Chapter 15
Ren paced down the hallway with his fists clenched. Each step echoed off the dark marble floor like a foreign heartbeat—too loud, too fast. Brody’s scent grew stronger as he neared the office, and Ren forced himself to breathe through his mouth to keep his head clear.
Jax’s words echoed in his head. Say you’re sorry. Then tell the truth.
Simple. Direct.
His life had never been straightforward or easy to understand.
He stopped in front of the office door. Solid, dark wood, with a wrought-iron handle that looked like it belonged to another century. On the other side, voices. Brody’s, deep and restrained, and another softer one, almost a whisper. Zev.
Ren raised his fist and knocked twice. The voices fell silent.
Silence.
Then footsteps. The door opened and Zev appeared in the doorway, those black eyes of his that always seemed to calculate something. He looked at him for a second, just one, and stepped aside without saying a word.
Brody was standing by the desk. Not sitting. Standing, his knuckles resting on an unfolded map, his jaw so tense that the muscles stood out beneath his pale skin. He didn’t look at him as he entered.
“I need to talk to you,” Ren said.
“Come in.”
The word came out flat. No inflection. No warmth, the warmth that usually colored Brody’s voice when he spoke to him, even when they were arguing. Ren felt the chill of that absence like a punch to the chest.
Zev closed the door behind him but didn’t leave. He leaned against the bookshelf to the side with his arms crossed, watching. Ren ignored him. He focused on Brody.
“I wanted to tell you that…”
“Sit down.” Brody finally looked up. His gray eyes, rimmed with red from lack of sleep, fixed on him with a hardness Ren had never seen before. “I have news. About your family.”
The floor tilted beneath his feet. Or so it seemed to him.
“My family?”
“Sit down, Ren.”
It wasn’t a request. Ren slumped into the chair in front of the desk. The leather creaked under his weight. His hands were shaking, and he hid them beneath his thighs.
“What happened?”
Brody walked around the desk. He didn’t sit down. He stood there, looking down at him, and the difference in height between them had never felt so brutal.
“Zev intercepted communications this morning. Your father and your brother have been on the move for days.”
“On the move, how?”
“Looking for you.”
Ren’s heart raced. For a moment—just a moment, brief and foolish and hopeful—he thought they were looking for him to bring him home. That they’d reconsidered. That Julian Valois had looked in the mirror and felt the shame a father must feel when he sells his own son.
Brody must have read the hope on his face because he looked away.
“It’s not what you think.”
“Tell me.”
Zev spoke from the bookshelf, his voice flat and clinical:
“They’ve made a deal with Malachi. The buyer, Reznov, demanded they hand over what he bought or give him his money back. Your family doesn’t have the seven hundred thousand. So they signed a deal with Malachi.”
“For what?”
“They’ve put a price on your head.” Zev pulled a phone from his pocket and swiped his finger across the screen. “Dead or alive. They prefer dead, because that way Reznov can’t claim the merchandise and the contract is voided due to force majeure.”
The words entered Ren’s ears one by one, like drops of acid. Dead or alive. They prefer dead. His father. His brother.
“No.” The word came out hoarse, torn from somewhere Ren didn’t recognize. “That can’t…”
“There’s an order circulating among Malachi’s men.
One hundred thousand for you, delivered dead.
Fifty if you’re alive, but alive means returning you to Reznov, and your family would have to pay a penalty.
” Zev recited the numbers as if they were statistics from a weather report.
”The math benefits them if you’re dead.”
Ren doubled over. His stomach clenched so tightly he thought he was going to vomit right there on the wooden floor of Brody’s office. He dug his fingers into his thighs until his knuckles turned white.
His father.
Julian Valois, who taught him to ride a horse when he was six. Who took him to the theater to see The Nutcracker every Christmas until he turned twelve. Who bought him adventure books at downtown bookstores and let him pick three each time.
That same man would rather see him in a body bag than on the run.
“Ren.” Brody’s voice, closer now. He didn’t touch him, but Ren felt his warmth inches from his back.
“And my brother?” The question came out hollow. He knew the answer before he asked it.
“He signed too,” Zev confirmed.
Ren closed his eyes. The tears didn’t come. It was as if his body had decided there was no liquid left to shed, that the supply had run out days ago, that all that remained was that abrasive dryness behind his eyelids.
His brother. Andrew. His damn older brother who was supposed to protect him. Who looked at him with that mixture of pity and contempt every time Julian lent his out for a night, as if Ren were to blame for being born an omega into a family that treated him like a bargaining chip.
“How long have they been…?”
“Since the day after the auction,” Zev said. “Malachi contacted your father that very night when they discovered you’d escaped. Your father offered to cooperate immediately.”
Immediately. Without hesitation. Without a moment’s hesitation.
Ren opened his eyes and looked ahead. The map on the desk. Lines, marks, names. His gaze slid over the papers without really seeing them until a name caught his eye like a hook.
Malachi Kovac.
Kovac.
The surname echoed in his head. Once. Twice. Three times.
Kovac.
Brody Kovac.
He spun around so fast that the chair screeched against the floor.
“Kovac,” he said, looking directly at Brody. At those gray eyes watching him with what might have been caution. “Your father? No, your uncle.”
It wasn’t a question. But Brody answered as if it were.
“Yes.”
A single syllable. No excuses. No beating around the bush. Not the slightest hint of regret in his voice.
“Malachi Kovac is your uncle.”
“Yes, Ren.”
The air in the room turned solid. Thick. Unbreathable. Ren stood up from the chair so abruptly that he knocked it backward, and the thud echoed like a gunshot.
“The man who auctioned me off. The man who locked me in that casino. The man who let them dress me up like a fucking doll and parade me in front of fifty predators.” Each sentence was a step he climbed, his voice cracking at the edges. “The man who’s now put a price on my head. He’s. Your. Uncle.”
Brody didn’t move.
“Did you know that the day Rocco pulled me out of there? Did you know who he was snatching me away from?”
“I knew.”
“And you didn’t think it was worth telling me?”
“It wasn’t the right time.”
“It wasn’t the right time?” Ren let out a laugh that tore at his throat. “When was it supposed to be the right time, Brody? Before or after we fucked?”
Zev straightened up against the bookshelf. A subtle, almost imperceptible movement, but Ren caught it. As if he were preparing to intervene. Ren glared at him.
“You knew too?”
“We all know,” Zev replied without flinching. “It’s the reason we exist.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means Brody’s been working for five years to dismantle his uncle’s network from the inside.
” Zev didn’t raise his voice a single decibel.
“It means every omega we’ve pulled from those auctions is a blow against Malachi.
It means you’re not the first, though you are the one we’ve had the hardest time keeping hidden. ”
Ren processed those words as slowly as someone trying to read underwater. Brody against his uncle. Brody infiltrating Rocco. Brody hiding rescued Omegas.
And Brody lying to him.
“You were going to tell me,” Ren said, and he didn’t know if he was asking or stating a fact.
“I was going to tell you today.” Brody crossed his arms. His forearms tensed beneath the rolled-up sleeves of his black shirt. “Before you arrived, I was already figuring out how to explain it to you.”
“How convenient.”
“Ren…”
“No.” He took a step back. Then another.
The scent of raisins and walnuts flooded his nostrils, and now it felt like poison, like an invisible chain binding him to a man who shared blood with his executioner.
“Don’t calm me down. Don’t use my name like that.
Don’t look at me as if this is something you can fix with pheromones and pretty words. ”
Brody dropped his arms. He let his hands fall to his sides, open, palms facing Ren. Surrender. Or a perfect imitation of it.
“I will not calm you down. You have every right to be furious.”
“I don’t need your permission to be furious!”
The shout echoed off the book-lined walls. Ren brought his hands to his face. His fingers trembled against his hot skin.
His father wanted him dead. His brother signed the death warrant. And the man whose body screamed he belonged to shared a last name, blood, and past with the monster who orchestrated it all from the start.
He’d come to apologize. To tell Brody he was sorry, that it wasn’t rejection but fear, that he needed time to understand who he was before he could be anything to anyone.
And now he was standing in the middle of an office that smelled of him, surrounded by truths they’d hidden from him, feeling lonelier than the night he fled barefoot through unfamiliar streets.
“I need to get out of here,” he murmured into his palms.
“Out of this room, yes.” Brody’s voice, low and controlled. “Out of this house, no.”
Ren pulled his hands away from his face. He looked at him. And he hated him with every fiber of his being. He hated him because even now, even knowing everything, his body leaned toward him like a sick sunflower seeking a poisoned sun.
He turned and walked out of the office without closing the door.