Epilogue
Three Months Later
I’m on camera in the living room of our new apartment, halfway across town from the old building, from the shared wall, and from the hallway where I first kissed an Alpha and changed both our lives.
The apartment is ours now, chosen together, furnished together, and lived in together in a way that still feels like a small miracle every time I walk through the door.
Sai’s photograph wall sits reconstructed directly across from where I set up my cam equipment, hundreds of images of me staring back at me.
The old ones came from the stalker wall and the new ones he took with permission, with love, with me looking directly at the camera and knowing exactly who stands behind the lens.
I perform with my own face staring back at me from Sai’s lens. It’s the most romantic and most unhinged decorating choice either of us has ever made and I love it.
We chose the living room instead of the bedroom.
Well, Sai insisted on it the day we moved in.
He stood in the middle of the empty space and assessed every room with that photographer’s eye and told me the afternoon light comes through those windows at the perfect angle so I would glow. He was right. I do glow.
I’m a few months along now, my belly rounded out.
My audience can’t get enough of it. The pregnancy has amplified everything about me, the skin, the hair, and the confidence that was always there but now carries a new depth to it.
It’s the depth of someone growing a person inside them and still commanding a room from behind a ring light.
“It’s been fun tonight,” I tell the camera as I run a hand over my belly, the other lining the lace against my hip. Sai was all too ecstatic to buy me new sets to fit during pregnancy, my Alpha eagerly watching every video I uploaded.
He still only rewatches the soft ones, sometimes long enough for me to hear when I come home, my pretty Alpha waiting for me to take him apart.
“Tomorrow, I can’t wait to have a little more fun with you all, hmm?” My videos have shifted. I’m no longer speaking to the Alphas on the other screen. Now, I’m just showing off my body and the claim my Alpha has on me.
You’re mated right? Just answer!
Other, similar messages scroll through the chat.
God, he’s so pretty like that.
You’re mated to Sai Hollis, right?
I just laugh, refusing to confirm or deny. “Until next time, loves.” I shut everything off, moving to remove the lace when my phone rings. It’s Koda.
I answer and his voice comes through tight. “I need you downstairs. It’s Sai.”
My heart seizes. I reach for the bond, the constant hum between us, the thread that tells me where Sai is emotionally at any given moment. It’s fine. It’s calm. It’s even happy. There’s no distress, no spiral, and no freeze. Whatever this is, Sai’s not in danger.
But Koda’s voice has that edge, the one that tries to sound casual and fails.
“Is he okay?”
“Just come down. I didn’t have time to call ahead. He’s fine, just come down.”
I don’t argue. I grab a shirt, one of Sai’s oversized ones, and yank it on over the lingerie.
I pull on shorts and groan at the extra weight in my belly as I bend to find my shoes.
Then, I rush down the stairs as much as a pregnant Omega can rush, one hand on the railing and one hand cradling my stomach.
Koda’s waiting at the bottom, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed with a smug look on his face that I’ve learned to distrust.
“What’s going on? Where is he?”
Koda pushes off the wall and starts walking, down the street. I follow, bewildered, one strap of my lingerie slipping off my shoulder under the oversized shirt.
Koda glances back and grins. “Didn’t have time to change?”
I look down at the lace strap visible and the fabric peeking out of the collar of Sai’s shirt. I was literally on camera three minutes ago. “You made it sound like an emergency. Where is Sai?”
“Close. Two streets over. Come on.”
I follow, questions spilling from my lips that Koda doesn’t answer while I cradle my belly as we walk.
I keep one hand on my stomach the whole way, feeling the gentle curve that’s become so familiar these past months.
Koda keeps walking ahead of me, phone in his hand, that smug grin still tugging at his mouth.
I want to snap at him to slow down but I don’t because the bond tells me Sai is okay and that’s the only thing that matters right now.
I’m the one who’s supposed to be in control, the one who commands the room, the one who decides the pace, but right now I’m waddling after Koda in lingerie and an oversized shirt with my hand on my belly like I’m protecting the most important secret in the world.
We turn the corner and Koda finally slows.
He glances back at me again and his expression softens just a fraction, the smugness giving way to something that looks almost like affection.
“You’re doing good, you know. For someone who’s carrying a Hollis and still running a whole empire from a ring light. ”
I roll my eyes but I smile because the words land softer than I expect. “Flattery won’t get you out of explaining why you dragged a pregnant Omega across town in lingerie.”
Koda laughs and it’s genuine this time. “Worth it. Trust me.”
I trust him. That’s the strange part. I trust Koda because Sai trusts him and because the bond has shown me over and over that the laid-back charm hides a man who shows up when it matters.
So I keep walking, one hand on my stomach, the other adjusting the slipping strap of the blush set under Sai’s shirt, and I let Koda lead me wherever this emergency that isn’t an emergency is taking us.
I follow Koda through the streets until he leads me to a small parlor. The kind of place that doesn’t advertise, with no sign out front, just a door squeezed between a laundromat and a bodega. Inside, it smells like ink and antiseptic and something warm like leather.
Sai is leaning back in a tattoo chair, shirtless, his neck tilted to one side with the skin exposed and a man leaning over him with a tattoo gun.
I stop in the doorway. "What is going on?"
Sai looks over. And the grin, the one I am obsessed with, the one that makes my whole chest go warm and stupid, the one that only started appearing after I put a collar on him and told him he was good, that grin splits across his face.
"Doll."
"Don't 'doll' me. Your cousin called me after a stream because of a tattoo?"
"Come here."
I cross the room, still bewildered, with my belly leading the way. I get close as Sai tilts his head further, showing the work in progress.
It’s my bite. The one I gave him the night we mated, the impression of my teeth on Sai's neck, the mark that bloomed and then faded because Omega bites don’t scar on Alphas.
Sai's bite on me is a scar that will never go away.
My bite on Sai disappeared within days so I gave it to him days after and every so often, like I did last night.
Half of it is inked now. The skin is swollen and red around the fresh lines but the shape is unmistakable, my teeth.
Every ridge, every impression, translated from memory into ink.
Permanent. Indelible. The mark the biology would not let stay, forced to stay anyway by a man who decided that his Omega's claim on his body was not optional.
"It had to be permanent," Sai says simply, like it is obvious, like anything less would be unacceptable.
I stare at the tattoo. My fingers hover over it, wanting to touch, knowing I cannot yet because the skin is too fresh.
Koda clears his throat from behind us. "Mavi, this is our uncle." He gestures to the tattoo artist, an older man, maybe late thirties or early forties, with hands covered in ink of their own. He has got the Hollis bone structure but none of the corporate polish. Something rougher. Realer.
"Cain," the man states.
I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. "You're not going to get in trouble for this? I thought the Hollis family—"
Cain laughs, the sound of a man who has watched the family operate for decades and has very specific opinions about it.
"They're never going to disown Sai. Not publicly.
It would ruin the brand. And as for me—" He returns to the tattoo gun, adjusting something, looking at Sai's neck with the focus of an artist assessing his canvas.
"I'm a little too old and too forgotten to mess with. As long as I don’t make a mess for them to clean up, this won’t hurt me too much. "
But his eyes flicker when he says it. Just for a second.
Cain Hollis is choosing rebellion in the quietest way he knows, with a needle and ink, in a parlor with no sign, making his nephew's Omega's bite permanent. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He knows the family would see this as treason. And he’s doing it anyway.
I lean down and kiss Sai. Carefully, avoiding the fresh ink, cupping his jaw, I press my mouth to his. Sai's hand finds my belly, holding me gently.
Koda reaches over and physically drags me back by the shirt. "Let them finish and then you can take my cousin home and do nasty things to him."
Sai growls at the arm that came around my waist when Koda pulled me back.
Koda throws his hands up. "Damn. Fuck. Sorry. My bad. Possessive much?"
A bright laugh tumbles from my lips, the sound bouncing off the parlor walls. Cain shakes his head with the faintest smile. Sai's growl dissolves into a grin. Koda backs away with exaggerated caution, hands still raised, already checking his phone.
This tattoo will be more permanent than a collar. More visible than an anklet. More honest than a cage. The Hollis family's definition of strength is a cage. Love is the thing that breaks the lock.