"I'm sorry," I say. And I mean it in a way that covers more than I can articulate. For Chase losing a pack member. For Arden losing him too. For Jasper, who spent so long playing the long game that he might not know how to stop.
"Yeah," Chase says. "Me too. We'll figure it out. Or we won't. But I wanted you to know."
We say goodbye. I stand there with the phone in my hand.
Jasper’s gone.
And Marie.
I think about her like I've been trying not to—the damage underneath the things she did, the note she gave Chase that I've read so many times the fold lines are wearing through.I never wanted to hurt another omega. But I'd do it again.
And then, without planning to, I'm back in Ragon's house.
It was the middle of the night. I woke up to a sound and followed it down the hall to the bathroom. The light was on underneath the door. I could hear it clearly once I stopped… crying. The kind that tries to be quiet and isn't.
I knocked.
There was a long pause before the door opened.
Marie stood there in the bathroom light, red-eyed and tear-streaked, her hair loose, wearing a sleep shirt that was too big for her. Drake’s. She looked—different than the person I'd been building in my head. Here she was just a girl who had been crying alone in a bathroom in the middle of the night.
She looked at me.
I asked if she was okay.
Her face shifted… a crack in whatever she was maintaining, a moment where she almost said a real thing. Her mouth opened. She looked at me with an expression that I didn't understand then and only half understand now.
Then she closed it.
“I'm fine,” she said. And shut the door.
I stood in the hallway confused and vaguely unsettled, and then went back to my room.
I didn't think about it again until much later.
I think about it now.
She wanted to say something that night. I'm sure of it. Something real and complicated and probably too big for a bathroom doorway at two in the morning. And she chose not to. Or couldn't. Or was afraid of what happened if she did.
I don't know her story. I know pieces of it—the father, possible trafficking connections, the brother who's missing, that she did things she maybe didn’t want to do. But I don't know what it felt like from the inside. What it cost her. Whether she had any choices at all or just the illusion of them.
She's one of the lucky ones. She got away.
I hope Marie got away too.
Wherever she is.
I put my phone in my pocket and stand in the warm afternoon letting the thought drift into something I can carry without it weighing too much. Marie's problems are her own. Her story is her own. I hope it ends somewhere better than it started.
But that's for her to find out.
I walk back to my pack.
Rhys sees me coming and extends his arm. I tuck into his side and feel his warmth wrap around me immediately, his lips kissing my hair. Jonah is still talking and Rhys has one ear on the conversation and one on me, how he always divides his attention when I'm nearby.
I press my hand flat against his chest.
Feel his heartbeat. Steady and real.
