I'm shaking now. Full-body, hands, legs, teeth. My instincts are in chaos—rage, fear, grief, a desperate, pathetic hope that this is some kind of test I can still pass if I just say the right things.
"Tell me," I whisper, turning to Drake. "If she hadn't shown up… if you hadn't smelled her… were you going to bond me?"
He freezes.
Eli closes his eyes.
Ragon's scent spikes with alarm.
"Answer me. Were you? Or were you just going to keep me like this? Convenient. Temporary. Until something better came along."
"That's not fair," Eli says softly.
"I don't care if it's fair."
Drake swallows. His throat works. "We talked about it. Before. About making it official if things kept going the way they were. I meant what I said back then. I did."
"'If we don't find a scent match in five years, we'll bond you officially,'" I quote. I remember every word. Every look. Every shift of scent in that conversation. "That's what Ragon said, right?"
He nods, eyes glassy. "Yeah."
"It's been almost five years. And you found one."
Silence.
Not a metaphor. Not a maybe. Just the knife.
"But you stayed," Eli whispers. "You stayed with us. We stayed with you."
"Because you didn't know she was out there. Now you do. And everything's different."
"Some things are different," Ragon concedes. "Some aren't. You're still here. You will remain here."
"Until when? Until she gets uncomfortable sharing? Until the registry calls with a better placement for me? Until you decide a two-omega, four-alpha, one-half-broken girl pack is too much?"
His eyes darken. "Enough."
The word rolls over me like thunder. My instincts drop to their knees. My mouth snaps shut.
For a heartbeat, we just stare at each other. Alpha and omega. Leader and… something.
"Breathe," Eli murmurs, his palm smoothing between my shoulder blades. "In. Out. That's it."
I drag in air. It tastes like pine and citrus and tea and my own fear.
Ragon sits back slowly, reeling himself in. "We are not giving you away. Put that thought down. Right now."
"I can't."
His jaw ticks. "You will."
"No. I can't just pretend my first pack didn't happen. I can't pretend that hearing 'we found our scent match' doesn't make me feel like I'm about to be packed in a box and shipped back to that place. To be given to another pack who can use me until they findtheirsomething better. I can't even imagine what I did to end up in this vicious cycle!"
Drake lets out a broken noise. "We would never send you back there."
"You say that like you didn't just prove I don't belong here in the same way she will."
The words hang between us, ugly and true.
