Chapter forty #2
I don’t shatter. A part of me just… dies out. Whatever hope I had left flatlines.
Gabriel reappears. “Lily, pack your things. Jeremy is heading to the registry to file custody transfer and the claiming paperwork.”
I don’t move. I can’t. My body’s not listening.
“Lily.” He says my name gently. Which only makes it hurt more. “Go pack.”
I look at Miles again. He’s already walking away. He sits at the kitchen table, grabs a banana, peels it and bites into it.
He’s eating fruit. Like it’s just another Tuesday. As if he didn’t tear me out at the roots and toss me in the trash. To him, I’m already gone and breakfast is the only thing left to finish.
I head to my room, same as always. I pull the suitcase out of the closet—the one from the registry that can easily hold everything I own.
Not that it amounts to much.
I start piling things in. Clothes that never really felt like mine, but I wore anyway.
The dress Jeremy bought me because it would be rude to show up without it.
My hoodie that I’ve had since the year my dad died.
It’s the last thing he ever bought me. It’s worn around the edges, stained and faded.
I don’t care. I’ll wear it until there’s nothing left.
It’s the only thing I have to remind me I was once worth loving.
That I used to be more than a rejected stray.
I fold everything one piece at a time, shirt after shirt, pants and socks and underwear.
I make the edges precise, stack everything neat.
If I focus on the folding, I don’t have to think about anything else.
If I get the lines straight, maybe I won’t notice how empty my chest feels, how cold and echoey it is inside me now.
From the living room, someone’s yelling.
The alphas are at it again. Cyrus’s deep voice, Garrett’s edge, Gabriel keeping things even like he’s trying to referee.
I can’t make out the words. It sounds like Cyrus and Garrett are arguing with Gabriel.
Over me, probably. Or because they’re out of ideas.
It doesn’t matter. Nothing really matters because Miles said he doesn’t love me and the alphas picked him and I’m off to Jeremy’s, and that’s my story. That’s how it ends. Now I can close the book and say goodbye to the characters. Say goodbye to Lily.
My life is about to become a very different story.
And there’s no way to tell if there’s a happy ending.
I told him I loved him and he said, how could I ever love a rejected stray? Now that’s a sentence I have to carry around in my body for the rest of my life.
I zip up the suitcase.
I look at the room. The bed I’ve hardly slept in lately because Miles wanted me in his nest. The window that looks out on the backyard where Cyrus does all his grilling.
The nightstand where I kept Jeremy’s flowers, which are long dead, thrown out a couple days ago because I thought I didn’t need another alpha’s flowers when I finally had a pack.
Had. Past tense.
I guess I’ll have a pack now after all.
Just not the one I want.
I drag the suitcase down the hall. Past the bathroom, past Miles’s room—the one he never uses, unless he’s screaming at the walls while Gabriel is holding him together. Past the door to the pack room, which is closed, but the scent of all of us still leaks out from underneath the door.
I don’t look at anyone as I head to the front door. I can feel them, though. Garrett’s somewhere to my left, Cyrus behind me, both of them staring after me. Miles at the kitchen table, chewing like nothing is happening.
“Lily,” Garrett says, gentle, careful. “Do you want some breakfast before you go?”
I shake my head. Thinking about food makes me want to throw up. Thinking about sitting at that kitchen table, in the chair where Miles used to hook his foot around mine, makes me want to melt into the floor and never move again.
Gabriel grabs his keys from the counter. “Let’s go.”
I slip my shoes on and leave without saying goodbye. There’s nothing left to say.
I follow him out to the truck. The morning air should be freezing on my bare arms and legs. I barely feel it. I never changed—I’m still in my tank top and shorts, exactly what I wore to sleep, exactly what I had on when the alphas held me last night and Miles found us.
The cold doesn’t reach me. Nothing does.
He tosses my suitcase in the back, opens the door for me. I climb in.
We drive away. I watch the house shrink in the side mirror—the porch where Jeremy kissed me, the yard Cyrus liked, the windows of the room where I felt like I belonged for the first time ever, before it got yanked away.
I breathe in. Cedar and smoke. Gabriel’s scent. It fits my body exactly right. Once Jeremy claims me, I’ll never have another scent match. Not after I’m bonded. This is it—the last time I’ll ever breathe in my scent match and feel my body settle.
I try to memorize the feel of it in my lungs. How it soothes everything. Even the things that are dead.
He doesn’t talk for most of the drive. His hands grip the wheel at ten and two. His jaw is set. He drives like a guy heading somewhere he never wanted to go.
Finally, without looking over: “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault he can’t love me,” I say. My voice doesn’t sound like mine. The words come out hollow, like I’m not the one saying them.
“That’s not true. He’s just... yesterday broke him open. He backslides sometimes, especially when things get close to the surface. I really wish you could stay.”
I don’t answer.
I’m out of answers.
We pull into the registry lot. The building looks exactly the same as before. Gray, blocky, REGISTRY in big letters above the door. The last time Gabriel walked me out of here, I had hope. Just a little. Now I’m walking back in with nothing.
He carries my suitcase and we go inside. The clerk at the desk greets us like she’s done this a thousand times and learned not to look at the omega’s face.
They take us to a back room. Jeremy’s already at the table.
He’s got paperwork lined up, everything neat, pen on top. He’s dressed like he’s headed to a meeting, not here to pick up the omega nobody wanted.
He looks up when we come in and gives a tight smile. I know the evidence of my crying is all over my face. He knows nothing went right. He can tell the omega he’s been trying to get didn’t choose him so much as get thrown away.
“Lily.” He says my name gently. He can see I’m close to falling apart. “Please, sit.”
I do. The chair is hard, the room is cold, everything smells like paper and disinfectant and nothing like home.