8. Bianca
BIANCA
Ezra and Megan check their gear with the same kind of care you would expect from people about to climb Mt. Everest, not hike through local woods.
“Ready?’ Ezra shoulders his pack, eyebrows raised. No. Not even close. But I nod anyway.
The first hour isn’t terrible. We walk through neighborhoods I recognize, past the community center where I met them, past streets that look normal and safe in daylight.
Then we hit the forest.
“How far did you say this was?” I ask when we stop at what looks like an actual trail marker.
“Four hours,” Megan says, adjusting her pack straps. “Give or take.”
“Give or take what?”
“How often we have to stop for you to catch your breath,” she says with a grin. “No offense, but you look like a strong wind could knock you over.”
She’s not wrong. Two months of existing on pills and toast hasn’t prepared me for hiking through the wilderness, that’s for sure.
The trail starts easy enough. Packed dirt, gentle incline, trees on both sides, but nothing too thick. I can do this.
Twenty minutes later, I’m dying.
My lungs burn. My legs shake. The backpack feels like it weighs a hundred pounds, and we haven’t even hit the hard part yet.
“Break?” Ezra suggests when I stop to lean against a tree.
“I’m fine,” I lie, gasping.
“Sure you are,” Megan says. “That’s why you sound like you’re having an asthma attack.”
I sink down on a fallen log, sweat already soaking through my shirt. This is pathetic.
“Water,” Ezra says, handing me his bottle.
The water’s cold and tastes like nothing, which somehow makes it perfect. I drink more than I should and hand it back.
“Better?” he asks.
“Getting there.”
“Good. Because that was the easy part.”
He’s not joking. The path ahead rises fast, almost straight up in parts. Rocks and roots everywhere, branches grabbing at my clothes, mud that tries to suck my boots off.
My knees scream where the stitches pull tight. Each step sends glass-sharp pain up my legs. But the weird thing is... I don’t mind it. The pain’s clean. Simple. Physical instead of the twisted mess that lives in my brain.
“So,” Megan says when we stop again, me bent over with my hands on my knees, “what’s your story? Besides the obvious trauma and trust issues.”
“Megan,” Ezra warns.
“What? We’re gonna be walking for hours. Might as well get to know each other.”
I straighten up, wiping sweat out of my eyes. “Not much to tell.”
“Bullshit. Everyone who ends up at the refuge has a story. Usually involving alphas who fucked them over.”
The bluntness catches me off guard. But also... it’s easier than tiptoeing around it.
“Four alphas,” I say. “Thought they were my scent matches. Turned out they weren’t. Bonded someone else.”
“Ouch. All four?”
“All four.”
“What happened?” Ezra asks.
We start walking again, and somehow it’s easier to talk when I’m focused on not falling on my face.
“I’ve known them since I was little. My brother’s friends. Always felt... connected to them. Like they were meant to be mine.” The words come out between huffed breaths. “Spent years waiting for my omega to wake up so I could tell them.”
“But it didn’t?” Megan asks.
“Nope. Not holding my breath.”
I tell them about Dr. Montgomery and everything he told me.
“That’s fucked up,” Megan says.
We walk in silence for a bit, just the sound of our feet on the trail and my pathetic attempts at breathing.
“So what happened between you and them?” Ezra asks.
“Graduation night. I was going to tell them how I felt. Had it all planned out.” The memory tastes bitter. “Then I found out they’d bonded with my best friend. All of them. Someone sent me a video of them... of her heat.”
“Jesus,” Megan mutters.
“Yeah. Spent a month in the hospital after that. Couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, wanted to walk into traffic.” I stumble over a root but catch myself. “Mom took me to that town where you found me. Been there ever since, going through the motions.”
“And now you’re here,” Ezra says.
“And now I’m here.”
The trail gets worse—steeper, rockier, and more overgrown. My backpack cuts into my shoulders. My knees feel like they’re full of glass—which, technically, they were a day ago. But I keep moving because stopping means thinking, and thinking means spiraling.
“How much further?” I ask when we stop for lunch.
“Halfway,” Megan says, pulling out a sandwich.
I want to cry. We’re only halfway? But instead of crying, I eat the protein bar Ezra hands me, drink more water, and pretend my legs aren’t screaming.
“You’re doing good,” he says quietly.
“I’m dying.”
“Yeah, but you’re not quitting. That’s something.”
The afternoon is worse than the morning. Sometimes the path vanishes entirely—just rocks, fallen trees, and drops that send my pulse skittering. I slip and scrape my palm raw. My shirt sticks to my back with sweat and blood from where the pack’s been rubbing.
But my brain goes quiet.
I’m too busy trying not to die to think about anything else. No replaying that video. No wondering what’s wrong with me. No picturing their faces when they chose someone else.
Just step. Breathe. Step. Don’t fall. Step. Keep going.
“There,” Ezra says, pointing through the trees.
I look up from watching my feet and see smoke rising in the distance. Then buildings. Tiny cabins scattered through a clearing. A tiny village.
“Holy shit,” I breathe.
“Welcome to the refuge,” Megan says.
It’s not what I expected. It’s much better.
A woman practices archery near the edge of the clearing. Two spar with wooden swords. Someone tends a fire pit while others work in what looks like a huge vegetable garden.
Everyone looks... busy. Focused. Like they have somewhere to be.
“How many people live here?” I ask.
“About thirty right now,” Ezra says. “Changes depending on who’s ready to leave and who needs sanctuary.”
“All omegas?”
“Mostly. A few betas who’ve experienced traumatizing experiences. We don’t turn away people who need help. But no alphas.”
We walk into the clearing, and a few people look up, nod at Ezra and Megan, glance at me with curiosity but don’t stare. It’s the opposite of what I expected—no group hug, no overwhelming welcome, no demands to share my story with strangers.
Just acknowledgment that I exist and then back to whatever they were doing.
“Your cabin’s this way,” Megan says, leading me toward a cluster of small buildings.
The cabin is tiny—one room just big enough for a bed and a tiny desk. No bathroom. Windows look out at trees and more trees.
“It’s not much,” Ezra says.
“It’s perfect.”
And it is. It’s mine—my space, my bed, my four walls. I can hear people moving around in nearby cabins—voices, footsteps, the sound of someone chopping wood—but it’s not crowded. Not overwhelming.
It’s nice to feel like I can breathe without someone watching me do it.
“Rest up,” Megan says. “Dinner’s at six in the main hall. You don’t have to come if you’re not ready, but there’ll be food.”
They leave me alone. I drop my backpack and sit on the bed, which is just a mattress on a wooden frame.
Through the window, I can see the woman with the bow. She’s good—arrow after arrow hitting the center of her target. Focused, controlled, like the rest of the world doesn’t exist.
I want that. I want to be so focused on my goal that everything else disappears.
Dinner is weird but not awful—twenty-something people in a building that’s part kitchen, part dining hall, and part community center.
Conversations happen around me, but no one pressures me to join.
Someone hands me a plate of food—actual food, not the processed crap I’ve been living on—and I find a corner table.
The food tastes good… roasted vegetables from their garden, bread made from scratch, and meat they hunted for themselves.
“How are you holding up?” Ezra sits across from me.
“Tired.”
“Good tired or bad tired?”
I think about it. “Good tired, I think.”
“Tomorrow we’ll figure out how you want to contribute. Everyone works here—it helps keep us self-sufficient and gives people purpose.”
“What kind of work?”
“Depends on what you’re interested in... garden, kitchen, maintenance, security training, crafts. Whatever speaks to you.”
Security training. The woman with the bow, the men sparring. Learning to protect myself instead of just surviving attacks.
“Can I try the archery thing?”
Ezra smiles. “Anna will love that. She’s been looking for someone else to train with.”
I finish eating and head back to my cabin as the sun sets. The place gets quiet after dark—not dead quiet, but peaceful quiet. No traffic, no sirens, no sounds of a world that kept moving while I fell apart.
I sit on my tiny porch and watch stars appear between the trees. Real stars, not the faint ones you can rarely see in town. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands, scattered across the sky like someone threw diamonds at black velvet.
When was the last time I looked at stars?
When was the last time I sat somewhere and felt... not happy, but not miserable either? Just present.
My body aches in new ways. My legs throb from the hike. My shoulders are raw from the backpack. My hands are scraped and dirty. But it’s clean pain. Honest pain from living instead of just existing.
I’m too tired to think about alphas or best friends or diagnoses. Too tired to wonder what’s wrong with me or replay videos I wish I’d never seen.
Just tired enough to sleep.
Tonight, I fall asleep without taking pills.
Day two starts at dawn whether I want it to or not. Someone’s chopping wood outside my cabin, the sound cutting through whatever dream I was having.
I roll out of bed feeling a hundred different aches all over. My legs struggle to hold me up. But I’m awake, and not the groggy half-conscious existence I’ve been living for months.
There’s a knock on my door.
“You alive in there?” I recognize Megan’s voice.
“If you could call it that.”
“Good. Time for breakfast.”