She's terrified of me.
The onion blurs. I blink hard, force it back. Keep cutting. The knife moves through the layers, and I focus on the sound of it, the rhythm. Something I can control when everything else is falling apart.
“What the hell just happened?” Kev's voice comes out rough, scraped raw.
No one answers. What can you say?
Lex stops pacing. “I've never read about this. Anywhere. And I've read everything. Pack formation, scent-match literature, every case study I could find.” He drags a hand through his hair. “There's no precedent. None.”
And we have two traumatized omegas hiding in a corner two floors up, four alphas standing in a kitchen, and no biological shortcut to make us pack.
The butter sizzles when I drop the onions into the pan. The sound grounds me. This is what I know. This is what I can control.
Kev turns from the sink. He finds Sera across the kitchen. “How did you find Espie? What happened to her?”
I stop cutting. The knife hovers over the board, forgotten. I need to hear this. I dread hearing this.
Sera's voice goes flat. Professional. The way people talk when the only alternative is breaking. “I got a tip about Ethan Wallace's black-site facility.” She uncrosses her arms, thencrosses them again, like she doesn't know what to do with her hands either. “I went in alone. There wasn't time to wait for backup.”
“Alone?” Kev's jaw tenses. “Into a facility run by the man who created modified betas?Alone?”
“Every hour I waited was another hour too long.” No apology in her tone.
“You could have died.”
“I called for backup.” Sera meets his gaze. Holds it. “Thank the gods I didn’t wait. Because I found our omega in a cell. Barely conscious.”
I add the carrots to the pan. The scrape of wood against cast iron fills the silence.
“What did they do to her?” Lex has stopped pacing, frozen by the coffee maker.
“I found her strapped to a table… hooked up to…” She clears her throat. “Fuck.”
Kev's scent goes nuclear. Oakwood burning, whiskey sharp enough to cut through everything else in the room. I've seen Kev angry before. Righteous fury in the courtroom, cold precision when he's dismantling a corrupt official's testimony. This is different. This is personal. This is a man who just learned his mate was tortured.
“I'll kill him.” Kev's voice is low. Deadly calm.
“Get in line,” Sera says.
Lex has gone white. The coffee grounds spill across the counter, forgotten. “How long was she there?”
“I don't know exactly how long Wallace had her. Years, from what I can piece together.” Sera's voice cracks. “She was... she's strong. Stronger than anyone should have to be. When I found her, she was unresponsive. I think that… it was only a matter of time before...”
“It would have to have been years in the place.” Kev's voice is hollow.
Sera swallows. “It took a long time to get her to understand I wasn't one of them. She kept waiting for me to...” She stops. Breathes. “She kept waiting for the trick. The trap. The moment I'd turn on her. She still does.”
Nobody moves. The soup bubbles on the stove. The refrigerator hums its low drone. And the four of us stand here, breathing in gardenia and clover and the sharp edge of grief, trying to make sense of a world that just tilted sideways.
Sera's telling this like a report. Facts. Timeline. Observations. I recognize the technique. I've used it myself, in the underground clinics, when the only way to get through the horror was to flatten it into data. But her hands are trembling where they grip her arms, and her scent has gone sharp with grief she's refusing to let surface.
She carried this alone. We looked after Aubrey, praying for him to heal but we had each other. I've stopped moving. The knife sits idle in my grip, and my vision blurs. I blink hard, force it back.
My mate.Experimented on. Alone in a cell with no one coming.
The rage that rises in me is unfamiliar. I'm the gentle one. The patient one. The one who soothes rather than fights. Right now I want to find Wallace and tear him apart with my bare hands. I want to break every bone in his body, one by one, while he screams the way she must have screamed. Him and any other asshole who dared harm my omega.
I add the stock to the pot. The liquid splashes against the hot pan and sizzles. The soup won't fix anything either, but it's something.
