Chapter 24
Mo
The healer’s cottage is on the far side of the compound, tucked between tall pines. I’m glad for the walk. I need space to think that isn’t soaked in four different alpha scents.
Archer keeps pace beside me.
“So,” he says after a while. “You and Silas seem to be getting close.”
I tense, here it comes.
But Archer just gives me a small smile. “It’s good. He’s been through a lot. It’s nice to see him opening up to someone.”
“Yeah, well. He’s not so bad… For an alpha.”
Archer laughs. “High praise, coming from you.”
We reach Cassia’s cottage, and Archer stops at the door. “You want me to wait out here?”
I nod. “Yeah. This is kind of personal.”
“Take your time. I’ll be right here.”
Cassia opens the door before I can knock. “Blue! Come in. Good to see you.”
The scent of dried herbs and flowers greets me as I step inside. So different from the cabin, where everything smells too good and too much like testosterone. In here, the scents are soft, feminine. I sit in one of her cushioned chairs and exhale, feeling more myself.
Cassia sits across from me and puts a cool hand on my forehead, studying me with a gentle curiosity. “How are you feeling?”
“Weird,” I say. “I think my heat’s coming.”
Cassia raises an eyebrow. “Is that so?”
“Yeah. I’m all hot and flustered, and my scent is changing. I can feel it.”
She takes my temperature, presses her fingers to my wrist, and checks my pulse. Then she sits back. “It’s not your heat.”
“That’s impossible,” I say. “I know what it feels like. This is exactly how it starts.”
“Your body isn’t preparing for a heat cycle. Not yet.”
“Then what is it?” I ask. “An infection? Something I ate?”
Cassia gives me a look. “Could it be something else?”
I frown. “Like what? Stress? Fear? I’m used to those. They don’t feel like this.”
She tilts her head. “Perhaps you’re becoming attracted to one or more of the alphas.”
I stare at her.
“What?”
“It’s natural, Mo. Especially for an omega in such proximity to strong alphas. Your body is reacting to them.”
I shake my head. “I’m not attracted to them. Well, I kind of like Silas. But they’re… I mean, they literally kidnapped me.”
“Are you still being held against your will?”
“Well, no, I guess. I dunno.” I pick at a thread on a pair of jeans Lily gave me.
“Attraction doesn’t always make logical sense. It’s instinctual. Biological.”
“I don’t want this,” I say. “I don’t want to feel this way about them. I’m not going to submit,” I say. Firmer this time.
Cassia shrugs. “No one is asking you to.”
“Darius is.”
“Darius is doing what he thinks is best. That doesn’t mean he’s right. I don’t agree with the way he brought you here, but I am happy to have you with us.”
That catches me off guard. Disagreeing with the pack leader? Openly? Or is this some kind of test?
“I just want to be free and safe.”
Cassia nods. “Freedom is a tricky thing. Sometimes the bonds we think are chains are the very things that keep us grounded.”
I’ve never been one for philosophical bullshit, but something in her words lands.
“What did you do during your heats in the forest?” she asks.
I let out a dry laugh. “Oh, you know. The usual. Long walks on the beach, picnics under the stars. Oh, and that one time I spent all night in a frozen stream trying not to lose my mind.”
Cassia’s breath catches.
“Mo, I won’t sugarcoat this. Your next heat is going to be intense. You’ve been suppressing them for three years, and now you’re surrounded by alphas. Your body is going to overcorrect.”
I groan, letting my head fall back against the chair.
“Fuck!”
“That’s precisely what your body will be screaming for,” Cassia says with a smile. “Your omega nature is going to come at you harder than anything you’ve experienced before.”
“Great. Any more good news?”
She moves to the shelf behind her, fingers running over the glass jars. “The alphas’ ruts might sync with your heat. It’s a natural response when an omega is in proximity for this long.”
I close my eyes. “Of course they will.”
“I hate being an omega,” I say quietly. Not angry this time. Just tired.
“It’s part of who you are,” Cassia says.
I look up at her. “It’s a weakness. A liability. There has to be something you can give me to stop it.”
Cassia shakes her head, and something in me sinks. “I can’t, Mo. Suppressing your heat now would be too dangerous. Your body needs to go through this cycle naturally after all those years of forced suppression.”
“Dangerous how?”
“It could cause permanent damage to your reproductive system—or worse. Your body is already worn down from the wolfsbane and years of deprivation. Forcing another suppression on top of that could do real, lasting harm.”
I can’t imagine someone touching me, let alone fucking me in the place where those wires once held me hostage.
My mind flashes back to the moment I was pinned down with my clothes ripped off, and there is nothing I can do to stop that needle from piercing my flesh.
The agony of it comes flooding back. I can’t breathe.
“You are safe here,” Cassia reminds me in a soothing voice over and over again, rubbing slow circles on my back until my breathing starts to slow down. Her calm, steady presence grounds me, and I’m finally able to look up at her again.
“I’m broken.”
“You’re not broken,” Cassia says, handing me a glass of water. You’re healing. Remember that, Mo. It’s important.”
I stare at the floor for a long time. “Then what am I supposed to do?”
“Tell them. Tell them what happened to you. Be honest about how you’re really doing.”
I slide off the chair and onto the floor, my back against the wall. Cassia settles beside me like she’s done this before. And the words just start coming. I don’t decide to talk. It just happens.
“I don’t know how to tell them anything. I’ve spent my whole life hating alphas. But these guys…” I trail off. “Silas is gentle, and Archer respects me, and I don’t know what to do with that. Even Elias, with his stupid flirting—I kind of like it sometimes. Which is mortifying.”
I pull my knees up to my chest. “And then there’s Darius. He chained me up. He refused to let me shift. He called me his, like I was something he’d bought. And now he’s acting all distant, and I don’t understand him at all.”
“‘I had a sister,’ I tell her. “She protected me. Did everything right, everything the pack wanted. And they killed her, anyway.”
I rest my chin on my knees. “I don’t know who to trust anymore. Out in the woods, I knew exactly who I was. The survivor. The one who doesn’t need anyone. And now I’m sitting on your floor talking about my feelings, and I don’t know how to be this person and also be me.”
“The boys have been through a lot, Mo. They’re not perfect. But they’re good males. Not all alphas are monsters.”
I give her a look. She’s heard my whole speech, and that’s what she’s going with?
“I’m serious,” she says, and her voice changes. “When the coup happened, they saved me. I was about to be raped. And Darius found me.” She pauses. “He killed the male with his bare hands. I was fifteen. He was sixteen. He didn’t hesitate.”
I blink. Whatever I was expecting, it wasn’t that.
“Darius did that?”
Cassia nods. “He’s terrible at showing who he is. Really, he’s terrible at it. But he protects the people he cares about completely and without question. That’s who he is under all the brooding and the bad decisions.”
I don’t say anything for a while. I just sit there, turning it over.
Darius at sixteen. A boy who’d just watched his father die, killing a man to save a girl.
And then spending the next ten years carrying the weight of two broken packs on his shoulders, making every wrong choice look intentional because he couldn’t afford to look weak.
It doesn’t excuse the chain. It doesn’t erase what he said or how he made me feel.
But it puts a crack in the picture I’d built of him. And through that crack, I can see something I didn’t know to look for.
He’s broken, too. Just like me.