Chapter eight
Lily
Iwake up fighting ghosts. Arms swinging at empty air, heart pounding, body bracing for a fight that’s already over. It takes a good three seconds before I remember: guest room, Santos house. Stuck in a holding pen the registry calls a fairy tale.
A fairy tale… sure. As long as you don’t look too closely at the cage.
Everything hurts. My cheek is throbbing where Miles decided to use me as a scratching post. My shoulder?
I don’t even think about rolling over, unless I want to see stars.
I lie on my back and look up at the ceiling, all white and smooth and kind of smug about it. Untouched by my existence. I get it.
The clock on my phone says 7:23 a.m. Day one of thirty. Or less, if Gabriel has his way. I bet he’s already at his desk, making calls, looking for anyone who’ll take me off his hands. That’s what planners do—they plan you right out of their lives.
My stomach twists and growls. I try to remember eating something that wasn’t panic, but I can’t. My body is running on fumes and old adrenaline.
There’s coffee somewhere in the house. I smell it, faint but alive, and I latch onto it like a lifeline.
There’s a soft knock at my door.
“Lily? You awake?”
Garrett. I sit up, catch a glimpse of my face in the mirror over the dresser, decide to not care.
“Yeah. Come in.”
He comes in backward, arms full—a tray, eggs, toast, coffee, even a daisy in a tiny vase. The daisy is so cheerful, it almost pisses me off.
“Pack tradition,” he explains, balancing the tray on my lap. “First morning, breakfast in bed.”
“What about second morning?” I ask.
He falters and doesn’t answer. But we both know anyway. The second morning I’ll still be having breakfast in bed because the other omega in the house can’t stand to see my face.
I eat because if I don’t, I’ll pass out. The eggs are perfect, the coffee’s hot and sweet. For thirty seconds, I pretend this is my life—that I get to keep it.
Garrett drops into the chair by the window. Honey and sage drifts toward me and my omega reaches for it before I can stop her. I pull back. New house, new rules. Rules rules rules.
“Thank you,” I say. “For this. It’s been a long time since anyone…”
Garrett’s about to answer, but Gabriel’s voice cuts through the hall. Just his name, no extra words.
Garrett freezes, then stands up. “Be right back.”
He goes to find Gabriel, leaving the door just barely open.
I should focus on my eggs. I should not eavesdrop. Instead, I do both.
Their voices are low, but the hallway is a megaphone.
“You can’t spend time in there. Her room smells like you now.”
“I brought her breakfast. I sat in a chair.”
“Your scent is going to linger. If Miles finds out—“
“I know. I know.”
There’s a pause. Gabriel again, moving away, voice softer. “I have a call with the Mercer pack at nine. David Mercer’s been looking for an omega for a while but hasn’t found a good fit. I’m sending Lily’s file. I think he’d like her.”
My fork stops. My mouth is dry.
Mercer pack. A real name. Real alphas. My actual file, being sent out on day freaking one.
“Already?” Garrett’s voice goes tight. “She just got here.”
“Weren’t you just in the gym pushing me to hurry up? Because of her health?”
“I know, I know.”
“You were right. She needs to be placed, Garrett. The sooner, the better. For everyone. Including her.”
“That’s not—Gabe, at least give her a few days to—“
“A few days to what? Get more attached? Let the bond get stronger? That’s not kindness, Garrett. That’s cruelty.” He pauses. “You think I want to do this? I don’t. I’ve been up all night struggling with it, but it has to be done. For Miles.”
Silence. Then footsteps, fading.
I stare at the eggs. Cold now. The coffee’s still warm, but it tastes like nothing.
Mercer pack. David Mercer. By nine this morning, some stranger will be opening my file, flipping through my medical records, my lack of interested packs, my photo. Deciding if I’m worth it.
Day one, and I’m already on the block. I don’t even get to pretend I might stay, that I’m wanted here, even for a little while.
I finish the coffee, because wasting it feels wrong. The daisy sits in its little vase, bright and oblivious.
***
I make it until two o’clock before I can’t take the walls anymore. I read until my eyes ache, rearrange my suitcase, memorize the tree branches outside my window. Everything itches: my face, my shoulder, the quiet.
I crack my door. Listen. Nothing. I slip out.
The kitchen is empty. I fill a glass at the sink and drink, staring out at the trees like they belong to me. Pretending the Mercer pack doesn’t exist.
“Bandage is slipping.”
I jump, water sloshing onto the floor.
Cyrus. He’s in the doorway, arms folded, tattoos out, face unreadable. How does someone that big move so quietly?
“I’ll fix it,” I tell him.
“You can’t reach it.”
He’s right. He crosses the kitchen, all black pepper and leather, and my omega goes perfectly still.
His hands are careful on my shoulder—too careful.
Like I’m something breakable. As if I already came to them cracked.
He fixes the tape, smooths it, seals the edges.
It takes maybe half a minute. Then he’s done and my body is cold again.
No more electric currents lighting me up.
“Healing,” he says. “It won’t scar.”
“Thank you.”
He nods. Then he’s listening to something I can’t hear, and just like that, he’s gone. Gabriel calls, and Gabriel always comes first.
I rinse my glass and stand there in the empty kitchen, wondering what David Mercer looks like.
I should go back to my room. That’s what I’m supposed to do. But my legs take me the other way, down a hallway I haven’t explored, past doors I haven’t opened. I’m not snooping. I’m just not ready to go back.
The hallway curves toward what has to be the other wing—the part that belongs to Miles. I should turn around. I keep going.
One door is cracked open. Not wide, but enough for me to see inside as I walk by. I slow, even though I shouldn’t.
It isn’t a bedroom. More like a study or a studio. There’s a desk pushed against the window and it’s covered in drawings. Real sketches, not doodles. Pencils, shading, some finished, some not. Pages scattered everywhere and pinned to a corkboard above the desk.
I should keep walking.
I stop.
The drawings are good. Actually, they’re incredible.
Even from the doorway, I can tell. Mostly faces.
I spot Garrett first—the laugh lines, the open smile, all of it captured in a few perfect strokes.
Gabriel, all intensity, looking away from the viewer.
Cyrus from behind, massive, the tattoos on his neck drawn with real care.
They’re drawn with love. That’s the only way to say it. Whoever did these wasn’t just sketching—they were memorizing, trying to hold on to something too precious to lose.
Miles drew these. Of course he did.
I step closer without meaning to. On the edge of the desk, half-buried by a loose page, is a smaller sketch. Not like the others. Not an alpha this time.
It’s an omega. A woman. She’s drawn from memory, I think—the lines are softer, less certain, like the artist was fighting to remember the exact curve of her smile, the way her hair fell. She’s smiling. For someone she trusts maybe.
I don’t know her. But I know what it’s like to try to keep hold of a fading face.
I hear footsteps behind me. My heart slams into my ribs.
“What are you doing in here?”
Miles. Close enough to block the door, his voice low and tight. Worse than yelling.
I step away from the desk. “The door was open. I was just—“
“Just what?” He fills the doorway, tall and unmovable. “Snooping through my things? Going through my room?”
“I wasn’t touching anything. I saw the drawings and I—“
“You saw,” he says, blank and final, like it’s a confession. His eyes flick to the desk, the sketches, the smaller drawing. His whole face shifts. I expect anger, but it’s more… exposed. Like I’ve peeled back his armor and he can’t stand it.
“They’re beautiful,” I say, because it’s true, and because it’s the only thing I can think of.
“Get out.”
I go. He doesn’t follow. But as I pass him, close enough to catch the heat of his body, he says something almost too quiet for me to hear.
“Don’t tell them about that one.”
I look back. He’s standing there, staring at the sketches like they betrayed him. For the first time, he doesn’t look angry or tough or in control. He looks like someone in the middle of loving people he’s convinced are going to vanish.
“I won’t,” I promise.
He doesn’t reply. He just gathers up the picture of the woman and places it carefully in a drawer.
I walk away.
***
Gabriel collects me for dinner at six.
“You need real meals,” he says, walking me to the dining room like I’m a patient instead of his scent match. “I know what I said about you keeping to your room but that really isn’t fair. You should at least be able to come out and eat. Miles will understand.”
The table’s full when I sit down. Gabriel at the head. Garrett smiling, but it doesn’t reach his eyes this time. Cyrus is hunched over his bowl. And Miles is beside Gabriel in a dark sweater, hair messy, face unreadable.
I sit where I’m told. Garrett passes me a bowl. I eat because that’s what you do.
The stew is amazing but I can hardly taste it. My mind keeps returning to the Mercer pack. All I see is Miles’s studio, the sketches, the omega’s quiet smile.
“Shoulder’s looking better,” Gabriel says.
“Cyrus fixed the bandage.”
Miles pauses, spoon in the air. He glances at Cyrus, then me. Just holds.
“How thoughtful,” he says, light and pleasant-like. “Taking care of our little guest.”
The word little hangs there.
“You know,” Miles goes on, dipping bread with perfect precision, “I’ve been thinking about your situation, Lily. I actually feel sorry for you.”
Garrett stiffens. Gabriel is locked onto Miles, not blinking.
“You found your scent matches. The thing every omega dreams of. And the lead looked at you and said no.” Miles tips his head, studying me. “That must sting.”
He takes his pleasure in reminding me. As if I could ever forget.
“Miles,” Gabriel says.
“I’m being nice.” Miles’s eyes go wide, innocent. “I’m showing empathy. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“That’s not what you’re doing.”
The mask drops. “Even if Gabriel wanted to keep you—which he does, I can smell it all over him—it won’t happen.
He promised me. And Gabriel keeps his promises.
” He shrugs. “So you’ll eat our food, sleep in our guest room, and every day the bond will pull at you, and every day nothing will come of it.
Until they find some pathetic yet adequate pack to take you. ”
Silence. The word hovers in the air.
“Adequate,” he repeats, softer. “That’s what you get. Just…adequate. Because your alphas are mine.”
I set my spoon down. My hand shakes just a tiny bit.
“You’re right,” I say.
He blinks.
“He chose you. I’m the one in the wrong chair.” I hold his gaze. “But I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t choose to imprint. And I’m not trying to take anything from you.”
He stares, then glances toward the hallway. His studio. The sketches I wasn’t supposed to see.
“Thirty days,” he says, voice quiet. “That’s what you have.”
He eats, and the rest of us follow. Nobody talks.
***
Back in my room it’s dark, quiet, and empty.
I don’t replay the nice moments. There’s one, maybe, if you count Garrett’s daisy, already drooping on the nightstand.
Instead I wonder about the Mercer pack. David Mercer, whoever that is.
By tomorrow, he’ll be looking at my file again, probably for the fifth time, judging every line, every note, deciding if I’m even worth the risk.
Next week, I could be sitting at a different table, meeting a whole new set of alphas, pretending I’m not still longing for the ones who sent me away.
The bond will dissolve when they claim me.
Like it never happened. Like it never mattered.
That’s what happens. My biology will erase all of this—the cedar and smoke, honey and sage, the black pepper and leather.
Gone. Replaced by whatever the new pack smells like.
And I’ll spend the rest of my life with someone “adequate,” always wondering if there’s a ghost of this feeling left, too deep to dig out.
Always trying to find something in them that isn’t there.
But I’ll act the part. I’ll smile with all teeth. I’ll nod with my whole head. I’ll pretend with my whole heart that I don’t know what I’m missing. And maybe they won’t know the difference.
Miles was calm and surgical at dinner, dismantling me word by word.
But he’s also the kind of man who sketches the people he loves with trembling, reverent care before turning vicious toward anyone who threatens them.
I can’t stop thinking about the portrait in the studio, the omega woman drawn from memory, and how he tried to hold onto her face even while it faded from him.
Then there was the crack in his voice when he said, Don’t tell them. Almost scared. Like I’d uncovered something fragile beneath all that armor. Proof that he still knows how to love. That he loved someone once, deeply enough that losing her left damage even his alphas can’t fully reach.
I pull the quilt up. My shoulder pulses. Cheek aches.
The daisy is wilting. I don’t bother moving it.
It fits.
I don’t cry. I just lie here, empty, counting the days.
Twenty-nine. Maybe less.
And somewhere, David Mercer is reading my file.
I don’t know what David smells like.
I don’t know what it will feel like when he touches me.
I don’t know if I’ll hate it.
Or worse—if I won’t.