I don't look at them. Instead, I focus on the orange glow in the wood burner.
"Eleven years in a cage."
Barkrood Base kept me safe, but I was never free.
I scoff, remembering that despite the horrible circumstances of my deployment with Scorch Squad, I'd been excited.
"Frack, it’s embarrassing how hopeful I was. It was my first experience living outside of The Omega Division."
I take a shuddering breath, letting it out slowly.
"To you, training me was a chore, but to me… it was a chance to live,reallylive. To breathe fresh air and actually interact with the world. For me, it was never about becoming a soldier, I only wanted the chance to prove I was more than wasted potential — a defective, broken womb. I wanted to learn how to protect the little family of rejected Omegas I love more than myself."
I swallow the lump that's formed in my throat. I know they can probably smell the salt in the air, but I can't let them see the tears threatening to well in my eyes.
"And I tried, I really fracking tried, but you only ever treated me as a poor trainee or, when my powers came in, a tool to use. You never really understood what it took for me to fight. Omegas aren’t made for violence. I killed people and it broke something in me, something I haven’t figured out how to put back together yet. I don’t know if I ever will.”
The tears fall, and I hate that they might steal from the strength of my words. I’m not weak.
“There were so many reasons for me to leave. So many misunderstandings, raging instincts clouding judgment, a misalignment of our goals and dreams. If I stayed, you would’ve overridden my decision to find my missing family. I know what was at the core of my decision to leave.”
After months of blaming myself, I'm ready to confront a painful truth at the very crux of my decision.
"I can't join a Pack that doesn't see me as a equal."
Knox’s face scrunches into a visage of frustration, and he slams a fist on the table.
"Because you're not our equal!" he roars.
There it is.
He said the quiet part out loud.
And just like that, the fragile hope I’d been nursing cracks wide open. My heart doesn’t just ache — it splinters. Because no matter what I give, no matter how hard I try to come back from everything that happened, it’ll never be enough if they still see me as less.
I don’t say another word.
I just stand there, arms wrapped tight around myself, holding in the pieces.
If they won’t fight to see me as an equal, then maybe I was right to walk away the first time.
Chapter Twenty-One
Shade
'You're a fucking idiot, Knox,'I snap across the bond, my projection sharper than I intended.
He has the grace to grimace as it dawns on him how badly he screwed up.‘That wasn’t how I meant to say it.’
It’s too late. Halley is shutting down right in front of our eyes. She’s making these soft whining sounds of pain, humiliation, and utter defeat that slice right through the center of me.
Viper reaches out to comfort her, but she swats him away like his touch burns.
Blaze, in his twisted mind, finds it funny.
“Can’t handle the truth, Sparkles?” Blaze chuckles.
‘Shut the fuck up Blaze, you’re not helping,’I snarl. He doesn’t respond. Of course not. He doesn’t share the link because his mind’s too fractured for the rest of us to reach. If he was anywhere near sane, he’d be ashamed of the way he’s treating Halley, of how quick he is to wound the very Omega he used to swear he’d protect with his life.
