"That's exactly what I said."
"Like... arranged marriage? In this century? In this economy?"
The words leave my mouth carrying a fury that is disproportionate to their comedic framing, because I am not joking. I am remembering three men in suits in my mother's living room. An Alpha who leaned into my personal space and whispered threats against my mouth. A woman who viewed her own daughter as a commodity with a shelf life. The institutional violence of a system that treats Omegas as assets to be allocated rather than people to be respected.
Mae's family is doing the same thing my mother tried to do to me.
The exact same fucking thing.
She explains. The late presentation at twenty-one, three years behind schedule. Parents who interpret biological tardiness as personal failure. An ultimatum: bond by twenty-five or they select the pack. A birthday that falls on Valentine's Day, which is six weeks from now, converting a romantic holiday into a deadline with the aesthetic cruelty of a Hallmark card designed by a divorce attorney.
I cycle through approximately seventeen emotions in thirty seconds. Horror, disbelief, rage, more rage, a concerning quantity of additional rage that I channel into gripping the edge of the table rather than flipping it.
"That'sbarbaric." The word hisses between my teeth. "They can't just auction you off like livestock!"
"They're my parents. Apparently, they can do whatever they want."
"But it's your life! Your body! Your choice!"
The ferocity surprises me. Not the anger itself but its depth, the way it reaches down into the specific, personal well of my own experience with parental control and draws from areservoir that has been filling since I was sixteen and my mother confiscated my phone and my friendships and my autonomy in the same administrative sweep.
Jace sets down his smoothie, his golden eyes carrying a softness that he conceals beneath sarcasm in the same way I conceal tenderness beneath volume.
"That's messed up, MaeMae. Seriously messed up."
Mae shrugs. The gesture is practiced. Defensive. The body language of a woman who has been explaining her situation to people for long enough that the explanation has smoothed itself into a routine.
"So you came here to... what? Buy time?"
"Pretty much."
Jace and I exchange a look across the table.
The loaded kind. The kind that contains an entire conversation compressed into a single glance, built on years of proximity and shared context and the mutual understanding that develops between people who have been reading each other's faces since childhood.
My look says:This is worse than I thought.
His look says:I know.
I lean forward, elbows on the table, redirecting the conversation before the rage makes me say things that will frighten Mae and alarm the surrounding tables.
"Okay. Change of subject before I track down your parents and give them a piece of my mind. Did they already situate you with a room?"
She laughs, and the sound is more bitter than amused.
"Oh, they situated me, alright. I'm so thrilled to be temporarily housed with the three musketeers."
My eyebrows scrunch.
"The three musketeers?"
"Also known as my bullies from sixth grade."
My fork clatters to the tray.
"No.Fucking.Way."
"Yes fucking way."
