Page 207 of Beautifully Scarred Omega

I think about how wrong she was. And despite everything, some part of me is grateful, because if none of it had happened, Sophie might never have walked through our door. I don’t let myself think about what life would look like without her. I already know the answer, and it’s unbearable.

Ethan speaks next. He is precise and thorough and loses approximately thirty percent of the non-scientists in the audience within the first two minutes. Finn rests a hand briefly on his shoulder, Ethan recalibrates, and the thirty percent return.

I love him for both the thoroughness and the recalibration.

Then Finn steps forward.

“There’s one more thing,” he says.

He holds the room without trying, completely relaxed, making every person feel like he’s speaking directly to them.

“And it’s considerably more interesting than pharmacokinetics.”

Ethan gives him a look and Finn grins.

“A few months ago,” Finn says, “a woman walked into this building and turned our whole world upside down.”

He pauses, and his expression turns unexpectedly tender.

“In the best possible way.”

He glances at me, and I step forward to stand beside him.

“We didn’t know what we were getting when she first arrived,” I say. “I don’t think any of us could have been prepared for her.”

I look across the atrium at her.

“She is the woman who changed everything. She⁠—”

I stop, the knot in my throat catching me off guard.

I think about the basement in Detroit and the scars on her body and the girl who came home from school and found her mother gone. Everything she survived. Every wall she built to keep herself safe. And then the night she tore those walls down, one by one, and handed us everything she’d been holding.

I swallow hard and keep going.

“She changed everything,” I say. “That’s the only way I know how to say it. Nothing has been the same since she walked through our door.”

“She changed us,” Finn says beside me, his hand finding my shoulder and squeezing once. His voice is quiet now, the humor gone. “All three of us. More than I think any of us knew we needed.”

The room seems to hold its breath with us.

“We would like to announce our bond,” Ethan says.

A murmur moves through the crowd, soft at first, then spreading as people exchange glances.

“And our engagement.”

Ethan says it simply, his voice calm, but there is nothing casual about it. We all knew what this moment would mean, but hearing the words out loud, in front of everyone, hits me harder than I expected.

Sophie is looking at us across the atrium. A smile breaks across her face, and even from here I can see tears beginning to gather in her eyes.

I’m ready.

She’s standing with Evie, a champagne glass in her hand, and Evie is looking around, trying to work out which woman in this atrium we are talking about.

“Sophie.” My voice drops into something I’ve only ever used in the dark, softer than it ever is in public, but right now, I don’t care who hears it. “Thank you for saying yes.”

I raise my glass, and Ethan and Finn raise theirs beside me.