Page 126 of Beautifully Scarred Omega

My hand found the scar. The one on her right shoulder. The one Finn told us about the night at the club.

I straighten and pick up the scattered papers. Close the folder and place it on the desk where she was sitting, where the warmth of her body is still fading from the wood.

I have spent my life solving problems with data and patience, with the certainty that every question has an answer if you look at it long enough.

But I know that this isn’t a problem I can solve. Whatever made her run isn’t something I can reason through.

And all I can do is hope and wait.

CHAPTER 34

Sophie

You’re disgusting. Look at you. Who would ever want to touch this?

Marek’s voice. Low, bored, the way he always sounded when he said things that left marks deeper than his hands ever did. I can hear it as clearly as if he were standing behind me—the patience, as if he had all the time in the world.

Look at you. You’re used up. You were never worth the money we paid for you. You’re worthless. You know that, right? Completely fucking worthless. Your cunt is the only useful part of you, and even that’s disappointing.

I open my eyes.

The gray ceiling of my room in the residential wing stares back at me. My pulse is hammering. The sheets are tangled around my legs, damp with sweat, and my tank top is clinging to my chest like a second skin.

The fifth night in a row.

Ever since the archive room with Ethan, the nightmares have come back with a vengeance. They were mostly of Marek’s voice layered over the darkness, whispering the things he used to say while I lay on the floor of that room in Detroit, too broken to move. Telling me what I am. What I’ll always be.

Ugly. Ruined. Worthless.

I thought I’d buried him. I thought the years and the training and the careful, methodical process of becoming someone else had put enough distance between me and that girl that his voice couldn’t reach her anymore.

I was wrong. All it took was one touch on my shoulder—Ethan’s gentle hand, wanting nothing from me but closeness—while I was falling apart in his arms, and my defenses came crashing down like they were built from paper.

Finn grazed my shoulder once and I put him in a chokehold. So why did Ethan’s hand on the same spot shatter me?

Because this time you were further in. The answer rises unbidden. Finn touched your shoulder while you were still deciding. Ethan touched it while you were past deciding, and your body couldn’t tell the difference between his hands and Marek’s.

I sit up and press the heels of my hands against my eyes.

In the days since the archive room, the alphas have been careful with me in a way that makes my chest ache—Max leaving extra space between us in meetings, Finn keeping his jokes light, Ethan maintaining a respectful distance that somehow hurts more than closeness would. They’re giving me room. They’re being patient.

It makes me want to scream.

Because the distance I’m trying to maintain keeps crumbling at the edges.

So I’ve been pulling back and keeping our meetings as short as possible. Because the alternative—throwing myself at them, which apparently my body is now programmed to do—is not an option.

Get the mole. Get out.

The mantra feels thinner every time I repeat it.

And now, for the first time, I’m tempted to call Griffin and ask him to take me off the case.

I’ve never asked to be pulled. Not once. Not during the Volkov extraction when I spent three weeks sleeping in a car. Not during the Baton Rouge job when I took a bullet in the shoulder and finished the op on adrenaline and spite. I don’t quit. I don’t break. That’s the deal I made with myself when I was twenty-one and Sentinel gave me a way out—I would be useful and strong and I would never again be the girl who couldn’t protect herself.

But I don’t know how to do this anymore. I don’t know how to sit across from three men who make me feel things I’ve never felt and pretend I’m fine. I don’t know how to sleep when every time I close my eyes I’m back in that bedroom with Marek’s voice telling me I’m nothing. I don’t know how to be Sophie Dysart when Sophie Aveline is falling apart.

I don’t call Griffin.