Are you my sister?"
My fingers froze above the screen. The cramping in my abdomen intensified, though whether from my approaching heat or the sudden surge of adrenaline, I couldn't tell. TommyG. Tommy. Tom Graves. A soccer ball.
Could it really be my brother?
The little boy with grass-stained knees and a gap-toothed smile who used to perch at the end of my hospital bed and tell me how he’d scored a winning goal. The kid I'd read books to over video calls that grew increasingly shorter. The boy who became too busy with schools and sports and friends to visit in person. My brother. My brother who my parents became so vague about in those last months before they’d signed me over to Omega Protection Services.
I stared at the comment until the words blurred, trying to calculate the odds that this was actually him. Tom was a common name, and soccer a common sport. It could be coincidence. It could be a cruel joke. It could be?—
"Lucy?"
I looked up to find Xander standing in the doorway, his hair still damp from the shower. Something in my expression must have alarmed him because he crossed the room in three quick strides, the others appearing behind him as if summoned by some silent signal.
"What's wrong?" Fallon's deep voice cut through the buzzing in my ears.
Wordlessly, I turned the tablet toward them. Kane took it, his brow furrowing as he read the comment. His eyes widened slightly, then darted to my face.
"Your brother?" he asked, passing the tablet to Nitro.
I nodded, my throat tight. "I think so. I don't—I can't be sure."
"I can’t believe he’d contact you," Asher said, his jaw clenching in that way it did when he was suppressing anger.
"I haven't seen Tom since before Brightfield," I explained, the words scraping my throat raw. "My parents always made excuses about why he couldn’t come, or even video call. I assumed... I assumed they'd decided it was easier for him to just let me go. And then they—" I swiped at hot tears now streaming down my cheeks— “they let me go too.”
The men exchanged glances loaded with meaning. I knew what they were thinking because I'd thought it myself a million times: what kind of parents abandoned their sick child?
"Are you going to answer him?" Xander asked, his tone carefully neutral.
My hands were shaking as I took the tablet back. The men arranged themselves around me—Kane and Fallon on either side, Xander perched on the arm of the sofa, Nitro and Asher standing behind like sentinels.
I took a deep breath and began to type.
"My name is Lucy Graves. I'm twenty-four years old. I do have a little brother named Tom. He'd be about twenty now. He used to play soccer."
My finger hovered over the 'post' button for a heartbeat, then two. Then I pressed it, sending my words into the digital void.
"The comment is three days old," Nitro pointed out gently. "He may not?—"
A soft ping cut him off. A new comment. My heart jackhammered against my ribs as I opened it.
"My name is Tom Graves. I'm twenty. I play soccer for San Diego State. I think you're my sister... I thought you were dead."
The words hit me like a physical blow.Dead.My parents told him I died. Not sick, not away, not even abandoned.Dead.
Grief crashed over me, a wave so powerful I couldn't breathe through it. They had erased me not just from their lives but from existence itself. They had taken away any chance Tom might have had to find me, to know me, to decide for himself if I was worth keeping.
Fallon's arm tightened around my shoulders. Kane's hand found mine, his fingers intertwining with my trembling ones. Behind me, I felt Asher's hands on my hair, Nitro's on my neck, Xander's on my knee. They were all trying to anchor me to our beautiful present and not let me sink into my broken past.
"They told him I was dead," I breathed out, the words barely audible. "How could they do that?"
But I knew how. They could do that the same way they could sign away their parental rights, the same way they could stop visiting, stop calling, stop acknowledging that they'd ever had a daughter named Lucy. They could do it because for them, I had already died the day I was diagnosed. All the years that they’d fought insurance companies, scraped together money for treatments, and visited me in different hospitals was just the denial stage of their mourning.
New tears spilled down my cheeks, leaving behind damp, hot trails. I hadn't cried for my parents in years, not since I'd realized no number of tears would bring them back. But these weren't tears of pure sadness. They were complicated, mixedwith something that felt suspiciously like joy.Tom had looked for me. Tom wanted to know me!
My Alphas moved as one, pressing closer, their bodies forming a protective circle around me. Fallon's lips brushed my temple, Kane's my knuckles. Nitro leaned down to kiss the top of my head, while Xander's mouth found my wrist, his lips pressing against my pulse point. Asher, never one for subtlety, tilted my chin up and placed a soft kiss directly on my lips.
In that moment, surrounded by their warmth and strength, I felt something settle into place inside me. A piece I hadn't known was missing. I had lost a family and found another. And now, perhaps, I might reclaim a small piece of what had been taken.
