Epilogue #3
“I could get you fired, Athena,” Cyrus says, his voice low and dark. “You know that, right?”
“Yeah, of course I do. I also know you won’t.” I lift onto my toes and kiss him on the cheek before skipping away. “Thanks for the cake!”
Topher’s birthday always makes me a little emotional, and not just because my nephew is growing up. It was three days after his birthday party two years ago that I was kidnapped, which changed the entire trajectory of my life.
I would never, literally never, say that I’m glad I was kidnapped, but hey, Pack Lupine is a pretty great consolation prize for going through that.
Jordan sees me across the yard and comes over, a piece of cake in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. “It’s so hot out here,” she says, dropping into one of the folding chairs beside me. “It should not be this hot.”
“I’m sure drinking red wine isn’t the most refreshing drink on a hot day either,” I tease. I pop the lid off the cooler beside me and dig through it, pulling out a spiked seltzer. “Have this instead.”
“Nah,” she waves me away. “This is good for my heart, according to the internet.”
“The internet is never wrong.”
“Never. Where are those guys of ours?”
Cyrus is the only one outside, and that’s solely because every time he moves, he ends up getting stopped by the parents of one of the party attendees.
Such is the life of a celebrity. I’ve never been more glad to be behind the scenes at ABOSS.
They couldn’t pay me enough to get in front of a camera.
I love being the production manager of Sin Bin.
I did not know an entry-level PA gig would become a career for me, but I’m happy with how everything worked out.
“They’re inside playing video games, I think,” I say, pulling a chair up to prop my feet up while I lounge next to Jordan and eat the too-sweet cake. “They may as well be children. And leaving us to manage the party!”
“Assholes,” she says, taking a huge gulp of her wine. “See if I let them sleep in the nest tonight.”
“Can I kick Atlas out of the nest if we share it?” I ask, looking over my shoulder to see if I can spot the guys through the back door.
“Probably not.”
“Too bad. I’ll have to come up with another punishment for him.”
“Punishment for who?” Speaking of the Omega.
I turn around and am surprised to see Atlas coming around the side of the house, a soccer ball in one hand and a net hooked onto the corner of his elbow. He drops them and then adjusts the net until it’s in a good position.
“Where have you been?” I ask, ignoring his question.
He juts his finger over his shoulder. “I was grabbing some yard games with a few of the guys. Harvey and Slime went out for beers. No idea where Icarus and Sebastian ended up.”
Rafe and Wyatt are chatting to each other as they carry out cornhole boards, and Charles follows behind them with two ladder ball ladders slung over his shoulders.
“You have all of these yard games, and you ordered a bounce house?” I ask Jordan as I watch the guys set up the equipment.
She shrugs. “Kids like to bounce, and it helps wear them out, so maybe they’ll take a fucking nap. These are more parent games, anyway.”
“You’re right, Icky,” Sebastian’s voice is loud as they come out of the kitchen. “This is a great iced tea.”
“Don’t call me Icky.”
“Right. Well, thanks for the lesson. I didn’t know there were so many layers to tea.” Sebastian drops a kiss to the top of my head and places a cold glass of iced tea in my hand.
“Is that the pack tea, Vick?” Jordan asks, getting up so he can sit where she was and pull her onto his lap.
“Of course. I can’t believe we’ve never served it to them before.” My brother wraps his arms around his Omega’s waist and rests his chin on her shoulder. They’re so perfect for one another.
Perfect.
Dr. Icarcus Knight with his perfect pack.
I carried so much anger about it at one point, full of jealousy that he had the life I wanted.
When Harvey and Slime come back, each holding a twelve-pack of craft beer, and my pack is all around me, joking with my family, I fight back tears.
I never thought life could be like this for me. In my wildest dreams, I never would’ve guessed that I would have five men that I love so much that it aches.
“You okay?” Wyatt whispers in my ear. “Do you need to get out of here?”
I shake my head, biting my cheek to keep the happy tears from falling. “I have nowhere else I’d rather be.”
Atlas
Life has a way of surprising you at every turn.
One day, you’re pretending to be an Omega to help break up a trafficking ring, and the next, you’re an Omega, scent matched to the very people you were working with.
Well, not the next day, but not far off.
And now, two years later, I’m standing in the parking lot of that warehouse, staring at the place where my life as a Beta ended and my one as an Omega began, complicated feelings swirling through me.
I hate this fucking place.
It has caused me so much pain. I still have nightmares sometimes. I probably always will.
There are side effects to being a lab-created Omega we didn’t see coming.
Now that our bodies have adjusted to the change, Athena and I go into heat almost every month, sort of like her period used to be, but only for a day or two.
It’s exhausting. No one knows if I would cycle like this on my own, since I don’t have a uterus, or if it’s my bond with Athena that has put me on the same hormone cycle as her, but it doesn’t matter.
I’m not doing this without her.
Athena’s soft hand grabs mine, as Harvey’s heavy hand lands on my shoulder.
“Are y’all ready?” Wyatt asks, checking his phone. “It’s almost time.”
“I think so,” I say, but my voice doesn’t sound steady.
“It’s okay if you’re not,” Charles says, moving onto my other side and resting a hand on my back. “We don’t have to do this now. The permit can be extended.”
“We need to be,” I tell him, not looking away from the warehouse. “I need to be.”
“Me too,” Athena admits. “I didn’t know I needed it, but I do.”
Harvey hums softly, squeezing my neck to help release some of the tension. “It’s okay if you’re not okay.”
They tell us that a lot. All the Alphas want to make sure Athena and I know we don’t have to be okay all the time, every second of every day.
That there is no shame in having hard moments, days, weeks.
It’s taken a lot of effort for me to fight through my hangups and show my weaknesses, but I’ve gotten better at it.
The car door closes from behind us, and I can hear Sebastian step up to Athena’s side. “Are we ready?”
“That’s what we’re deciding,” Charles answers.
“What’s the verdict?”
Athena and I look at each other, and two years of love flow between us. The guys can be here to support us, but this, this moment, isn’t about them.
It’s about us.
This is the place where Athena lost hope.
Where I broke.
This is where our lives changed forever, in good and bad ways.
Sometimes, in that twilight moment when I’m halfway asleep, I remember the biting cold of the floor and the way the grates dug into my back.
I remember the way Athena’s fingers wrapped around the side of her enclosure, always reaching for me, but never touching.
I remember Wyatt and Harvey dragging me out of this building, and the way I felt fractured, like half of my body was left behind because Athena wasn’t with me.
“Do you want to say anything?” Harvey asks.
“I do,” Athena says quietly, her hand tightening in mine.
“I never thought I’d make it out of that place.
I watched so many people disappear and never come back, and I was sure I was next.
There are still moments when I wake up, convinced this life was all a dream, and I’m still in there, hooked up to their machines.
” Her body trembles, and I press closer to her side, sighing in relief when the rest of our pack closes ranks.
“I will never forget what it was like in there, but it doesn’t control me anymore.
I am not broken. They didn’t win. They didn’t break me. ”
She looks at our pack, the men who have held us up through every nightmare, who have held us together when it felt too hard to stay in one piece, and smiles through the tears that run down her face.
“I love you all so much. Thank you for seeing me as whole before I knew I was.”
The Alphas move around us, kissing her cheeks, her hair, her lips, as they whisper their affection. When Harvey places a hand on my shoulder, bringing me back into the moment, my throat thickens, and I struggle to find the words I want to say.
Tears run down my cheeks as memories flash through me, and I can’t bring myself to look at any of my pack mates.
I stare straight ahead at the warehouse where I nearly lost it all, their silent support holding me up in a place that once pulled me down.
“I found love in hell. That’s what that place has felt like to me since the moment I woke up there.
But it’s just a building. That’s the most surprising thing to me.
It’s nothing more than an empty warehouse in an abandoned part of town. It doesn’t hold power over me anymore.”
I don’t tell the guys I love them often.
It’s hard for me to get the words out when I look at them.
It’s not that I don’t, because I do. And I know they love me, too, and not only because they’re much less shy about speaking their affections.
While I stand here, next to the woman who has my entire heart, they show their love in gentle caresses of my arm, a squeeze of my shoulder, a kiss on the back of my neck.
“I love you guys,” I whisper. It feels like I should say the words out loud here, in this place completely devoid of any love or affection. It’s only a building, but I need it to know that there is love in my life now, and I am not a ghost that haunts its walls.
Athena grips my hand tightly, so tight I’m worried my fingers may bruise, but I don’t ask her to loosen her grip.
We are two halves. We were broken apart inside those walls, but we put ourselves back together, with the help of the last four Alphas I ever would’ve expected.
We made it.
We made it out alive.
Sebastian holds his phone up and shoots off a quick text message. I count backward in my mind.
Three…
Two…
One.
The building goes up in flames.