Alex doesn't touch me beyond what's unavoidable. The old restraint because of the flag. But his presence is close and real and the juniper of his scent comforts me alongside Rhys's burnt wood and ash.
Both of them. Mine.
Tomorrow is still a question mark. The registry, the flag, Chase's efforts, those sterile rooms—none of it certain. All the answers I'll need stay just beyond reach.
But today Drake left with Eli. The hearing went how it needed to go. I said the things that needed saying and let go of the things that needed letting go.
Today I am here.
I'm in this bed with these people. In this house that smells like my pack.
Rhys's purr moves through the mattress into my bones. Alex's chest rises and falls slowly beside me.
I close my eyes.
I fall asleep with what feels like hope.
Chapter 30
Rhys
She asks.
That's how she does most things—like she's aware the question has weight and wants to give me the option to set it down if I need to. We've been lying in her nest for an hour, her tucked against my side, the cabin settling around us in the dark. My arm is around her. Her hand is flat against my chest.
"You don't have to," she says. "If you don't want to."
I think about that.
I've never told anyone the whole story. Arden knows the clinical version—what I let him piece together over months of sessions, fragments offered slowly when I had enough trust to give them. Malcolm knows some of it. Finn knows pieces. Alex knows what he needs to know.
No one has asked like she's asking. Like she wants to understand, not manage. Like she'll hold it without judging me or it.
"I was fourteen," I say.
She freezes. Listening.
"Walking home from school. I'd presented three weeks before." I pause. "I was already big. Bigger than most grown alphas by then. The traffickers were watching for new designations. Especially large ones."
I feel her fingers press slightly against my chest. Not asking me to stop. Just being present.
"They took me off the street," I continue. "Locked me in a cell. Beat me for the first week to establish what I was to them—property. Then they started the conditioning."
"What kind of conditioning?"
"Starvation. Sleep deprivation. Pain. Every time I showed aggression toward a beta or an omega, they'd punish it. Every time I showed aggression toward another alpha, they'd reward it. Food. Rest. Basic comfort." I look at the ceiling. "It doesn't take long. When you're hungry enough, you learn fast what gets you fed."
She doesn't say anything. I can hear her breathing, slow and deliberate, how she breathes when she's working to stay steady.
"Then the fights started," I say. "Small at first. One alpha. Then two. They were testing what I could do." I pause. "I was good at it. That was the problem. The better I got, the more money I made them, the less chance there was of them letting me go."
"Did you try to leave?"
"I tried to throw fights. Early on, before I understood the system." My jaw clenches at the memory. "They'd put me back in the cell. Starve me for days. Then come in with bats and cattle prods and work on me until I couldn't stand. Heal me. Feed me. Start again." I feel her flinch slightly against my side. "I learned trying got me nowhere. So I stopped trying."
"You just survived," she says.
"For a while."
