Chapter twenty-four
Lily
Sixteen hours in bed. I mean it. I don’t sleep, not really.
I lie there, flat on my back, blanket up to my chin, staring at the ceiling like I can will myself invisible.
It’s survival mode, bare minimum. Existing in the smallest way possible.
I did notice the trash can disappeared sometime in the night.
Not that I care who took it. Someone must’ve come in while I was pretending to sleep.
The painting, the supplies, all of it gone.
The empty patch where the can used to be is just another hole in a room already full of them. I think I’m becoming one too.
My head aches. Pressure behind my eyes making the weak daylight that sneaks around the curtains feel like a personal vendetta.
My stomach is sour and empty, but the idea of eating is worse.
I haven’t had anything since that banana yesterday morning.
Before the painting. Before Gabriel called me what I was.
I don’t dwell on what he said. Already done enough of that.
The word is in me now, tucked right in with all the other letdowns—the registry, the packs that never called, the scent matches who wouldn’t touch me.
Reject. It fits, like it was always meant to be there, just waiting for someone to name it.
The house is alive around me, but I’m a rock at the bottom of the river, water rushing past because there’s no reason for it to stop. Footsteps in the hall. Voices, doors opening and closing. The pack does their thing. I stay here. Existing in the void. I find I like the void. It’s peaceful here.
At some point my door swings open without even a warning creak. And there’s Miles, fully dressed, glasses on, arms folded. He looks at me like you look at a dog that’s been in the same spot too long.
“Get up,” he says.
I don’t move.
“I said get up, Stray.”
“Go away, Miles.”
Instead of listening, he walks in, crosses to the bed, and stands over me. His jaw is set. Whatever he’s decided, he’s just waiting for the rest of us to catch up to it.
“You haven’t eaten since yesterday morning. You haven’t showered. You haven’t left this room. Get up.”
“I’m fine here.”
“You’re not fine. You’re decomposing. Get up, eat something, and go clean the kitchen. It’s a mess.”
“Clean it yourself.”
“That’s not how this works and you know it.”
I bunch the blanket tighter. He waits, silent, then yanks the blanket off me in one smooth move. The cold air hits me. Then his eyes. Expectation.
I should fight. I should tell him to leave, to go back to his alphas and his perfect nest. But there’s nothing left in me to fight with. Gabriel took it when he called me the reject. Now I’m just a shell of a person, someone good at following orders.
So I get up. Because Miles told me to, and it’s the only thing my body seems to know how to do. Follow. Submit. Survive.
I shower because he says so. I eat toast because he puts it in front of me and waits until I take a bite.
The kitchen gets cleaned because he points.
The counters don’t even need it; Garrett’s kept them spotless, but I wipe them anyway, over and over, letting the motion smooth out the frantic edges in my head.
Miles sits at the island, drawing. He doesn’t thank me or say I’m doing a good job. He just sits there, burnt sugar scent thick in the air, pencil scratching paper.
I can’t figure out what he’s doing. He isn’t apologizing or being gentle. He hasn’t said one kind word since he barged into my room. He’s just there. Not letting me fade away. Ordering me to keep existing, even though he won’t say why it matters.
I don’t understand any of this weird thing between us.
All I know is that when he tells me to wipe down the table, I do it.
When he says vacuum, I do it. Fold the throw blankets?
Done. Each task is a rung on a ladder I didn’t know I was climbing, pulling me up from the bottom one small instruction at a time.
By mid-afternoon, the headache is getting nasty. It’s vicious and insistent. My body’s burned through whatever it had left. I’m on the couch, folding the last blanket, and suddenly the pain spikes so bad I grab my temple and shut my eyes.
Miles notices.
He doesn’t ask if I’m okay or offer to call Dr. Turner or tell me to take my medicine. He sets his sketchbook down, comes over, and sits beside me. Close. Thigh against mine.
Then he leans in and puts his nose to my neck.
He’s slow, careful, nosing along my throat, finding the places he already knows, the soft skin behind my ear. When he gets to my scent gland, he nips. Precise, light. Just enough to send a shiver through me.
The pain dulls to a hum instead of an ice pick. My body sags against him, tension seeping out slowly. Relief feels dangerously close to trust.
I should be grateful. I am. But there’s something else underneath his actions, and it tastes like pity. He saw what Gabriel did to me. He saw the aftermath. Now he’s helping, and I can’t stop thinking—is he doing it because he wants to, or because he feels sorry for the reject his alpha broke?
I don’t want pity. I have enough of that to last a lifetime. Pity from registry staff, pity from chosen omegas, from Garrett every time he sees me. Pity is what you get when people have given up on you. It’s the prize for losing.
But I guess I’ll take it if it keeps me breathing.
I don’t pull away. His nose is on my neck, his teeth on my scent gland… it feels too good. The relief is so immediate, so physical, that I can’t say no. Even if it’s pity. Even if it’s from the omega who calls me Stray and drug me across the floor by my ankle.
He nips again, harder, and I make a sound I can’t control.
It’s the sound of an omega receiving what she needs, even if it’s not technically from an alpha.
My scent spikes, ozone bright, peach going sweet, and his scent answers.
The burnt sugar deepens, the iron drops out.
He’s suddenly not pitying me anymore. He’s aroused.
It’s from the way I give in. How I go pliant for him.
The submission he doesn’t have to fight for.
It gets to him, and it has nothing to do with feeling sorry.
We stay like that for a long time. Him nosing and nipping, me pressing into it, both of us breathing each other in. By the time the front door opens and the alphas’ trucks rumble into the driveway, I feel better than I have in days. I’m at least functional now. Headache manageable. Stomach steady.
I hear Gabriel’s keys. His footsteps in the entry. The cedar and smoke scent rolling through the house.
I’m off the couch before Miles can even react. Straight for the stairs, moving fast. I am not sitting in that room while Gabriel walks in.
“Lily—“ Miles calls.
“No.” I don’t stop. No way I’m sitting still while Gabriel looks at me. I can’t take it again. I can’t stand there and watch his face decide what I am. I’d rather be alone in the dark forever than let him shrink me down to worse than nothing again.
I’m halfway up when his voice finds me.
“Lily.”
Gabriel. Not Miles. Gabriel, coat still on, keys in his hand, standing at the bottom of the stairs. I freeze. One foot on the next step, hand tight on the railing.
Here it comes. Whatever I did wrong. Whatever new way I failed to disappear.
“Come here, Lily. I need to talk to you.”
Every instinct screams no. My omega wants space, walls, a locked door. She’s learned what happens when Gabriel opens his mouth in her direction.
But it’s his house. His air. There’s no choice. I never really had one.
I turn. Walk back down, slow, staring at my feet.
“I’m sorry.” It slips out before I reach him. I can’t stop it. Instinct, straight from the gut. Keep the alpha happy. Make yourself small. Survive.
“I’m sorry for yesterday. And today. And for whatever you’re about to say I did wrong. I’ll go to my room and I’ll stay out of the way. I’m sorry—“
“Sorry for what?” Softer than I thought he’d be. He doesn’t sound angry. But I still don’t trust it.
“For—for the door, and the painting, and being in the way. I’ll be more careful. I’ll stay out of sight. I won’t—“
He holds up his hand. “I’m not angry at you, Lily.”
I shut up. Look up for the first time. He looks tired. Like he hasn’t slept and knows it’s his own fault.
“What I said yesterday was wrong,” he says. “I didn’t mean it. I was scared. Angry. I took it out on you and that wasn’t fair.”
I stand there, hands clasped, waiting for the “but.” The part where he says it’s still my fault. The part where the apology turns into another warning.
“I was worried about Miles,” he goes on.
“When you opened that door, all I could think about was what could have happened. Someone walking in. Someone taking him. I can’t…
the thought of anything happening to my omega—“ He stops. Swallows. “It would kill me, Lily. Losing him would end me. And I let that fear come out as cruelty aimed at you, and I’m sorry.”
And losing me would just be unfortunate. A blip on the radar. Acknowledge, then move along, life goes on.
I bite the inside of my cheek to keep the tears back. I think about Jeremy and his pack. I wonder if any alpha will ever talk about me the way Gabriel talks about Miles. With terror in their voice. Like losing me would matter.
Or if I’ll always be the reject. The one alphas protect their real omegas from. The omega who gets the apology, but never the devotion.
“I understand,” I say. “I won’t do it again.”
“Do you forgive me?”
He asks as if I owe him comfort for hurting me. “Yes,” I reply, because how else can I answer that?
“Good. And I forgive you. Just be careful. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“You don’t have to hide in your room,” he adds. “Things are better now. Everything’s fine.”
“Okay.”
He looks at me like he’s waiting for something. For me to believe him, maybe. I don’t give him anything. He leaves, back to the kitchen, to the pack that actually belongs to him.
I go straight to my room. Door shut. Under the blankets.