"If you want out," he says, "I will make sure Ragon cannot touch your life again. Cannot reach you through any mechanism I can block." A gentle squeeze. "But if you don't want that. If you want to go back—especially knowing what you know now, knowing Marie is gone—if that's what you choose, I will call this off."
I stare at him.
"Everyone around you has been moving pieces," he says. "Including me. Including Arden. And I know that's not something you asked for. I know you were never given the choice to say yes or no to any of it." Even and careful. "That's the world we live in. Omegas answer to the registry first and their pack second and somewhere after that, if they're very lucky, they get to answer to themselves."
He lets that sit.
"I want you to be very lucky. So I'm asking. What do you want?"
I'm quiet for a long time. The fire pops in the grate.
I think about Ragon. Not the Ragon of the last year—the one before that. The one who appeared in my doorway when I was screaming from nightmares and didn't ask what was wrong, just pulled me in and saidno one is taking you from here. The one who used to sit in my nest on slow Sunday mornings just to sit there, talking about nothing for hours.
I remember the nights he held me and told me I was good enough. Until I wasn't. Until Marie arrived and five years of promises dissolved like they'd been made in water.
I think about the registry and my first pack returning me when their match showed up, the hollow assessment hallways, the woman in the grey suit who made decisions about my future without asking. I think about Drake at the window offering to testify, how it didn't change anything but still meant something. I think about Marie back at the registry and Ragon with nothing.
After all of it.
I meet Chase's eyes. "If I go back to Ragon's, I'll also need a lobotomy and possibly a personality transplant, so unless the registry is offering a two-for-one special on those this week, that's going to be a hard pass from me."
Chase's mouth curves. Just slightly.
"I'd elaborate," I say, "but I think that covers it."
"It does."
Malcolm makes a sound that might be a laugh. Might be relief. Hard to tell.
Beside me, Rhys says nothing. But his hand finds mine where it rests on my knee and his thumb traces one slow circle across my knuckles. I don't look at him. Neither of us makes anything of it.
"So what happens to me?" I ask. "Where do I actually go?"
Chase releases my hands and moves back into business. "For now you stay here. I'll tell the registry you're coming to my home—I've done it before for omegas in transition. They'll accept thatfor a short time. Right now they think you’re still with Ragon. I don’t expect him to contest that tomorrow. If he told them you’ve been missing and he hasn’t reported it, they’ll accuse him of trying to hide the heat abandonment, which is the truth. We won't mention Alex’s pack at all and neither will he." He glances briefly at Alex. "It buys us time."
"Time to do what?"
"Figure out the next move." He stands. "But first we get through tomorrow."
He looks at each of them in turn, something passing between the alphas that I'm only partly part of. He tells me to get some rest before he leaves, and the door clicks shut.
None of us say anything.
Then Finn exhales slowly. "Okay. That's tomorrow's problem."
I nod. The knot in my chest doesn't loosen.
***
The rest of the day is impossible.
I try to read and can't, the sentences sliding off the page and underneath them always the hearing, always tomorrow, always the chance that it isn't enough. I tell myself Chase is confident. It helps for about three minutes before the anxiety climbs back.
Finn worries over me in the quiet way he has—not saying he's worried, just appearing with snacks I didn't ask for, sitting nearby, making conversation that doesn't demand anything.
Malcolm, shirtless as always, keeps finding reasons to be in whatever room I'm in. His chest is a particular problem. A distracting problem. I notice Drake's jaw work every time Malcolm stretches or reaches for something, which would almost be funny if I weren't also experiencing a small guilty involuntary appreciation every single time. I am only human.
Rhys spends the afternoon moving between the porch and wherever I am, not hovering, just present. At one point I find him outside sitting on the steps watching the tree line and I sit beside him for twenty minutes without either of us saying anything, and I feel the anxiety dial down by several notches just from proximity to him. I don't understand exactly why his presence does what it does to me, but I've stopped questioning it.
