Chapter 20
I've reorganized my bookshelf three times.
After realizing I forgot my notebook in the library, I snuck back in there once I was sure Bane was gone and took it back. I stowed it away under my pillow after a mini freakout at the idea of anyone actually reading it, and then focused my neurosis on my room.
Alphabetical. Then by genre. Then by spine color, which is insane, which is something a crazy person does, but my hands won't stop moving and if I sit still for more than thirty seconds my skin starts crawling and I have to get up and do something or I'll lose my mind.
Or think about the bolt of electricity that shot up my spine when Bane grabbed me.
So. Spine color it is.
I line up the blues next to the greens. Straighten the stack of paperbacks on my desk.
Fold the hoodie draped over my chair. Unfold it.
Fold it again. Refold the shirts in my top drawer even though they're already folded.
Wipe down my nightstand with a sock because I don't have cleaning supplies and there's a water ring that's been bothering me for days.
The room is spotless. Has been since round two.
I keep cleaning anyway.
I'm too wired to sleep. Too wired to write.
Too wired to do anything useful. My body hums with a restless, jittery energy that has nowhere to go—this low-grade vibration under my skin that makes everything feel urgent and nothing feel possible.
Every nerve is on high alert. Every sound in the hallway makes me freeze, head cocked, listening, waiting for footsteps that might stop at my door.
Bane's footsteps.
I shove the thought down. Rearrange my pens.
Margot and Richard are due back soon. An hour, maybe less.
She'll want to talk because we haven’t in days.
She always wants to talk—that gentle, patient way she has of sitting beside me and waiting until the silence becomes unbearable and I crack.
And usually I can handle it. Usually I can give her enough to satisfy the worry without giving her everything.
A carefully constructed version of the truth.
Edited.
Safe.
But tonight I don't trust myself.
There's too much inside me right now. Too many things pressing against my ribs, my throat, my teeth—fighting to get out.
What happened with Zero. What happened in the library with Bane.
The way my body is changing, betraying me hour by hour.
The heat building under my skin that I can't control and can't explain and can't hide for much longer.
If Margot sits next to me and takes my hand and looks at me with those kind, knowing eyes—
I'll break. I know I will. Everything will come pouring out and I won't be able to stop it and then she'll know. She'll know what's happening to me. She'll know what Zero did. She'll know what I let him do. What I wanted him to do.
She’ll know.
I can't. Can't let that happen. Can't let her see what I'm becoming.
So I stay in my room. Door locked. Rearranging books by spine color like that's a normal thing a normal person does at seven o'clock on a Tuesday evening.
I'm lining up the reds—three of them, all different shades, none of them quite matching—when I hear it.
Voices.
Muffled. Coming from down the hall. Atlas's office—I've learned the geography of the second floor well enough by now to place sounds. The thick walls and heavy doors muffle everything, turn words into shapes without edges. I can't make out what's being said.
But I can hear the tone.
Low. Tense. Two voices, maybe three. The cadence of an argument that hasn't boiled over yet. The kind of conversation that happens through clenched teeth.
I stop moving. Hold still. Listen.
One voice is Atlas. I recognize the register—deep, controlled, deliberate. He's the one asking questions. Short sentences. Pointed.
The response is sharper. Clipped. Defensive.
Zero.
My stomach drops. Something cold and heavy settles in my gut.
They're talking about me. I know it the way I know my own heartbeat—instinctive, certain, wrong in a way that makes my whole body go cold. Bane went to Atlas after the library. Told him something. And now Atlas is—
What? Confronting Zero? About what happened in the basement?
How would Bane know about the basement?
He wouldn't. Not specifically. But the way I was moving this morning—wincing, favoring one hip, unable to sit without shifting my weight—Bane noticed. I saw him notice. Saw his eyes track the careful way I lowered myself onto the kitchen stool. Saw the question form on his face that he didn't ask.
He didn't have to ask. He's smart enough to connect the dots.
And apparently smart enough to take those dots straight to Atlas.
I press my forehead against the door. Close my eyes.
No.
No, that's insane. I'm being insane. This is exactly what I was afraid of—the jittery, wired feeling messing with my head. Turning me paranoid. Making me the center of a story I'm not actually in.
Bane wouldn't tell Atlas anything. Bane barely acknowledges I exist. And even if he did notice something off about the way I was moving, why would he care?
Why would he go running to his brother about the weird stepbrother who can't sit down properly?
That's not a crisis. That's not even interesting.
And Zero—
Zero wouldn't stick around to talk about me.
I'm not significant enough to fight about.
I was a warm body in the basement. A convenient outlet for whatever was eating at him.
He got what he wanted and now he's done with me.
That's how it works. That's how it's always worked with people like him and people like me.
I'm imagining things. Letting the vibrations rattling through me cloud my judgment, turn me into the protagonist of some delusion where I actually matter to these people. Where three alphas would waste their time arguing about one broken omega who can't even—
Atlas's voice rises. Just slightly. Just enough that I catch fragments.
"—know what you did—"
Zero's response is a snarl. I can't make out the words but the tone is unmistakable. Cornered. Vicious. The sound of someone who's been caught and has decided to fight instead of flee.
A third voice—Bane. Lower. Trying to mediate. Trying to hold the middle ground. A word I catch: "—calm—"
Then Atlas again. Louder now. The control in his voice is fraying. I can hear the threads snapping one by one, like a rope under too much strain.
"—he's twenty years old, Zero. Twenty."
Zero's response hits the door like a physical thing. I feel the vibration. Not the words—just the force behind them. Raw. Aggressive. The verbal equivalent of baring teeth.
My hands are shaking. I press them flat against the door. The wood is cool under my palms.
I should stay here. Should lock myself in and put in earbuds and pretend I don't hear anything. Should do what I always do—make myself small, make myself invisible, wait for the storm to pass.
I open the door instead.
The hallway is empty. Dim. The sconces cast warm amber light that makes the shadows softer than they should be. Deceptive. Everything looks calm.
It doesn't sound calm.
The voices are clear now. Not the words—not yet—but the emotion.
Atlas is angry in a way I've never heard from him.
That careful, measured control stripped away to reveal something underneath that's white-hot and barely contained.
His voice has dropped into a register that makes the hair on my arms stand up.
Low. Lethal. The voice of a man who has spent his entire life keeping a leash on something dangerous and is about to let go.
Zero is matching him. Volume for volume. Heat for heat. But Zero's anger is different—wilder, more desperate. The sound of someone backed into a corner who's decided the only way out is through.
Bane is between them. I can hear it in the positioning of the voices—one on the left, one on the right, one in the middle. Trying to hold the space. Trying to keep them apart.
I move down the hallway. Sock feet on carpet. Silent. My body protests every step—the ache in my joints, the lingering soreness between my legs that hasn't fully faded, the headache that's become a permanent resident behind my eyes.
Atlas's office door is closed. I stop three feet from it.
Now I can hear them.
"—don't owe you an explanation." Zero. Harsh. Jagged. Each word bitten off like he's tearing them from something.
"The hell you don't." Atlas. Cold. So cold it burns. "You've been circling him for weeks. Watching him. And now you disappear for an entire day while he can barely—"
"While he can barely what?" Zero cuts him off. Mocking. Defensive. "Be normal? Maybe you should ask Bane about that. He's not exactly been rolling out the welcome mat either."
A pause. Then Bane's voice, lower, harder than I've heard it: "I never touched him."
"No, you just made him feel like garbage every time he walked into a room. Real noble, Bane. At least I—"
"At least you what?" Atlas again. The temperature dropping with every word. "Finish that sentence."
Zero doesn't.
"Bane came to me because he saw Max in the kitchen this morning." Atlas's voice is measured now. Deliberate. The calm before something breaks. "Said he was moving like someone who'd been hurt. Couldn't sit down without wincing. Wouldn't make eye contact."
"So?"
"So—" The word cracks like a whip. "—you've been gone all day. You have a bruise on your jaw the size of his fist. And he flinches every time someone mentions your name. You want to tell me that's a coincidence?"
Silence. Heavy. Loaded.
"We're not stupid, Zero." Bane's voice now. Quieter than Atlas but just as sharp. "Something happened. Last night—I heard you come up the stairs. Heard his door close after."
"You don't know what you're talking about."