Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Crash
The kitchen smelled wrong. Not bad, Milo's cooking never smelled bad, but wrong. Like cinnamon rolls trying to mask the sharp edge of anxiety that had been building since I'd checked my phone an hour ago.
I drummed my fingers against the marble counter in a rhythm that matched the notification pings still going off every three seconds, watching Nova pace the length of the room while Ghost tracked something on his tablet that made his jaw clench tighter with each swipe.
"Seventeen news vans," Ghost said, not looking up. His voice scraped like he'd been gargling gravel. "Three documentary crews. Someone from the BBC."
"The actual BBC?" Blitz dropped his protein shake, and it rolled across the floor, leaving a chocolate trail that would've made Milo lose his mind on a normal day. But Milo just stood at the stove, mechanically stirring something that had probably been perfect ten minutes ago.
Nova's phone rang. Again. He'd been declining calls for the past hour, but this time he stopped mid-pace, staring at the screen like it might bite him.
"Your mother?" Milo asked without turning around.
"Third time this morning." Nova's accent had gone so sharp you could cut glass with it. "Father's called twice. My sister sent thirty-seven texts that progressively devolve from concern to threats about what she'll do to anyone who's 'corrupted her baby brother.'"
I couldn't help it, I laughed. The sound cracked through the kitchen like a whip, making everyone turn. "Your sister thinks Callie corrupted you? Has she met you? You organize your socks by thread count."
"I organize them by color and fabric composition," Nova corrected stiffly, but his mouth twitched. "Thread count would be inefficient."
Another notification lit up my phone. This time, a Google alert. My stomach dropped as I read the headline out loud, "OMEGA MOTHER OF VIRAL STAR SPEAKS OUT: 'I Don't Want This For Her.'"
The kitchen went silent except for the bubble of whatever Milo was now destroying on the stove.
"Fuck," Blitz breathed. "Her mom?"
I pulled up the article, speed-reading through the disaster.
"Channel 9 morning show. Exclusive interview with Margaret Cross about her daughter's 'situation.
' Direct quote: 'I lived through a public heat disaster.
The humiliation never goes away. I thought Callie understood that biology isn't destiny, but here she is, making the same mistakes. '"
Milo finally turned off the stove, his hands gripping the counter edge. Through our pack bonds, I felt his distress spike, not for us, but for Callie, still sleeping in the nest after yesterday's intensity.
"She doesn't know," he said quietly. "About her mother. Has anyone—"
"Let her sleep." Nova's command voice kicked in, the one that made even my chaotic brain snap to attention. "She needs rest more than she needs crisis management."
But I knew Callie better than that already. The girl who'd built an empire on savage independence wouldn't want us protecting her from hard truths.
"Boss," I started, but my phone exploded with a call that overrode everything else.
Mom calling.
My mother who had opinions about everything and shared them at volume eleven.
"Tanner!" Her voice burst through the speaker before I could even say hello. "What is this I'm seeing on the news? Five Alphas and one Omega? Your father is having chest pains!"
"Ma, Dad has chest pains when the grocery store runs out of his coffee brand."
"Don't be smart with me, Tanner Luis Bailey. I raised you better than to be on the news for..." She spoke so quickly that I couldn't keep up. It basically boiled down to various creative threats about what she'd do to my reproductive organs if I'd dishonored this poor girl.
"Ma, it's not, we didn't… it's complicated."
"Complicated?" Her voice hit that pitch that made grown men cry. "What's complicated about respect? About honor? You're all over the internet acting like—like—"
"Like we're in love?" The words tumbled out before I could stop them. The kitchen went still again, everyone staring at me. "Because we are. All of us. With her. And she, well, she chose us back."
The silence on the other end stretched so long I checked to make sure the call hadn't dropped.
"Bring her to dinner," Mom finally said, her voice softer but somehow more terrifying. "Sunday. Two o'clock. Don't be late."
She hung up.
"Your mom wants to meet Callie?" Milo looked like I'd suggested jumping into an active volcano. Which, honestly, might be safer.
"All our families do," Nova said, looking at his phone with the expression of someone calculating escape routes. "My parents are threatening to fly over from London. Blitz, didn't your—"
"Seven missed calls from my sisters." Blitz had gone pale under his golden tan. "They've started a group chat called 'Intervention for Hermanito.'"
Ghost held up his phone, showing twelve missed calls from a contact labeled 'DNA Donor.' We all knew he hadn't talked to his father in two years, not since the accident that took his first pack.
"This is insane." I started pacing, my energy needing outlet before I exploded. "We can't… Callie can't handle this right now. She's still processing the scent match, still coming to terms with what we are, and now everyone wants a piece of her?"
"Want a piece of what?"
We all spun toward the doorway. Callie stood there in one of Nova's shirts and Ghost's sweatpants, her pink hair a disaster, face still puffy from sleep. But her eyes were sharp, taking in our guilty expressions and the tension thick enough to swim through.
"Your mom did an interview," I said, because ripping off the bandaid was kinder than letting her guess. "About us. About you."
She moved into the kitchen with that careful grace of someone expecting to shatter. Milo immediately pushed a mug of tea into her hands, chamomile with honey, somehow already the perfect temperature.
"Show me."
Nova pulled up the video on his tablet, and we all watched Margaret Cross, looking polished but hollow-eyed, explain to a sympathetic morning show host how she'd tried to protect her daughter from this exact situation.
"I removed myself from Callie's life so she wouldn't follow my path," her mother said on screen, hands folded so tight her knuckles went white. "I thought if she never saw me weak, she'd stay strong. But here she is, surrounded by five Alphas, letting biology dictate her choices just like I did."
Callie's face never changed, but I caught the micro-expressions, the tightening around her eyes, the way she pressed her tongue against her teeth, the slight tremor in her hands that made the tea ripple.
"There's more," Ghost said gently. "The media—"
"I can see them." She nodded toward the window where shadows of news vans were visible through the privacy fence. "How many?"
"Twenty-three at last count," Nova supplied. "Plus documentary crews, independent journalists, and what appears to be a group of sociology students doing field research."
She laughed, but it sounded like breaking glass. "Field research. Like we're animals in a zoo."
"Callie—" Milo started, but she held up her hand.
"My mother hasn't spoken to me directly in three years. But she'll go on national television to discuss my choices?" Her voice stayed steady, but tears tracked down her cheeks, falling into her tea. "She abandoned me to protect me from this, and now she's making it worse by giving them ammunition."
"She's scared," I said, surprising myself with the insight. "My mom just called too. They're all scared because they don't understand. They see the headlines, the viral videos, the speculation, and they think—"
"They think you're taking advantage." Callie's voice went flat. "Five Alphas, one Omega. The math alone makes people assume things."
"Fuck what people assume," Blitz said with enough force to make us all look at him. "We know the truth. You know the truth."
"The truth?" Callie set down her mug with deliberate care.
"The truth is that I built my entire brand on independence, on not needing exactly this, and within three days of meeting you, I was begging for your bites.
The truth is that my mother's worst nightmare came true, I fell apart in public over Alphas.
The truth is that we don't even know what we are to each other beyond biological compatibility. "
"That's not—" Nova started, but she wasn't done.
"Seventeen news vans, Nov. My mother on morning television. Your families calling with concern or threats or dinner invitations." She laughed again, higher, more fractured. "Crash, your mom wants me to come to dinner? I only just learned your middle name."
"Luis," I supplied immediately, just in case she forgot from the heat. "Tanner Luis Bailey. Milo's is Gabriel. Nova's is James. Ghost is—"
"Theodore," Ghost supplied, so quiet we almost missed it.
"Eli Wolfgang Reyes and that's just confusing," Blitz added with a self-deprecating grin that didn't reach his eyes.
"Wolfgang?" Callie blinked, momentarily derailed. "Your parents named you Wolfgang?"
"Middle name, but yeah. My dad's German. My mom lost a bet."
The absurdity of it made her laugh, for real this time, not that fractured sound from before.
"See?" I couldn't stay still any longer, bouncing on my toes as energy crackled through me. "We're learning. Middle names, family drama, favorite breakfast foods—"
"Dinosaur nuggets," Milo said quietly, and Callie flushed pink.
"That's different from—" She gestured vaguely at the window, the shadows of vultures circling. "They want to dissect us. Study us. Turn us into content or cautionary tales or academic papers on modern pack dynamics."
Nova's phone rang again. He looked at it, then at Callie. "It's Michelle."
Callie grabbed the phone before he could answer, putting it on speaker. "Michelle, I swear to god, if you've scheduled some kind of press conference without—"
"Shut up and listen." Michelle's voice crackled through, sharp and efficient as always. "Your mother's interview is trending, but not the way you think. The younger generation is dragging her for abandoning you, for judging your choices, for making your moment about her trauma."
I pulled up one of my social media apps on my phone, scrolling through the reactions.
"Holy shit, she's right. Look—'Imagine being so committed to your trauma that you abandon your daughter then judge her for finding love.' That's got fifty thousand retweets."
"There's more," Michelle continued. "Dr. Yates wants to offer a statement about the medical legitimacy of your bond if you're willing.
Several prominent Omega activists are ready to speak up about choice and agency.
And Kara from Pack Wrecked just posted a beautiful thread about finding your pack being brave, not weakness. "
Callie sank into a chair, looking smaller than I'd ever seen her. "It's too much. All of it. I just—I need—"
"Time," Nova finished. "You need time. And we're going to give it to you."
He moved into full business mode, that thing where his spine went straight and his accent got crisp enough to cut diamond. "Michelle, we're going dark for forty-eight hours. No statements, no posts, no content. Radio silence."
"Nova, that's career suicide—"
"That's non-negotiable." His voice brooked no argument. "Handle the logistics however you see fit, but we're unavailable. All of us."
"The documentary crews have offers—"
"No."
"The morning shows want—"
"No."
"Your mother," Michelle said to Callie, and that made everyone freeze. "She's requested contact. Through her lawyer."
Callie's laugh was hollow. "Of course through her lawyer. Can't risk actual human connection."
"You don't have to respond," I said, moving closer without thinking about it. "You don't owe her anything."
"Don't I?" She looked up at me with those brown eyes that had undone us all. "She's trying to protect me the only way she knows how. By staying away. By warning others. By—"
Her phone rang, cutting her off. Unknown number, but something made her answer.
"Callie?" The voice on speaker was older, feminine, carefully controlled. "It's your mother."
The kitchen became a tableau of frozen Alphas, none of us even breathing.
"Mom." Callie's voice came out strangled.
"I'm sorry. About the interview. I thought," she paused and sighed heavily. "I thought if I explained, people would understand the danger. Would protect you from what happened to me."
"What happened to you was abandonment," Callie said, stronger now. "By your Alpha. By your pack. By society. And then you abandoned me too, just to make the circle complete."
The silence stretched like taffy.
"I see them," her mother finally said. "Your pack. They're all over the news. They look at you like—like—"
"Like they love me?"
"Like they own you."
"No." Callie's voice went steel. "They look at me like I'm choosing them. Every day. Every minute. And they're choosing me back. That's the difference, Mom. This isn't something happening to me. It's something I'm doing. With them."
"Biology isn't choice, Callie. When the heat comes, when the rut comes, when the bond demands—"
"Then we handle it. Together. Not by running away. Not by hiding. Not by abandoning each other when things get hard."
Another silence, this one heavier.
"I want you to be happy," her mother said, so quiet we almost missed it.
"Then let me try. My way. With them."
"The media will eat you alive."
Callie looked around the kitchen at all of us, and something shifted in her expression. Something that looked like determination.
"Let them try."
After her mother hung up, the kitchen stayed quiet for a long moment. Then Callie stood, squaring her shoulders.
"Forty-eight hours of radio silence," she said to Nova. "After that, we go public. Really public. Our way, our terms, our story."
"Callie—" Milo started.
"I'm tired of defending. Tired of explaining. Tired of being afraid." She moved to the window, staring out at the media circus. "They want a story? We'll give them one. The real one. Messy and complicated and biological and chosen, all at once."
"That's career suicide," Nova pointed out, but his eyes held admiration.
"No," she said, turning back to us with that savage smile that had built her empire. "That's authenticity. And it's about time the world saw what modern pack dynamics actually look like."
My phone buzzed. Mom again.
"Sunday dinner?" she'd texted. "Yes or no?"
I looked at Callie, surrounded by her pack, preparing for war with nothing but truth as her weapon.
"Yes," I texted back. "All six of us."
Because if we were doing this, we were doing it together. Media circus and all.