Page 140 of Beautifully Scarred Omega

“When I first got here,” she says, “I thought this was just another job. Rich alphas, fancy building, someone sabotaging their company.” She picks at a thread on her wet jeans, not looking at any of us. “Find the mole, get out. That was the whole assignment.”

She looks at Ethan. “I told you that what you were building here didn’t matter. That it was just products. Sex toys.” She swallows. “I didn’t understand.”

Ethan’s hand tightens around his glass but he doesn’t speak.

She turns to Finn. “And when you told me how important it was to find the leak, I thought—I thought you were three billionaires who were pissed off that someone had broken into your playground and touched your things. That it was about ego. About money.”

Finn opens his mouth but she shakes her head.

“Let me finish. Please.” Her voice is barely holding together now. “I’ve met a lot of alphas in my line of work. And most of them are exactly what you’d expect. So when I walked in here, I assumed the worst, because that’s what I’ve learned to do.”

Her hands curl into fists in her lap, then release, like she’s making herself let go.

“I know now that I was wrong. About all of it. About what Synthera is, about what you’re trying to do, about what Equinox could mean for omegas like—” She stops and catches herself. “For omegas.”

Like me. That’s what she almost said. Omegas like me.

“I just wanted you to know that. And that I’m sorry. For how I was in the beginning. For the things I said.”

She looks sad in a way I haven’t seen before. Her eyes are bright and her lower lip is caught between her teeth, and she looks like she’s about to cry and is furious at herself for it.

Finn moves to sit on the arm of her couch. “Sophie, you didn’t know. We don’t blame you.”

“Well, maybe you should.” Her voice cracks. “I’ve been so angry. I kept telling myself you were the enemy. That you had to be. Because if you weren’t...”

She doesn’t finish and she doesn’t have to. Because if we weren’t the enemy, she’d have to reckon with what we actually are to her, and I have a feeling that’s the thing that terrifies her more than any of it.

“And now?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” she whispers, looking down at her hands twisting in her lap. “I don’t know what I think anymore.”

The fire crackles. On the screen, Colin Farrell is still in Bruges, but nobody’s watching.

Then she stands, fast and abrupt, like a decision made between one heartbeat and the next. She’s already turning toward the door, already doing what she always does—giving just enough and then pulling back before it turns into something she can’t take back.

“Sophie, wait.” I’m on my feet before she reaches the door. “There’s something I’d like to show you.”

She turns back to me, biting her lip. “Okay,” she says quietly.

I lead her upstairs, past the bedrooms, to the library at the end of the hall—floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, a leather couch by the window, and above us, a skylight that turns the ceiling into a frame for whatever the sky is doing. It’s where I come when the house feels too full and my head feels too loud, and tonight I want her to have it.

The rain has stopped as quickly as it started. The clouds have split open and the sky above us is scattered with stars, and when Sophie looks up, some of the tension leaves her face.

We sit beside each other on the couch, the stars pressing down through the glass above us. I can hear her breathing and the quiet tick of rain still dripping from the gutters outside.

I pick up my tablet from the side table. I’ve been carrying this for days—since she told me in the car that she’d stayed at an Elaine House. I went home that night and couldn’t sleep, and I opened the database and searched until I found her.

“When you told me you stayed at an Elaine House,” I say, “I checked our records.”

Her head turns toward me.

“I found you.” I open the tablet and hold it out to her. “I know I probably shouldn’t have.”

She takes it and looks at the screen, and the sound she makes is so small I almost miss it, a hitch of breath.

It’s a Christmas photo. Elaine House, eleven years ago. A group shot—residents and staff gathered in front of a decorated tree, paper plates and tinsel, the kind of scrappy celebration that happens in places where people don’t have much but make the most of it.

And there, near the back, half-hidden by someone’s shoulder—a girl. Twenty years old, maybe twenty-one. Short dark hair, like she’d cut it herself. A face so thin the cheekbones look like they might cut through the skin. Hollow eyes staring at the camera without expression. A girl who looked like she was already gone.