Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
Rowan
Juno sat on the dusty leather sofa, his knees pulled up to his chest, shaking so violently that the cushions vibrated against the frame.
The air in the cabin was thick, oppressive, and tasted like a bakery burning to the ground, sugar scorched black, resinous timber, and a desperate, clawing sweetness that coated the back of my throat.
My hindbrain had known. It had flagged the data during the argument about my mother, during the car ride, during the broadcast. But my conscious mind, the part of me that relied on categories and neatly labeled boxes, had refused to process the error.
"Omega," Juno said. The word fell out of his mouth like a tooth he’d just ripped loose. "Heat triggered by the stress event. Suppressants compromised."
He didn't offer an apology. He just listed the structural failures.
I didn't yell. I didn't throw the folio I was still clutching like a shield. I went very, very quiet.
I am a processor. I take chaos and I build a spreadsheet around it until it makes sense. But the spreadsheet I was building in my head was rewriting the last week of my life in real-time.
Every interaction. Every look. The way Mateo and Stephen moved around him, not just with respect, but with a gravitational pull I had misidentified as friendship.
The way Juno monitored the room, manipulating the emotional temperature not just because he was charming, but because he was hyper-sensitive to the biological data.
The Anchor Protocol.
The realization hit me harder than the smell. I thought about the drafting session. I thought about the specific language Juno had insisted on, retroactive voidance of any provision monitoring or commodifying reproductive cycles.
I had assumed he’d researched it. I had assumed he was a brilliant empathetic strategist who had read about the horror stories in trade magazines.
He hadn't read them. He remembered them.
Juno didn't build the Anchor Protocol from the outside, looking in at the damage. He built it from the inside, looking for a way out of the architecture that was designed to crush him.
"You wrote it from memory," I whispered.
Juno flinched. He looked up, his amber eyes glassy and dilated, fighting a losing war against his own biology.
"I needed you to trust the mind," Juno rasped, his hands gripping his shins until the knuckles were white. "If I told you... if you knew what I was from the start... you would have seen the biology first. You would have lowered your voice. You would have tried to protect me."
"I protect everyone," I said, my voice flat. But the anger was there, a cold, hard knot in my chest.
"You protect victims," Juno corrected, a flash of his old defiance cutting through the haze. "You protect the vulnerable. I couldn't be vulnerable, Rowan. Not to you. I needed you to choose the strategist. I needed to know the choice was real before the heat made it mandatory."
The bitterness in his voice was old. It was years of scar tissue. He was terrified that my respect was conditional on his designation, that if I knew he was an Omega, I would inevitably view him as less capable, less stable, less real.
I wanted to deny it. I wanted to stand there in my drenched silk dress and tell him that I was better than the industry, that I didn't see designations.
But I couldn't. Not honestly. I had built protections for people like Juno, but I had always stood apart from them.
I was the Beta manager; they were the biological variables to be managed.
If I had known, would I have let him lead the media strategy?
Or would I have put him in a safe room and handled it myself?
The uncertainty burned.
"Seven years," Stephen said from the door.
He hadn't moved. He was still watching the perimeter, but his attention was entirely on the sofa.
"He bought his way out of a contract that would have killed him seven years ago.
Liquidated everything. We built the consultancy around him so he would never be exposed again. "
"We are the wall," Mateo added, his voice low.
I looked at them. The lawyer and the bodyguard. They hadn't lied to me to hurt me. They had lied to keep him alive.
But there was something else. A jagged piece of irony that was currently bleeding out on the floor.
"Vance," I said.
The name hung in the damp air.
"He tried to kill me with a deepfake," I said, staring at Juno. "He put my face on a video and made me confess to being a passing Omega. He thought that was the worst thing he could accuse me of. He thought that was the lie that would destroy me."
Juno stopped shaking for a second. He looked at me, terror and shame warring in his face.
"He used a fake designation to try and erase me," I said, my voice trembling now. "And you stood in the wings and watched it happen. You stood there, carrying the real designation, watching him weaponize your existence against me."
I took a step closer. The scent was overpowering, but I forced myself to breathe it in.
"You couldn't warn me," I said. "You couldn't defend me. You had to stand there and watch me dismantle the specific weapon he was using, knowing that the weapon was you."
The horror of it landed in the room. Vance had unknowingly tried to hang me for Juno’s crime, and Juno had been forced to witness it in silence.
Juno’s skin flushed, a dark, burning red traveling up his neck. The heat slammed into him, his breath hitching into a sob he tried to swallow.
Mateo moved, his instincts screaming to comfort, to cover.
"Stop," I ordered.
Mateo froze.
I looked at Juno. He was fraying. The intelligence in his eyes was drowning in a sea of hormones and adrenaline.
"What do you need?" I asked.
Juno looked at me, confused. "Rowan..."
"I am a manager," I said, locking down the panic "I manage assets in distress. Tell me what you need."
"I..." He gasped, dragging a hand down his face. "I expected you to scream."
"I'm screaming on the inside," I assured him. "It’s very loud. But we are currently in a black site cabin with no heat and you look like you're about to shatter. So. What do you need?"
He looked at Mateo. He looked at Stephen. Then he looked at me.
"Them," he whispered. "I need them."
It was biology. It was the heat demanding the Alpha presence.
"Okay," I said. I turned to the two men standing like statues by the door. "Get out."
Stephen blinked. "Rowan, we can't—"
"Get out," I repeated. "Wait on the porch. Give me five minutes."
"He’s in distress," Mateo rumbled, his feet planted.
"He’s in a crisis," I countered. "And if you touch him right now, while he’s terrified that I hate him, he’s going to feel coerced. He needs to know he has a choice before the biology makes the choice for him. Get. Out."
Mateo looked at Juno. Juno gave a ragged, barely perceptible nod.
The Alphas left. The heavy wooden door clicked shut, leaving us in the sudden, ringing silence.
I didn't rush to him. I walked to the small kitchenette. I found a clean glass. I filled it with water from the tap. I found a wool blanket draped over an armchair.
I walked back to the sofa.
"Drink," I said, handing him the glass.
Juno took it. His hands were shaking so hard half the water sloshed onto his wrist, but he drank.
I wrapped the blanket around his shoulders. I pulled it tight, tucking the ends in, cocooning him. It was a containment strategy.
"I'm angry," I said, sitting on the dusty coffee table in front of him, my knees brushing his.
Juno flinched. "I know."
"I am furious," I corrected. "I hate being managed, Juno. And you managed me. You curated my reality."
"I didn't want to lose you," he whispered. The burnt sugar scent spiked, agonizingly sweet.
"Well, you haven't," I said.
He looked up, startled.
"I'm angry," I repeated, holding his gaze. "And I'm staying. Those two things can exist in the same space. I can be furious at the lie and still refuse to leave the liar in the middle of the woods."
"Rowan..."
"Why the concealment?" I asked. "Really? Not the strategy. The fear."
"Because seven years ago I trusted a Beta manager," Juno said, his voice hollow. "And when I presented, when the heat hit... he didn't see an asset anymore. He saw a liability. "
I sat with that. I couldn't argue with the trauma. I couldn't tell him he was wrong to be afraid, because the system I worked in was a monster. I had just drafted the paperwork to kill it, but it was still alive.
"Okay," I allowed. "I accept the data."
I reached out. I placed my hand on his knee, over the blanket.
"The Alphas," I said. "You need them?"
"Yes," he breathed. "The heat... it hurts, Rowan. It’s like being hollowed out."
"And me?" I asked. "Do you need me to leave?"
Juno’s hand shot out from the blanket, grabbing my wrist. His skin was burning hot.
"No," he gasped. "God, no. Don't leave. I need... I need the Anchor."
I looked at the red ink, still faintly visible on his wrist.
"Okay," I said. "I'll call them back."
I stood up and went to the door. I opened it.
Mateo and Stephen were standing in the rain, soaked to the skin, staring at the wood like they were trying to burn through it with their eyes.
"You can come in," I said.
They were inside before I finished the sentence.
They didn't swarm him. They stopped a few feet away, looking to Juno for the signal. They knew the protocol better than I did.
Juno pushed the blanket down. He sat up straighter, the strategist trying to surface through the heat. His face was flushed, his eyes wild, but his voice was steady.
"Terms," Juno said.
"Name them," Mateo rumbled.
"No softness," Juno said, looking at the Alphas. "I am not a victim. I am not a rescue case. You do not treat me like glass. You treat me like Juno."
"Understood," Stephen said, loosening his tie.
"No recalibration," Juno continued, his gaze shifting to me. "This changes the dynamic in the bedroom. It does not change the dynamic in the boardroom. When this is over, I am still the narrative lead. I am still your equal."
"Never does and you always are," Mateo grunted.
Juno let out a breath. He looked at the three of us.
"I want Rowan," he said.
He didn't look at me; he looked at the Alphas. It was a challenge. A demand.
"I want her in the circle," Juno said. "I want her skin. I want her scent mixing with ours. If we do this... we do it as the Pack we signed our names to be."
Mateo looked at me. His eyes were dark, heavy with a hunger that had nothing to do with contracts.
"She’s Beta," Mateo warned Juno. "The pheromones... it’s intense. It can be overwhelming."
"She’s durable," Juno said, a ghost of a smile touching his lips. "She handled Vance. She can handle us."
Stephen walked over to the door, checking the lock one last time. He turned back, the grey eyes focused and calm.
"We’ve been doing this for seven years, Rowan," Stephen said. "We know how to manage the heat. But bringing you in... that crosses a final line. There is no way to prepare you for this."
I looked at Juno, shivering on the couch. I looked at Mateo, waiting for permission to care for him. I looked at Stephen, knowing the risks and staying anyway.
I kicked off my heels.
"I’m sick of trying to be prepared for everything," I said.