"Go shower. You smell like a hospital."
Iwishthat meant something.
I wishyou smell like a hospitalwas reallyyou smell like someone else's hands. I wish the edge in his voice was possessive—the alpha in him recoiling from the chemical traces of the facility on my skin. The blockers. The antiseptic. Scents that don't belong on me, covering mine.
But that's not what this is.
Zero is here for his brother. He pinned me to a pool table and fucked me in a basement and none of that means I matter to him. It means I'm convenient. It means I'm biology. It means I'm a stupid, lovesick idiot reading subtext into a sentence that has no sub, just text—go shower, you smell bad, get out of my sight.
I walk past him. Close enough that I feel the heat of his body and catch his scent—gunpowder and black coffee, the same as always, and underneath it something raw and sleepless that makes my pulse kick despite everything my brain is telling me.
Our hands brush.
Not his hand lifting. Not a deliberate reach. Just proximity—my knuckles grazing his where it hangs at his side, the barest collision of skin against skin as I pass.
The jolt goes through me like a live current. Sharp. Electric. Involuntary—the kind of contact that my body reads before my brain can intervene, and for a half-second every nerve ending between my wrist and my shoulder lights up.
I stop. Can't help it. My feet just stop.
Zero's head tilts. Barely. A fraction of a turn in my direction—not looking at me, not quite, but no longer looking away either. His brows knit. A crease forming between them that I've never seen before. His jaw works once and his hand—the one I brushed—flexes at his side.
Opens. Closes.
Did he… feel that?
My heart is hammering. My skin is still buzzing where we touched—a phantom charge that won't dissipate. And Zero is standing there with that crease between his brows and his hand flexing and his head tilted toward me like a dog hearing a frequency it can't identify.
No. I'm imagining things. I'm exhausted and traumatized and my biology is haywire and I'm projecting meaning onto a man who won't even look me in the eye. This is what omegas do—whatIdo—find crumbs and build castles out of them and then act surprised when the whole thing collapses.
I keep walking. Force my feet to move. Don't look back.
But I feel him behind me the entire length of the hallway. Not his eyes this time. Something else. Something I can't name and refuse to hope about.
I slide into the first bedroom and close the door behind me.
It’s bigger than my room at the estate. A king bed piled with white linens, blackout curtains half-drawn, my duffle bagnestled on a chair, my laptop on the desk. On the nightstand: a phone charger, a bottle of water, a bottle of ibuprofen.
Atlas thought of everything.
The bathroom is marble and glass and soft lighting that doesn't buzz. I stand under the shower for twenty minutes and watch the water run gray, then pink, then clear. The heat soaks into muscles I didn't know were still clenched. My shoulders drop. My jaw unclenches. The welts on my back sting under the spray and then go numb and I let them.
I press my forehead against the tile and close my eyes and breathe steam and for the first time in five days, no one is watching me.
My knees give out.
I don't decide to sit. My legs just fold and then I'm on the shower floor, knees drawn up, water streaming over my head and down my back and pooling around me. The tile is warm. Smooth. Nothing like concrete.
The first sob catches me off guard—a sound I didn't plan, ripping out of my chest before I can swallow it. Then another. My shoulders shake. I press my face into my knees and let it happen because the door is locked and no one is watching and no one is coming in and for the first time in five days my body is my own.
The tears feel good.
Like relief. And I let everything out.
When they stop, I turn off the water. Dry off. Open the duffle bag.
My clothes. Everything I packed for myself plus some extra things Atlas threw in. Comfy sweats. A cloth shirt that smells like him. Thick socks and fresh underwear.
Finally.
