Chapter 10 #2
Atlas pulls him in. Different from the way he held me—harder, faster, the embrace of brothers who speak a physical language built over a lifetime. One arm around Bane's shoulders, the other hand gripping the back of his neck. Tight. Fierce.
"You stupid, brave son of a bitch," Atlas says into Bane's shoulder. Low enough that I almost miss it.
Bane's eyes close. Just for a second. His composure slips—the mask cracking at the edges, exhaustion and relief flooding through—and then it's back. He pulls away first. Straightens up.
Atlas catches his wrist. Turns it over. The raw bands where the zip ties lived for days are angry and red in the suite's warm lighting—chafed skin, dried blood in the creases, the edges starting to crack.
"Jesus Christ." Atlas's jaw locks. His thumb traces the edge of the abrasion without touching it—the same careful cataloging he did with my face. "They kept you tied the entire time?"
"It's nothing."
"It's not nothing." Atlas drops his wrist. His voice is controlled but his eyes aren't—something hot and dangerous moving behind the gray. "Talbot gave his word you'd be treated as a guest. This is not how you treat a guest."
"Talbot's word isn't worth the wax he seals it with. We knew that going in."
Zero moves then. Swallowing up the last of the distance. He stops in front of Bane. Looks him over.
"Sit down before you fall down, Jesus," Zero says. To Bane. Only to Bane. His hand finds Bane's elbow, guiding him toward the couch, and the gentleness of the gesture—Zero, gentle—is reserved entirely for his brother. He hasn't acknowledged me since the door opened. Not a glance. Not a word.
Like I'm a piece of luggage Bane brought back from a trip. I swallow against the forming lump in my throat.
"Should see the other guys," Bane says. The ghost of a smile.
Zero's mouth twitches. He grips Bane's shoulder once—brief, hard, perhaps his version of I love you—and lets go.
I stand near the hallway and watch the three of them and feel the geometry of this family rearrange around me. Atlas checking Bane's injuries. Zero's hand on Bane's shoulder. The easy shorthand of brothers who've spent a lifetime reading each other's silences.
Zero still doesn’t look at me. Not directly. Not the way Atlas looked at me—consuming, desperate, his whole body leaning toward mine.
Of course. He's here for Bane. That's why he's in this room. That's why he hasn't slept—not for me, not for the omega stepbrother who caused this mess by running in the first place.
For his brother.
For blood.
The realization shouldn't sting. It does anyway—a quick, sharp pinch behind my sternum that I bury before it reaches my face. Because of course. Because I'm the foster kid who's never been anyone's priority, and for a second in the car I let myself think—
It doesn't matter what I thought.
"There are clothes in the bedroom," Atlas says, turning back to me. His voice softening. He points down the hall. "Shower first. Take your time."
I nod. Start to move toward the hallway. My legs feel strange—the adrenaline that's been holding me upright for hours is starting to thin, and the carpet under my bare feet is so soft it feels like walking on something alive.
Zero is in my path.
He's moved while I wasn't paying attention—drifted from Bane's side to the mouth of the hallway, arms crossed, positioned between me and one of the bedrooms like he ended up there by accident.
He didn't. Zero doesn't do anything by accident.
He still doesn't look at me. Not fully. His gaze lands somewhere around my collarbone—the torn scrubs, the bruise peeking above the neckline—and stays there. Not meeting my eyes.
"You look like shit," he says.
I can’t bring myself to react. There’s nothing left in me. "Thanks."
"Go shower. You smell like a hospital."
I wish that meant something.
I wish you smell like a hospital was really you smell like someone else's hands. I wish the edge in his voice was possessive—the alpha in him recoiling from the chemical traces of the facility on my skin. The blockers. The antiseptic. Scents that don't belong on me, covering mine.
But that's not what this is.
Zero is here for his brother. He pinned me to a pool table and fucked me in a basement and none of that means I matter to him.
It means I'm convenient. It means I'm biology.
It means I'm a stupid, lovesick idiot reading subtext into a sentence that has no sub, just text—go shower, you smell bad, get out of my sight.
I walk past him. Close enough that I feel the heat of his body and catch his scent—gunpowder and black coffee, the same as always, and underneath it something raw and sleepless that makes my pulse kick despite everything my brain is telling me.
Our hands brush.
Not his hand lifting. Not a deliberate reach. Just proximity—my knuckles grazing his where it hangs at his side, the barest collision of skin against skin as I pass.
The jolt goes through me like a live current. Sharp. Electric. Involuntary—the kind of contact that my body reads before my brain can intervene, and for a half-second every nerve ending between my wrist and my shoulder lights up.
I stop. Can't help it. My feet just stop.
Zero's head tilts. Barely. A fraction of a turn in my direction—not looking at me, not quite, but no longer looking away either. His brows knit. A crease forming between them that I've never seen before. His jaw works once and his hand—the one I brushed—flexes at his side.
Opens. Closes.
Did he… feel that?
My heart is hammering. My skin is still buzzing where we touched—a phantom charge that won't dissipate. And Zero is standing there with that crease between his brows and his hand flexing and his head tilted toward me like a dog hearing a frequency it can't identify.
No. I'm imagining things. I'm exhausted and traumatized and my biology is haywire and I'm projecting meaning onto a man who won't even look me in the eye. This is what omegas do—what I do—find crumbs and build castles out of them and then act surprised when the whole thing collapses.
I keep walking. Force my feet to move. Don't look back.
But I feel him behind me the entire length of the hallway. Not his eyes this time. Something else. Something I can't name and refuse to hope about.
I slide into the first bedroom and close the door behind me.
It’s bigger than my room at the estate. A king bed piled with white linens, blackout curtains half-drawn, my duffle bag nestled on a chair, my laptop on the desk. On the nightstand: a phone charger, a bottle of water, a bottle of ibuprofen.
Atlas thought of everything.
The bathroom is marble and glass and soft lighting that doesn't buzz.
I stand under the shower for twenty minutes and watch the water run gray, then pink, then clear.
The heat soaks into muscles I didn't know were still clenched.
My shoulders drop. My jaw unclenches. The welts on my back sting under the spray and then go numb and I let them.
I press my forehead against the tile and close my eyes and breathe steam and for the first time in five days, no one is watching me.
My knees give out.
I don't decide to sit. My legs just fold and then I'm on the shower floor, knees drawn up, water streaming over my head and down my back and pooling around me. The tile is warm. Smooth. Nothing like concrete.
The first sob catches me off guard—a sound I didn't plan, ripping out of my chest before I can swallow it.
Then another. My shoulders shake. I press my face into my knees and let it happen because the door is locked and no one is watching and no one is coming in and for the first time in five days my body is my own.
The tears feel good.
Like relief. And I let everything out.
When they stop, I turn off the water. Dry off. Open the duffle bag.
My clothes. Everything I packed for myself plus some extra things Atlas threw in. Comfy sweats. A cloth shirt that smells like him. Thick socks and fresh underwear.
Finally.
I dress. The fabric feels like an apology against my skin.
I'm pulling on the hoodie when a knock comes at the bedroom door. Two taps. Measured.
"Max. The doctor's here. Can we come in?"
Atlas. Asking permission. I zip the hoodie halfway and open the door.
She's in her fifties—sharp eyes, gray-streaked hair pulled back, a leather medical bag that looks older than me. The kind of doctor who makes house calls to hotel penthouses and doesn't ask how the injuries happened. Atlas follows her in and takes the doorway. Arms crossed. Watching.
"I'm Dr. Callahan." She sets her bag on the bed. Snaps on gloves. "May I?"
I nod. She tilts my chin toward the lamp. Checks my eyes with a penlight. Presses gently around the bruise on my cheekbone—I wince and she notes it without comment. She examines the split lip. Checks my wrists, turning them over, running her thumb along the soft abrasions.
"I'm going to need you to remove your shirt," she says. Matter-of-fact. "I need to see your back."
My stomach drops.
I glance at Atlas. He's watching from the doorway, his expression carefully neutral, but I can see the tension in his jaw. He already knows what's under the shirt. He saw it through the glass—the cross, the whip, the welts being laid into my skin while he sat at a dinner table and couldn't move.
I pull the hoodie off. Then the t-shirt. Turn around.
The silence that follows is clinical from her. Not from Atlas. I hear his breathing change—a sharp inhale through the nose, held, controlled. The sound of a man seeing something for the second time and finding it worse up close.
Dr. Callahan's fingers find the first bandage. Peels it back. I feel the air hit the broken skin and my jaw tightens.
"Who dressed these?" she asks.
"Bane." My voice comes out smaller than I want. "He—we had bacitracin. In the—where we were."