Chapter thirty-nine #2
Slowly, the screaming fades. The whine returns, but smaller now. More spent. Gabriel’s voice gets softer. The sounds shift—I think he’s letting Gabriel hold him. The whine turns into sobbing. Huge, crashing sobs that bounce off the walls.
Then I hear Gabriel’s purr. Deep enough to translate without words. Loud enough I imagine it vibrates through the floor all the way to where I’m sitting. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking.
The crying eases. The purr goes on. Silence settles over everything.
Cyrus is the next to come in. He takes in the mess—the coffee table, the TV, me on the couch. He doesn’t ask questions. He sets the table upright and sits down next to me.
“Tell me,” he says.
So I explain. The news set him off immediately. The mugshots. The panic. The second I said alpha, he completely lost control, and suddenly I was trying to stop him from running out the door.
I don’t mention the shove. That’s mine to hold.
“Do you remember any of the names?” Cyrus asks. “From the newscast?”
I think. The anchor read them out while the faces got big on screen. Most of them blurred past, but the last one stuck with me.
“Kovac,” I say. “The last one was Kovac. First name started with a D. Derek, maybe?”
Cyrus’s face goes cold. His usual blank cracks. Underneath is rage.
“You know who that is,” I say.
“Derek Kovac,” Cyrus says. “He ran the fighting ring in the Hollows. His crew killed Miles’s first pack.”
“His old pack,” I say. “The ones who hurt him.”
“They were murdered. Kovac’s fighters ambushed them. Three alphas, all dead inside an hour.”
“And Miles?”
Cyrus is silent for a long time. Gabriel’s purr still rumbles down the hall.
“They hurt him before he hid somewhere they couldn’t reach. Under the crawlspace, I think. He was there for hours.”
I picture it. Miles, younger, wedged under a house. Listening to the men who killed his pack hunt for him. Lying in dirt. Breathing dust. His omega screaming for alphas who were already gone.
“He watched it happen?” I ask.
“He did. Then they beat him pretty badly, but he fought and managed to slip out. Found a place to hide.”
My eyes sting. “God.”
“The fighters were after his alphas. The pack owed gambling debts. Kovac’s crew came to collect and it got ugly.
His pack tried to give him over as payment, but Kovac’s people are deep in the Hollow rings.
Omegas are a dime a dozen there. They didn’t need Miles.
” He pauses. “But what happened before that—what his own pack did to him—that was worse. The murder was fast. The rest was years.”
I think about the things he told me before. Lucky anyone wanted him. Faulty wiring. How his scent matches made him pay for existing.
“And Gabriel found him?” I ask.
Cyrus nods. “One of Miles’s alphas had a position at Gabriel’s company.
Executive level. Gabriel rarely crossed paths with him—only knew him as the guy with the expensive suits and the corner office.
Then the murders happened. Gabriel showed up at the scene himself.
He’s always been like that—needs to see things with his own eyes.
Police tape everywhere, body bags. Nobody even realized Miles was still alive or on scene until a gust of wind carried his scent to Gabriel.
He found him wedged under the house, covered in dirt and blood. It took him forever to coax him out.”
Cyrus almost smiles, but it’s sadder than anything. “Gabriel was patient after he brought him home. Miles made it hard.”
“I can imagine.”
“No. You can’t.” Cyrus says it flat, no heat.
“The first year, he didn’t talk. To anyone.
Notes, gestures, sometimes throwing things.
He slept in the closet because the bed was too exposed.
He flinched at any loud voice. He bit Gabriel once because Gabriel tried to brush his hair and he didn’t see the hand coming. ”
The tears are running down my face and I don’t even bother to wipe them away.
Cyrus moves closer, putting his arm around me. Heavy, solid, warm. His purr starts—softer than Gabriel’s, but I feel it everywhere.
“He’s come a long way,” Cyrus says. “What you see now—the sharp tongue, the control, how he runs the house—that’s all earned.
He built it piece by piece. But sometimes something cracks the foundation and everything shakes.
It’s why he covets control so much. He doesn’t like being out of it.
Which is why our pack is a good fit for him.
Not all alphas give their omegas so much free rein.
But we’re secure enough to let him be what he needs, even if he doesn’t always see that. ”
“Seeing those faces took him back,” I say.
“Yeah,” Cyrus says. “Seeing those faces.”
I cry for the omega Miles used to be. For the scared guy under that house. For the silence and the closet and all the ways the world taught him to expect pain. And I cry because somehow he still grew into someone capable of loving us back.
He’s still surviving it. Every day. Every hour. The cruelty, the violence, the loss—all of it still there, buried under the jagged edges.
Tonight, something cracked. And all of it came spilling out.
Garrett comes in at some point. He takes one look at me crying in Cyrus’s arms and sits on my other side, putting his palm on my knee. He doesn’t ask what happened. He stays.
Gabriel and Miles don’t come out that night.
I fall asleep on the couch, wedged between Cyrus and Garrett, their purrs layered together like a cocoon. Holding me steady. While the omega I’m learning to love lies in a dark room down the hall, held together by an alpha who’s been holding him since the day he stopped talking.
I don’t dream.
I just wait.