Chapter 27
Vee
I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling.
I came up here to take a nap, but it isn’t working. My brain won't stop running the conversation back—everything Drake said, everything I said, how his face crumpled when I told him I still loved him and hated myself for it. How I walked out anyway.
I keep landing on one thing.
Marie is gone.
After everything. After all of it—the nest, the zoo, my heat, all those months of being erased one inch at a time from a life I'd spent five years building. After everything they did and everything they didn't do.
They don't even have her anymore.
That should feel like justice. There's a part of me that does feel that way, a small ugly deeply human part that feels something uncomfortably close to satisfaction. But mostly I just feel tired. I spent five years with those alphas thinking I was building something, and now Marie is back at the registry and Drake is sleeping on a couch a few feet from me with a broken bond still healing in his chest. Ragon has nothing left but Eli. Jasper isn’t even his and I’d like to be a fly on the wall when he finds that out.
God knows what he thinks about the turn of events.
What was the point of any of it?
I roll onto my side and pull the blanket up.
I try not to think about Eli.
I fail.
Drake's betrayal, as devastating as it was, made a certain terrible sense. He was scent-drunk and weak-willed and I watched it happen in real time. I saw it coming long before I was willing to admit it.
Eli is different.
Eli was the one who noticed things. Who fixed me tea without being asked because he'd seen me get tired at this hour enough times to know I'd need it.
He remembered which chair I preferred at the table and which lamp I left on at night and exactly how I took my coffee.
Like he'd been studying me out of genuine interest rather than obligation.
He never made me feel like I was too much or not enough or taking up space that wasn't mine.
He was my safe place in that house.
And then Marie arrived and he was still there, still attentive, still noticing—except somewhere the noticing stopped being about me.
The tea stopped appearing. The little considerations that had made me feel seen dried up one by one, how things end when no one wants to have the conversation about it ending.
I heard him through Marie's bedroom door.
I know exactly how far gone he was. And knowing it doesn't make it better, because the part that cuts is the part before that—the part where I watched the careful attentiveness I'd believed was love redirect itself entirely onto someone else, and he didn't even seem to notice he'd done it.
There are people who hurt you and it surprises you. And there are people who hurt you and some part of you saw it coming for a long time before you were willing to admit it. Eli was both, somehow, and I don't know how to hold those two things at the same time except badly.
I don't want to miss him. I don't want to wonder if he's sitting somewhere right now thinking about me like I used to sit and wonder if any of them were. But refusing to wonder takes effort and I'm running low on that tonight.
I shove the thought down and stare at the ceiling again.
Outside, gravel crunches.
I sit up. It’s a car—too deliberate to be someone turning around, the engine cutting with intent. I'm out of bed before I've made a decision about it, padding to the window and shifting the curtain.
A dark blue sedan. Chase's car.
My stomach drops a little. Not dread exactly, more the feeling you get when something that's been building finally tips over the edge.
I grab a sweater off the chair and go downstairs.
Alex is already at the door, and when Chase looks up and sees me on the stairs he tries to arrange his face into something reassuring. He's not entirely successful. He has the look he gets when he's about to say something important, that investigator stillness I've learned to read.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey."
I come down the last two stairs. Malcolm is already in the kitchen doorway with a mug in each hand, reading the room.
Finn appears behind him. Rhys materializes from the hallway, which he tends to do—he moves for a man of his size and sometimes I don't realize he's joined a room until he's already been in it for a while.
"Living room," Alex says.
We settle. Finn drops down on my left. Rhys takes the other side of me with the careful deliberate way he always arranges himself near me, making himself smaller than he is. Malcolm takes the chair nearest the kitchen. Alex takes the armchair closest to the door.
Chase stops when he reaches the living room entry.
Drake is by the window, up and moving, still pale and too thin but present. He's sitting with his elbows on his knees, brow furrowed at Chase's face, recognizing him without knowing what to make of his presence here. He doesn't ask.
Malcolm growls. "He can leave."
Chase holds a hand up. "It's fine. He's not Ragon's anymore, it doesn't matter if he hears this."
He sets his jacket over the back of the armchair and sits. "I'll get to the point. I have news."
The word does something to the air in the room and Finn's hand finds my knee before I've noticed him reaching.
"The registry is holding a hearing tomorrow."
Silence.
"You know I've been building the case for months," Chase continues. "The nest destruction, comfort bans, the kneeling. Recordings Jasper took inside the house and Arden's clinical documentation. It's substantial. More than substantial."
"You think you'll win," Alex says.
"I think the evidence will speak for itself. Even if the board doesn’t want to listen." Chase pauses. "But I need to be honest with you about a risk."
The room shifts.
"Ragon knows about your flag, Alex. He's known since Vee left. He wanted to report you. The only thing stopping him is that reporting you means the registry investigates how Vee ended up here, which leads to the heat abandonment, which destroys him."
"The chokehold," Finn says quietly.
"The chokehold," Chase confirms. "Right now it's holding. Neither side can move without destroying themselves. But tomorrow, if the board rules against Ragon, he loses everything. Custody. His omega. His reputation. At that point he has nothing left to protect."
"So he might talk," Malcolm says.
"He might. He could stand up in that hearing room after the verdict and tell the board that a flagged alpha has Vee. Out of spite. Out of grief. Whatever he has to do to make sure we lose too."
Silence.
"What happens if he does?" I ask.
Chase is direct. "Alex gets investigated. Possibly arrested. Vee gets pulled into registry custody. The cabin isn't connected to Alex's name, so they'd have to find you first, but Ragon could motivate them to start looking."
"Then we run," Malcolm says. Immediate. No hesitation.
"And go where?" Alex's asks, the pack lead calculating.
"Anywhere. Before they get here. Take Vee and disappear."
"Malcolm." Alex shakes his head. "Running makes me a fugitive. That doesn't help Vee. That makes her life worse."
"Staying and letting them arrest you doesn't help her either."
Chase holds up a hand. "If Ragon talks, the first thing they do is file paperwork. The registry moves slow—that's the one advantage of bureaucracy. It would take them days to act on it, maybe longer. I'd know before they moved. I'd get word to you."
"So we'd have time," Finn says.
"You'd have time. Not much, but some." Chase looks at Alex. "My honest assessment: Ragon won't talk. He's furious, not suicidal. If he outs you, the heat abandonment comes out in the investigation. They’ll come down harder. Criminal negligence charges, possibly. He knows that."
"But you can't guarantee it," Alex says.
"No. I can't."
The fire pops. Nobody speaks.
"It's a risk," Chase says. "But it's a risk worth taking. Because the alternative is not going to the hearing at all, and Vee stays in legal limbo under Ragon's custody indefinitely."
Alex looks at me.
I look back.
"I want the hearing," I say. "Whatever comes after, I want it. I'm done waiting for someone else to decide my life."
Alex nods. Slow and certain.
"Then we take the risk," he says. "And if Ragon talks, we deal with it."
Chase nods. "I have witnesses." He looks at me. "Two, besides Arden."
"Who?"
"Jasper," he says. "And Eli."
The name hits like a shock of cold water. I hear it and it doesn't quite make sense, rearranges itself slowly in my head.
Eli.
The one I was lying upstairs refusing to think about.
"He's been helping Jasper since Drake left," Chase says.
I look at Drake's face. Solemn and closed off.
Something careful there, like he already knew this part and has had time to sit with it.
And that's when it hits me—they were close, Drake and Eli, maybe the closest of all of them, and now Drake is here bond-broken and starting over, and Eli is there testifying against the man who led their pack.
I feel bad for both of them without quite meaning to.
I swallow it down.
"What happens to Eli after?" I ask.
"I don't know," Chase says. "That's his problem."
Harsh. But honest.
"Jasper is coming here tomorrow," Chase continues. "After the hearing. He wants to talk to you face to face."
I nod. I'll figure out how I feel about that later.
Drake speaks from the window. "I'll come too. Testify. Tell them everything."
Chase studies him, then shakes his head. "I appreciate it. What I have is enough to get guardianship removed. I don’t think you’re well enough to travel right now." He pauses. "Which brings me to you."
He turns to face me fully, leans forward, and takes my hands in his. The gesture surprises me—his hands are warm and steady. I look up into his eyes and feel the same thing I always feel with Chase, that quiet inexplicable safety that doesn't demand anything.
"What do you want, Vee?"
The question is so simple it almost breaks me.