Chapter 19
Wren opens the door before I finish knocking. She stopped checking the peephole after the third visit—said my knock has a rhythm she'd recognize through a wall, which makes sense, because the first time she ever heard my voice was through one.
Her apartment smells like lavender and new furniture and the cinnamon candle I brought last Tuesday.
She’s wearing a sweatshirt three sizes too big—Bane's, I realize, from the stack of clothes he donated without being asked—and her face does the thing it does now when she sees me.
Not the flinch-smile from the hospital. Not the cautious, searching look from discharge day, when I wheeled her to the car and she gripped the armrest like the world outside might swallow her.
A real smile. Teeth and everything.
"The couch is still ugly," she says, stepping aside to let me in.
"The couch is a statement piece."
"It's a statement, all right. The statement is a rich man with no taste picked this out in under four minutes."
This is our bit now. The couch. She started it the day I helped her move in—carrying boxes up three flights because the elevator was broken, sweating through my shirt, and then rounding the corner into the living room and seeing it.
Olive green. Velvet. Shaped like something from a dentist's waiting room in 1974.
Bane's taste in furniture is, apparently, his one fatal flaw.
He’s gorgeous, but don’t ever let him decorate.
"I'm telling you, it's growing on me," I say, dropping onto it. The cushion swallows me whole. "Like a fungus."
"You said that last time."
"It's still accurate."
She laughs. The sound is different than it was in the hospital—fuller, less surprised by itself. Like her body is relearning that laughter doesn't cost anything.
"Coffee?" She's already heading for the kitchen before I answer. I watch her move through the space—easy, familiar, bare feet on the tile—and something warm settles in my chest.
Her kitchen is bigger than her old group home bedroom.
She told me that the night I helped her move in, standing in the middle of it with her arms wrapped around herself, turning in a slow circle like she couldn't believe the square footage belonged to her.
That same night, I watched her test the lock on the front door four times.
The deadbolt, opening, closing, locking again.
The fifth time, she pressed her forehead against the wood and stood there breathing, and I didn't say anything because I know exactly what it feels like to lock a door from the inside for the first time.
She makes one strong brew. Figured out my order by the second visit and I always get the blue mug because the handle on the green one is cracked.
I drift off the couch and into the kitchen behind her, dropping into what's become my chair—the one by the window, the one with the wobbly leg I keep saying I'll fix.
Let’s be real. Bane will.
She slides my mug across the table without looking up from her own pour.
"How's Reeves?"
"She did the thing again." Wren drops into the chair across from me. "You know how I told you she organizes the bathroom when I'm in the shower?"
"The thing with the towels."
"The thing with the towels. Except now she's moved on to the spice rack. I came home yesterday and everything was alphabetized. Alphabetized, Max. Who alphabetizes cumin?"
"Former military. They can't help it."
"Look, I love having a bodyguard and I love that she takes her job so seriously but, come on! It's creepy and nice at the same time."
"The Graves specialty."
She grins over her mug. The grin fades into the look—the one I've started recognizing over the past few weeks.
The recognition goes both ways. She must see it on my face–everything that happened between me and the brothers.
I couldn’t hide it even if I wanted to.
Not from her.
Wren sets her mug down. Leans forward on her elbows.
"Okay, what happened?" She says it the way she says everything—straight, no runway, no softening.
"And don't say nothing. You've had this look on your face since you walked in.
Like someone rearranged your insides and you're still figuring out where everything goes. " She waves a hand at me. "Spill."
It takes everything in me not to laugh. What a fucking ironic thing for her to say.
The Graves brothers have rearranged my insides.
I stare into my coffee. The cream swirls. I try to figure out what to say.
"There are three of them," I say.
Wren blinks. "Three what?"
"Stepbrothers." I drag my thumb across the placemat. "You know Bane. He’s the youngest" A breath. "There's also Atlas. The oldest. He runs everything. And Zero."
"Zero." She says it like she's tasting it. "That's not a real name."
"It's the only one he answers to."
She waits. Patient.
"The thing is..." I stop. Start again. "They're all… alphas. All three of them. And I'm—"
An omega." No hesitation. No surprise. I explained it to her the second night in this apartment—what we are, why our biology made us targets, why we ended up in that facility.
She didn't know the word for it before me.
Just knew the fevers and the shame. I gave her the language and she gave me the silence afterward, and we sat on the ugly couch and let the shared knowing be enough.
"And they all—" I wave my hand. A gesture that means everything and explains nothing.
"Want you?"
The bluntness makes heat crawl up my neck. "Yeah."
"All three."
"Yeah."
Wren leans back in her chair. Crosses her arms over Bane's oversized sweatshirt. Processes slowly—absorbing, categorizing, filing it in whatever internal system keeps her upright.
"Okay," she says. "And you want...?"
I bite the inside of my cheek. Sip the coffee. Internally cringe at what I’m about to say and how insane it is.
"All of them." The admission comes out smaller than I mean it to. "Which is—I know how it sounds."
"It sounds like the truth." Simple. No judgment.
Something in my chest unclenches. This is why I keep coming back to this kitchen table.
This ugly couch. This apartment that smells like cinnamon and lavender and new beginnings.
Wren doesn't perform reactions. Doesn't gasp or flinch or tell me I'm wrong.
She receives information the way the ground receives rain—openly, without commentary.
I've never had a friend like that. I've never had a friend, period, if I'm being honest. Just Margot. Just survival.
Wren makes things easy. Makes me feel like I’m not crazy. Or maybe I am and she’s just crazy enough to flow with it.
"Two of them have..." I trail off. She raises an eyebrow.
"Bane was first. In the facility—when they took my suppressants away and the heat came back, he was there.
He volunteered to be there." I trace the rim of my mug.
"It was... tender. Even in that place. Even with zip ties on his wrists.
He was gentle with me in a way I didn't know I needed. "
Wren's quiet. Listening with her whole body the way she does.
"And Atlas—recently. He bit me." My hand drifts to my neck without thinking.
The mark is still there, under the collar of my shirt.
Healed enough to be a scar now, not a wound.
But I feel it constantly—a low hum beneath the skin, Atlas's steady presence tethered to me like a second heartbeat.
"We're bonded. Permanently. It's—" I search for the word.
"It's like having someone standing right behind you all the time. Not crowding. Just there. Solid."
"That sounds nice," Wren says softly.
"It is." And I mean it. "But Zero—"
I stop. Pick up my coffee. Set it back down without drinking.
"Zero's different," I say. "He's the one who crossed a line first. Before any of them.
Before I even understood what was happening to me.
" I don't give her details. Don't tell her about the weight bench or the basement or the way he said clean yourself up and walked away like I was nothing.
But my voice tightens and Wren hears it—hears the shape of what I'm not saying.
"It was... intense. The kind of intense that scares you afterward.
Not just because he hurt me, exactly, but because of what it woke up inside me.
The part of me that wanted it. That wanted him even when I shouldn't have. Even when it was wrong."
I drag my thumbnail across the placemat.
"And that's what terrifies me. Not Zero—I'm not afraid of him anymore.
Not the way I used to be. I'm afraid of what I become around him.
The version of me that doesn't want gentle.
That wants to be taken apart." I swallow.
"Linda spent years telling me that part of me was disgusting.
Broken. And Zero is the only person who's ever looked at that part and wanted more. "
Wren's fingers curl tighter around her mug.
"But then he stopped. Something in him shifted.
He told me he wouldn't touch me again. Not until I came to him.
Put the whole thing in my hands." I press my thumbnail harder into the placemat.
"And he's kept that promise. For weeks. He’s given me space.
Been present but the not-touching is louder than anything he's ever done with his hands.
" My voice cracks. "He's completely different.
Like something rewired him from the inside out. "
"He's waiting for you," Wren says. Not a question.