Epilogue - Vespera
Vespera
Epilogue
Two years after Northwood, and I'm standing in the wings of the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre on Broadway.
Actual fucking Broadway.
The cast is doing vocal warm-ups around me, the stage manager is calling five minutes, and I'm trying to remember how to breathe. This is different from Off-Broadway. Different from the Drama Desk nomination that I didn't win but that led to more auditions, more roles, more chances to prove myself.
This is the dream. The one I had at seventeen when I applied to Northwood. The one that Eleanor Ashworth tried to kill. The one I claimed for myself with teeth and blood and stubbornness.
"Ms. Levine." Vivian Strasberg appears beside me, resplendent in designer everything. "How are you feeling?"
"Terrified," I admit.
"Good. Terror means you give a shit." She adjusts my costume—Emma, the role I was born to play, now on Broadway. "The reviews will post tonight. They'll either love you or destroy you. Nothing in between."
"That's not reassuring."
"It's not meant to be." She smiles. "But for what it's worth, I've been in this business for thirty years. I've never seen an opening night performance as strong as your dress rehearsal yesterday. You're going to be magnificent."
"Or I'll vomit in the wings."
"Do it after curtain," she advises, and disappears to take her seat.
I peek through the curtain gap. The theater is packed—over a thousand people in velvet seats, the kind of Broadway audience that expects perfection.
I spot the pack in the third row—Dorian in a suit that actually fits his theater salary now, Oakley still in his restaurant server shirt because he came straight from his shift, Corvus looking like he walked out of a business magazine cover.
My pack. My Alphas. My choice.
And beside them—Eleanor and Harrison Ashworth.
Two years of slow, careful reconciliation means they're here tonight.
Not hidden in the back. Third row, visible, showing support.
Monthly dinners became weekly. The trust fund restored eighteen months ago.
Slow rebuilding of a relationship that almost broke permanently.
They're trying. Actually trying. And Dorian is letting them.
Two seats down from the Ashworths—gray hair, kind eyes, hands clutching a playbill.
My father.
He made it. After saying for weeks he wasn't sure he could get off work, couldn't afford the trip, couldn't handle New York. He's here.
"Places," the stage manager calls. "This is places for Act One."
I take my position in the darkness. The overture begins—no music in this production, just the sound of breathing, heartbeat, existence. Then the lights come up and I'm not Vespera anymore.
I'm an Omega resistance fighter. Woman who burned down the system rather than submit to it.
The two hours that follow are a blur of perfect execution and raw emotion. I feel the audience with me, breathing when I breathe, gasping when Emma makes her final choice. This is why theater matters—this connection, this shared experience, this moment of collective humanity.
The final blackout holds for three seconds. Then the lights come up for bows and the theater explodes.
Standing ovation. Immediate. Complete. The kind that makes your eyes sting and your throat tight.
I bow with the cast. Take my individual bow as the lead. The applause doesn't stop. Two minutes. Three. Five.
This is real. This is happening. This is Broadway.
When we finally escape backstage, the pack is waiting. Dorian picks me up and spins me, all decorum forgotten. Oakley is crying. Corvus looks like someone hit him with a truck of emotions he doesn't know how to process.
"You were perfect," Dad says, and his voice breaks. "Your mother would have been so proud."
The mention of Mom stops me cold. I haven't thought about her in months—the woman who left when I was ten, who disappeared without explanation, who I've spent years trying not to wonder about.
"Dad—"
"I need to tell you something," he says. "About your mother. About why she left."
The theater lobby erupts with after-party chaos around us, but Dad pulls me aside to a quiet corner. The pack follows, protective and curious.
"Her name was Vera," Dad says. "Vera Castellano before she married me. And she was Omega, like you."
I already suspected this. But hearing it confirmed still hits hard.
"She had a bond," he continues. "Not fated. Just a regular claiming from an Alpha she dated in college. She broke it when she met me. Rejected it. Chose me instead."
"That's possible?" Oakley asks. "Rejecting a non-fated bond?"
"It's painful but possible," Dad says. "Not like rejecting fated bonds, which can kill you. But still dangerous. She was sick for months. We thought she'd die."
He pauses, and I see the weight of old grief on his face.
"She survived. We got married, had you, built a life." His voice drops. "But the rejection sickness never fully healed. Omegas who reject bonds—even non-fated ones—sometimes develop long-term complications. Psychological issues. Depression. Disassociation."
"Dad, what happened to Mom?"
"She's alive," he says. "But she's in Riverside Psychiatric Facility. Has been since she left. She didn't abandon you, Vespera. She checked herself in because she was losing touch with reality. Because she was afraid she'd hurt you or herself."
The world tilts. "She's been institutionalized for twelve years?"
"Yes." Dad's eyes are wet. "I couldn't tell you. She made me promise. Said she didn't want you to remember her as broken. Wanted you to think she chose freedom over family instead of—"
"Instead of becoming a cautionary tale," I finish.
"She'd want you to know the truth now," Dad says. "That she loved you. That she left to protect you. That she's proud of what you've become, even if she can only understand it on her good days."
I feel the pack around me, their presence stabilizing. Dorian's hand on my shoulder. Oakley's warmth. Corvus's calculating assessment that I know means he's already figuring out how to help.
"Can I see her?" I ask.
"I was hoping you'd ask," Dad says. "I've arranged a visit for tomorrow, if you want. She has good days and bad days. Tomorrow should be good."
I look at the pack. "Will you come with me?"
"Obviously," Dorian says.
"Whatever you need," Oakley adds.
"We're pack," Corvus says simply. "That means all of it. Not just the triumphs."
Riverside Psychiatric Facility is two hours north of Manhattan, tucked into woods that probably look peaceful if you're not visiting your institutionalized mother.
The visiting room is aggressively cheerful—pastel walls, soft furniture, windows with bars disguised as decorative elements. My mother sits in a chair by the window, gray hair pulled back, face lined with years I wasn't there to witness.
She looks up when I enter, and for a moment I see recognition. Then confusion. Then something like joy.
"Vespera," she says, and her voice is exactly as I remember. "You're so grown up."
"Hi, Mom." I sit across from her, the pack hanging back to give us space. "It's been a while."
"Twelve years," she says, lucid today. "I've missed twelve years of your life. Your father sends pictures. You're beautiful. And you're omega like me."
"I am."
"I'm sorry," she says immediately. "For leaving.
For making you think I didn't want you. I wanted you so much it hurt.
But I was losing myself. Seeing things that weren't there.
Hearing voices. The bond rejection never healed properly and I couldn't—" Her voice breaks. "I couldn't risk hurting you."
"Dad told me," I say. "About the Alpha you rejected. The bond sickness."
"David," she says. "His name was David. He was controlling. Possessive. Not fated, just an Alpha who thought claiming an Omega meant ownership. I chose your father instead. Chose love over biology."
She looks at me, and I see the intelligence that must have been there before the illness took hold.
"But you," she continues. "You rejected three fated bonds. Dad told me. Said you survived the impossible. How?"
"I claimed them instead," I say. "Publicly. On my terms. Made them mine instead of being theirs."
Her smile is beautiful and broken. "You did what I couldn't. You found the way to have both—freedom and love. Choice and connection."
"I had help," I say, gesturing to the pack. "They chose to be better. To be different."
Mom looks at them—three Alphas who marked me once and whom I marked back. "You're lucky," she says to them. "She could have destroyed you. Could have rejected the bonds and let you suffer. But she's kinder than me."
"She's stronger than any of us," Dorian says.
"She gets that from me," Mom says, and there's pride in her voice. "The Castellano women don't break. We bend. We survive. We become something new."
We talk for two hours. She drifts sometimes, loses the thread of conversation, comes back confused. But in the lucid moments, I see the woman she was. The one who chose love over safety. Who paid for it with her sanity but never regretted it.
When it's time to leave, she holds my hands.
"You were on Broadway," she says. "Your father told me. Opening night was last night."
"It was."
"Did you kill them?" she asks. "Did you make the audience feel your rage?"
I understand she's asking about Emma, the character. "I did."
"Good." She squeezes my hands. "Show them what Omega fury looks like. Show them we're not meant to be caged. Even when the cage is biology itself."
"I will," I promise.
"And those three," she says, looking at the pack. "Don't let them forget who gave them their marks. Who claimed them. Make them earn you every single day."
"I do," I say.
"Then you've already won." She releases my hands. "Go live the life I couldn't. Be loud. Be difficult. Be transcendent."
The drive back to Manhattan is quiet. I process what I learned—that my mother didn't abandon me, that bond rejection has consequences I'm still learning, that I'm walking a path she started but couldn't finish.