Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Rett
The elevator doors slide shut, and she is gone.
For a moment, we just stand there, four frozen statues in the hallway outside our penthouse, staring at the closed doors.
“She’s really leaving,” Diego whispers, his voice cracking.
“She’ll be back,” Tristan says, but the usual confidence is missing from his voice. “She has to come back. Right?”
I say nothing. I can’t speak past the knot in my throat, the raw, physical ache in my chest. I just keep staring at those closed elevator doors as if I could somehow will them to open again, to reveal her standing there, having changed her mind.
But they remain shut. Cold. Unyielding.
Dane is the first to move, turning to head back into the penthouse. “We should get ready for work,” he says, his voice devoid of emotion. “There’s nothing we can do now.”
“Nothing we can do?” Diego repeats, incredulous. “We can go after her! We can—”
“No,” I cut him off, the word sharp in the quiet hallway. “She made her choice. We have to respect it.”
It’s the right thing to say. The honorable thing. Even as the words leave my mouth, every cell in my body is rebelling against them. My alpha is raging. She is ours. Our beta. Our mate. We should be chasing her down, bringing her back, keeping her safe.
But I force the instinct down, burying it beneath years of hard-earned control. She’s not a possession to be claimed. She’s a woman who made a choice, and we have to honor it, no matter how much it tears at us.
“Come on,” I say, turning to follow Dane inside. “Let’s just—”
And then it hits.
It’s not a slow return. It’s not a creeping buzz. It’s not even the familiar, grinding static that’s been our constant companion for years.
It’s a wave of pure, white-hot agony that slams into my skull, so violent it makes my knees buckle.
The world dissolves into a roaring, shrieking wall of static, a thousand times worse than it ever was before.
It’s not just a noise anymore; it’s a vicious beast with claws and teeth, tearing at the inside of my brain.
I hear Diego cry out, a sharp, wounded sound. I see Tristan stumble, his hands flying to his head, his face a mask of pure, unadulterated torment. Dane just stands there, rigid as stone, but I can see the sweat bead on his temples, the tremor in his clenched fists.
“What the fuck,” Tristan gasps, his voice barely audible over the roaring in my ears. “What the actual fuck?”
The static has never been like this. Never this intense. It’s as if whatever dam Zoe’s presence built in our minds has not just broken, but exploded outward, letting in a tidal wave of noise and pain.
“Inside,” I manage to say, though I can barely hear my own voice. “Now.”
We stagger into the penthouse. Diego collapses onto the couch, his face buried in his hands.
Tristan paces, his movements jerky and uncoordinated, like a marionette with tangled strings.
Dane stands by the window, his pale eyes fixed on the street below, as if he could somehow see her taxi from fifty stories up.
And me? I can barely think past the noise. It’s deafening, disorienting, debilitating. Like someone cranked the volume on the world to maximum and then shattered the dial.
“This isn’t right,” I grit out, pressing the heels of my hands against my temples as if I could physically push the noise out. “It’s never been this bad.”
“It’s the bond,” Dane says, his voice a strained whisper. “It’s... punishing us. For letting her go.”
“That’s not how bonds work,” I argue, though I have no other explanation. “They don’t just... intensify like this.”
“Conventional bonds, no,” Dane agrees, still not looking away from the window. “But this was never conventional, was it? Four alphas claiming one beta? It’s unprecedented.”
He’s right. We’ve been operating in uncharted territory from the start. The static, the claiming, the immediate, bone-deep relief Zoe brought us. None of it follows the rules we thought we knew.
“So what do we do?” Diego asks, his voice muffled by his hands. “How do we make it stop?”
The answer is a raw, primal scream in my own head. Get her back.
“We go after her,” Tristan says, his voice a strained rasp, giving voice to the instinct we all feel. “We bring her back.”
“We can’t force her,” I manage to grit out, the words a betrayal of every possessive instinct currently trying to claw its way out of my throat. “It’s what she wanted.”
“She didn’t know!” Diego cries, lifting his head. His eyes are red-rimmed, his face pale with pain. “She didn’t know it would be like this! For her, for us! We have to tell her!”
“Tell her what?” I counter, the static making my own thoughts feel jagged and sharp. “That we’re in agony without her? That’s exactly why she left, Diego. She doesn’t want to be our medication.”
“Is that all she is to you?” Tristan demands, his voice sharp.
I don’t have an answer. My brain is a roaring wasteland of noise. All I know is the pain. All I know is the absence of her.
“I need air,” I mutter, pushing myself away from the wall I’ve been leaning against. “I can’t... I can’t think in here.”
No one tries to stop me as I stagger toward the door.
They understand. We’ve always dealt with the static differently.
Diego cooks, losing himself in the process of creating something.
Tristan talks, filling the air with words as if he could drown out the noise with his own voice.
Dane goes silent, retreating inward. For him, the world goes quiet.
Our chatter, the hum of the city, all of it fades to a dull background hum.
And me? I move. I walk. I try to outrun a noise that’s inside my own head.
The elevator ride down is a blur of pain and disorientation. By the time I reach the lobby, my shirt is soaked with sweat, my hands trembling so badly I have to shove them into my pockets.
“Sir?” Sternam looks up in alarm as I exit the elevator.
“Everything’s fine,” I manage, the lie so transparent it’s almost laughable. “Just... going for a walk.”
He doesn’t believe me. I can see it in his eyes. But he knows better than to press. “Of course, sir. Should I call for the car?”
“No,” I say quickly. “I need to walk.”
I push through the glass doors of the lobby and out onto the street. The morning air is cool against my feverish skin, but it does nothing to quiet the roaring in my head. If anything, the outside world, with its traffic and pedestrians and general cacophony, only makes it worse.
I turn left, heading in the direction I saw her taxi go. It’s a pointless gesture. She’s long gone by now, probably halfway across town. But my feet carry me anyway, as if by following her path I might somehow recapture some of the peace she brought.
The static doesn’t relent. If anything, it seems to grow worse with each step, as if the distance between us is directly proportional to the pain in my head. I make it three blocks before I have to stop, bracing myself against the side of a building, my breathing harsh and ragged.
A memory surfaces through the noise: Zoe, curled on the couch in the penthouse, a book in her lap, a small, private smile on her face as she reads.
The way she looked up when I entered the room, that smile widening just a fraction, just for me.
The way the static went completely, blissfully silent the moment our eyes met.
The quiet. The peace. It wasn’t just a relief from the noise. It was a glimpse of something I’d never had before, never even known was possible. A stillness at the center of the storm. A place to rest.
And we let her walk away, thinking all she was to us was a cure for our pain.
I push myself away from the wall, forcing my legs to carry me back toward Sterling Tower. Each step is an act of will, a battle against the roaring in my head.
By the time I reach the glass doors of the lobby again, I’m barely holding it together. Sternam takes one look at me and is instantly at my side, his arm coming around my shoulders to support me.
“Sir,” he says, his voice low and urgent. “You need to sit down. Let me call a doctor.”
“No,” I manage, shaking my head. “No doctors. Just... need to get upstairs.”
He helps me to the elevator, his concern evident in the careful way he handles me, as if I might shatter at any moment. And maybe I will. Maybe that’s what’s happening. The static is finally breaking me apart, piece by piece.
“Sir,” Sternam says as the elevator doors open, “if I may... Ms. Clarke seemed upset when she left. Is everything alright?”
The question is so inadequate, so woefully insufficient to describe the catastrophe that’s unfolding, that I almost laugh. But the sound that comes out is more like a wounded animal’s whimper.
“No,” I admit, stepping into the elevator. “Nothing is alright.”
The doors close, and I’m alone in the silent box as it begins its ascent back to the penthouse. Back to my brothers, who are suffering just as I am.
The agony is so profound that a single, terrifying thought cuts through the roaring noise in my head.
Mine. Gone.