Chapter 28
Back Home
Perrin
“Here you go.” Adam walks into the living room, holding a glass of water in both hands.
He moves toward Elowen on the long arm of the couch, then he sits on the edge of the coffee table right in front of her.
His knees almost touch hers. “Take a drink.” He leans forward slightly and brings the glass to her lips, tilting it just enough.
Raff leans forward as she drinks, watching her, while Cliff sits on her other side, his face lined with deep worry as he tracks every small movement she makes.
The omega hasn’t said much since we got back from her apartment. She’s been staring off at nothing, her hands limp in her lap.
"Hey," Raff rests his hand on the back of her neck as Adam pulls the glass back. "You're safe with us." He dips his head, finally meeting her eyes. "No one is going to hurt you. Okay?"
Elowen nods, but it's the small, automatic kind that doesn't mean much.
"I mean it," Raff says, and she nods again, then looks back down at her lap.
“One more, omega,” Adam brings the water to her lips again, and Elle takes one more tiny sip.
“Thank you.” She tries to smile at Adam, but it’s incredibly weak.
Adam whispers something that sounds like “no problem” then he stands and moves around the coffee table.
He settles onto the couch beside me, close enough that his arm presses against mine.
He doesn't say anything about it, but he doesn't have to.
This is simply how we've always worked. When things get a little overwhelming, Adam finds me, and I let him press in close, and whatever is wound too tight inside him starts to loosen.
“It’s getting late.” Cliff glances at me, then Adam, before looking back at Elowen. "Is anyone hungry?" he asks, his voice quiet. "I can cook something."
Elowen opens her mouth, and I expect her to say she's fine for the hundredth time since we got back from her apartment. But what comes out instead freezes the room.
"My parents were murdered,” she blurts out.
Raff’s head snaps up, his eyes going wide as they meet Cliff’s. “What?” He turns and looks at me, but all I can do is shrug. “What did you say?” He leans back down, trying to see Elle’s face. “Did you say your parents were murdered?”
Elowen stares at her lap for a moment, both hands pressed flat against her thighs, her knuckles pale against the dark fabric of her sweats. She looks as shocked at what she said as the rest of us.
“Um…yeah,” she finally says. “They were both killed.” Something moves across her face after that. Almost a flinch. “I’ve never said that out loud before.”
“I’m so sorry, baby.” Cliff reaches over and places his hand on her knee. He rubs in circles, waiting until she looks up at him. "You don’t have to talk about it,” he says. “But you can if you want to.”
“We’re here for you,” Raff says softly.
I feel like I should say something too, but I have no idea what. So instead, I keep my mouth shut.
“It happened three years ago,” Elowen finally says. “They were…killed. Both of them. In our pharmacy." She takes a deep breath, clearly trying to hold herself together.
"Your parents owned a pharmacy?" Raff asks.
"Yeah." She swallows. "It was a small one, there in Cassville. Independent. They'd had it since before I was born." She picks at the hem of her sleeve, not looking at anyone. "I was in the back room when it happened. Doing inventory."
She stops.
Cliff's hand tightens on her knee, enough to let her know he's still there, and she draws in a slow breath through her nose.
"I heard the bell above the door go off," she says.
"Which was normal. It was a Thursday afternoon, and we had a couple of customers come through.
And then I heard my mom say something. I couldn't make out the words, but I remember thinking her voice sounded off.
" She pauses. "And then I heard my mom scream.”
The living room is absolutely silent.
Adam has gone completely still beside me. I can feel the tension running through his arm where it presses against mine, his whole body locked up and listening.
"I was on the floor with my dad," Elowen says, and her voice has changed now.
The careful flatness is starting to crack at the edges, something raw and uneven bleeding through underneath it.
"I don't even remember how I ended up next to him.
" She frowns, tilting her head slightly.
"I could see underneath the shelving unit. Under the gap at the bottom. And I could see the man’s feet. "
"The shooter?" Cliff asks quietly.
"He didn’t—." She shakes her head once, telling me they weren’t shot, but none of us are mean enough to ask.
"He was on the other side of the shop with my mom. And then he—” Her chin quivers as tears fill her eyes.
“I saw it. There was blood everywhere, and I just." She stops. Presses her lips together hard. "Everything smelled like copper and antiseptic and I remember thinking, wrong, it was all wrong. Next thing I knew, I was screaming.” Her glassy eyes narrow like she’s remembering it all.
“The shop always, always smelled like my mom's hand lotion and the cleaning solution my dad used on the counters every single morning.
" Her voice breaks on the last word, and she drops her chin toward her chest, gritting her teeth.
Raff moves without a word. He reaches over and wraps one tattooed hand around hers. He doesn't say anything. He simply holds onto her, his soft gray eyes pulling in the corners.
Cliff's jaw tightens, the muscle jumping beneath his skin, and his eyes are very dark as he watches her pull herself back together.
I've seen Cliff absorb a lot of things in the years I've known him.
Bad news, physical pain, the kind of confrontations that would make most men fold.
But right now he looks like he's barely holding on.
"The cops said it was a robbery gone wrong," Elowen sniffles, lifting her head.
Her eyes are wet, but she hasn't let anything spill over yet, holding it back through what looks like sheer stubbornness.
"The register was open, and some cash was gone, as were a few controlled meds.
On paper it made sense." She shakes her head slowly. "But I don't think it was."
"Why not?" Adam asks from beside me, and his voice is so gentle it doesn't even sound like him.
Elowen looks at him for a moment, like she's deciding something. Then she looks around the room at all of us, and whatever she finds there seems to be enough.
"It was so…violent,” she finally says. "One of the detectives called it overkill." She squeezes the hem of her shirt between her fingers. "It—” she lets out a heavy breath. “It made no sense.”
Nobody speaks for a moment.
“Is that what triggered your transition?” I ask softly.
Elowen looks at me, eyes wide like she’s surprised I put that together.
“You mentioned at Odette’s that something happened three years ago….” I trail off, when I realize everyone is looking at me.
“Yes,” Elowen says, and something in her expression shifts. "After the funeral, I went home and…" She pauses. "That's when I transitioned."
The room shifts again, a different kind of quiet settling over it.
"I was in my bedroom," she says, her voice barely above a whisper now. "The day after we buried them. And I woke up in the middle of the night feeling like I was being torn apart from the inside out. The pain was so sharp, so deep, it felt like my bones were cracking and splintering into pieces. I was burning up, sweating through my sheets, and there was this... this wetness between my thighs.” She shifts like she’s embarrassed even thinking about it. “I was so confused and scared, I didn’t even understand that it was slick.”
She lets out a long, unsteady breath. "I locked the door, and I sat on the floor for three days waiting to die.
I didn't know what a heat felt like. I'd never heard someone transitioning in their twenties.
As far as I knew, I was a beta. I had always been a beta.
" She shakes her head slowly. "And then the heat broke, and I was still alive.” She lets out a heavy sigh.
“I was terrified someone would find out what I was, and I'd get locked up. "
Raff's thumb moves slowly across the back of her hand.
Cliff leans closer, his eyes still trained on her sweet face.
“Anyway,” she clears her throat roughly. “After…everything…I went back to clean up the pharmacy. And I was on my hands and knees scrubbing the floor behind the counter, and I found a business card that had slid underneath one of the shelves."
Cliff’s head tilts slightly. "What kind of business card?"
Elowen looks across the room toward the duffel bag filled with the medications from her apartment. "Can someone grab my notebook? It should be in the front pocket."
Raff is already up, crossing the room in three long strides.
He unzips the front pocket and pulls the notebook out, then brings it back and holds it out to her.
She takes it carefully with both hands, and opens it to a page near the front.
She works a small piece of card stock free from where it's been tucked against the inside cover and holds it out to Cliff.
He takes it between two fingers and looks at it.
It's a plain white card, with clean black font. And across the bottom left corner, right over The Morder’s stamp, is a smear of blood.
Cliff stares at it for a long moment. Then he looks up at Elowen. "This is why you were working at the Morder.” It’s not a question.
She holds his gaze and nods once. "I was trying to find out who killed my parents." Her jaw stiffens, and underneath all her grief, something harder surfaces.
“Were you close to finding out who did it?” Raff asks.
“I’m not sure,” she says honestly. “I had a few leads, but it was so hard to question people without drawing attention.” She looks down at the worn notebook. “It also didn’t help that I was trying desperately to hide my dynamic.”
"What were you working on?" Raff asks. “Did you have a lead?”
Elowen flips her notebook open and turns to the back, finding the last page with writing on it.
"The last thing I got was a shipping label," she says, smoothing her hand across the page.
"It came in on a damaged box of suppressants, which was unusual because nothing that comes through the Morder ever has a proper label on it. Everything is unmarked. All we got were lot numbers.” She tilts the notebook slightly so both alphas can see.
"But this box had a partial label. Torn at the edges, so I didn't get an address, but I got the name. "
"Montclare Family Pharmacy," Cliff reads.
"Yeah." She closes the notebook carefully and sets it in her lap. "I was hoping to talk to whoever runs the place, and see if they knew anything about who collected the medications from them." She shakes her head. "But I never got the chance."
"Do you think that's how the black market does it?" I ask. "Source the drugs, I mean. Small independent pharmacies instead of the big chains?"
“Yeah.” Elowen smiles like she’s happy someone else made that connection too.
"It's the only thing that makes sense," she says.
"While all pharmacies have inventory systems, the big chains have massive security and corporate audits.
It would be nearly impossible to siphon product out of a place like that without drawing a lot of attention. " Her hand smooths over her notebook.
"But a small family operation has fewer people and less oversight?” Raff says and Elowen nods. “So if someone applied the right kind of pressure, or made the right kind of offer, it would be a much cleaner pipeline."
“Exactly.”
"But what if that pharmacy, Montclare,” Adam says, “didn’t want to give those meds to the Morder?” He glances up at me, then back to Elle. “What if they were attacked? Or…” he shakes his head. “It could be dangerous going there.”
Elowen looks at my brother for a moment, and something passes across her face that's equal parts gratitude and grief. "Yeah," she says softly. "I know." She turns the notebook over in her hands. "But I never got the chance to find out."
Cliff is quiet for a long moment, still holding the business card between two fingers. He’s turning it slightly, his eyes moving over the dried bloodstain at the corner.
Then he sets the card down on the coffee table with a soft, deliberate tap.
"Raff and I will talk to them," he says, and Elle’s eyes go wide.
“What?” She sits up a little taller. “You don’t have to do that. This isn’t your problem.”
“Yes, it is,” Cliff says firmly. “What affects my mates is my problem.” He looks at her with those dark, steady eyes, and his voice doesn't change in volume or temperature, but something underneath it does.
Something that makes the words land harder than they would if he'd shouted them.
"You're not doing this alone. You're not going to an unknown pharmacy or back to the Morder.”
“We’ve got it,” Raff says simply.
Elowen opens her mouth, and I can see the argument forming behind her eyes before it reaches her lips. The look of a woman who has been handling everything herself for so long that the offer of help feels like a threat to her independence.
"No," she starts. “I can’t ask you two to—”
"I'm not asking you to hand it over," Cliff says, cutting her off before she can get any real momentum.
"I'm telling you that you have four people sitting in this room who are very good at finding things out, and who have absolutely no intention of letting you keep bleeding yourself dry alone.
" He holds her gaze. "You’re not alone anymore, omega.”
Elowen stares at him for a moment. Then she looks at Raff, who raises both eyebrows at her like the answer is obvious. Then she looks at Adam, who is studying the business card on the coffee table with his jaw set and his fingers laced together between his knees.
Then she looks at me.
I shrug one shoulder. "My social calendar is pretty full, but I can move some things around to help."
The corner of her mouth lifts.
"Besides," Raff says, reaching over and plucking the business card off the table, holding it up between two tattooed fingers and examining it with casual interest. "It’s harder to ignore two massive alphas, then one little omega.
" He looks at Cliff over the top of the card. "Montclare Family Pharmacy."
Cliff nods once, then he looks at Adam. "Didn't you say you needed a refill on something?"
Adam blinks, then nods once. “Yeah.” He looks at Elowen. “And I’ve been meaning to find a new pharmacy.”
Elowen looks around the room at all of us. Her mouth opens, then closes, like she’s struggling to find the right words.
“I..uh…” she sniffles once. “Thank you.”