33. Ethan
Ethan
Aweek has passed since the night at the pack house, and it feels like everything has changed without anything actually happening.
Sophie comes to work. She does her job. She’s professional and focused and exactly who she’s supposed to be.
But the air around all four of us is different now—there’s this tension, a charge, like the moment before a storm breaks.
I can feel it in the way Max watches her when she’s not looking and Finn goes quiet when she walks into a room.
In the way I catch myself rereading the same paragraph for the fourth time because my mind keeps sliding off the numbers and back to the kitchen.
I keep seeing it. Sophie’s body against Finn’s. Her hand fisted in the fabric of his shirt, pulling him closer. The breathless sound she made. And then her eyes opening and finding mine.
Her eyes were half-closed, dark and liquid, her cheeks flushed pink, and she looked... undone. And when those eyes met mine across the room, I felt it straight to my cock.
Fucking hell.
We’re all waiting. For what, none of us will say out loud. But it feels like the whole pack is holding its breath, and Sophie is the only one who gets to decide when we exhale.
I close the report and walk out of my office before I can think about it too hard.
Diana is at her workstation, reviewing trial data, her dark hair pulled back in its usual low bun.
“Diana, have you seen Sophie?”
She looks up. “I think she’s in the archive room. She said something about filing reports.”
“Thanks.”
I walk down the corridor. My footsteps echo in the empty wing—most of the researchers are in the main lab, and the archive room is at the far end, in the quiet corner of the building that is usually deserted.
The door is open. Sophie is inside, sitting on the small desk in the corner with her shoes on the floor, one leg tucked under her, the other dangling.
I stand in the doorway for a moment, taking her in.
She’s wearing a frilly pink blouse that the real Sophie would probably set on fire, a black skirt with the hem riding up where her leg is tucked beneath her, and a strand of hair that’s escaped her ponytail falling across her forehead. She’s immersed in a green folder open in her lap.
“Hey,” she says, looking up. She straightens, uncurling her leg, and slides off the desk to step back into her shoes. “I got caught up in reading this report.” She closes the folder and reaches to put it back on the shelf behind her.
“What were you reading about?” I lean against the doorframe, keeping my voice casual, like I’m the scientist asking a question and not the man who’s been thinking about the pink flush on her cheeks for a week straight.
“The results of the trial you did on the suppressants. The latest cohort—the extended-release formulation.” She pulls the folder back down, opens it, flips to a page of charts.
“How much safer they are now. How much longer they last.” She pauses, her finger tracing one of the charts.
“I’ve just realized that I’m on them. The Synthera suppressants. I didn’t know you supplied Sentinel.”
“We do,” I say.
She looks at me. “You knew? That I was on them?”
“Yeah.” I push off the doorframe and step into the room, pulling the door shut behind me.
“I smelled it that night we checked for bugs on the executive wing. When you first arrived here.” The memory comes back—the two of us in a darkened corridor, running a scanner along the baseboards, and the faint chemical signature in her scent that told me exactly which formulation she was on.
“It feels like a lifetime ago,” I add. Because somehow it does.
Somehow it feels like Sophie has been here forever—like the time before her was a different era, a sepia-toned version of my life that I can barely remember.
She’s quiet for a moment, then she looks at me, thoughtful and open, like she’s working something through.
“Ethan, can I ask you something?”
“Go ahead.” I move closer.
“What motivated you to create Synthera?” She tilts her head, studying me. “Aside from the money.”
She moves to sit on the small desk in the corner again, setting the folder down, opening the next file she needs to shelve.
I move to stand beside her, leaning against the desk rather than sitting.
Close enough that I can see the dark fringe of her lashes.
The faint freckles the foundation doesn’t quite cover.
“What do you think, Sophie? Based on everything you’ve seen so far?”
“I asked you first,” she says, looking at me sideways. The ghost of a challenge in her voice.
“Fine.” I fold my arms. Her question is simple, but it’s one that people rarely ask me. Everyone assumes it’s just a business, that it’s about the money.
The truth is, it’s the thing I care about most in the world, and saying it out loud to her, in this room, feels like handing her something I’ve never handed anyone.
“It was never about the money,” I say. “When I was in university, I wrote my thesis on ethical consent practices in alpha-omega dynamics. Three hundred pages about how the system fails omegas at every level. And what I learned while writing it changed my perspective on what it means to be an alpha. After that, all I wanted was to build something that actually fixed it.”
Sophie is watching me, and for a reason I can’t explain I want her to know the truth. The full story.
“And what does it mean to be an alpha?” she asks.
“That it’s our job to protect omegas. Being stronger doesn’t give us the right to use that strength to take what we want. Every advantage we have comes with a responsibility, not permission.”
“And so you created Synthera,” she says quietly.
“We created Synthera. We wanted to build something that would help omegas regain agency over their own bodies. Over their own biology. That’s it. That’s the whole mission, stripped down to its core.”
She doesn’t say anything. She just watches me with those dark eyes, and so I keep going.
“We wanted to build tools that gave omegas control,” I say.
“Real control. Not the kind that comes from being managed by an alpha or a system or a society that’s decided their bodies are public property.
The kind that comes from choosing. From being able to say this is what I want or this is what I don’t want and having the technology to back it up. ”
My voice is getting rougher and I don’t care.
“Because the alternative is what we see every day,” I continue, and the emotion is rising faster than I can manage it.
“Omegas in situations they can’t escape because their biology traps them.
Omegas spending money they don’t have on escorts and heat services because the suppressants aren’t good enough.
Omegas being coerced, being—” I stop and swallow.
“Being used. Because they’re physically smaller and their bodies have needs that are purely biological.
And there are people in this world who see that vulnerability as an invitation. ”
I push my glasses up and press my fingers to the bridge of my nose.
“I suppose we just wanted omegas to have a choice,” I say. “That’s all. A choice.”
“Ethan,” Sophie says, looking up at me. “The things I said in the beginning... I was wrong.” She bites her lip. “I get it now.”
The way she says it, quiet, without defense, makes my throat tight.
I turn to her.
And she gives me this look. Warm and so open it catches me off guard.
She moves closer to me on the desk. Her hand comes up to my jaw, her fingers soft against my skin, and her dark eyes hold mine with a vulnerability that makes my heart stutter.
She’s so close now, I can feel her breath on my lips.
“Thank you,” she says.
And then she just leans forward and presses her mouth to mine, and the contact is soft—warm lips, the slight tremble in her fingers against my jaw—and I’m so shocked that I don’t move.
She leans back, her cheeks flushed, her eyes dropping from mine. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“Yes, Sophie.” I take her face in both hands. “Yes, you should.”
And then I kiss her. My mouth finds hers and my tongue slides against hers and she drops the folder she’s holding.
It hits the floor with a slap that neither of us acknowledges because her hands are in my hair and she’s moaning against my mouth, a sound so raw and so real that it rewrites every fantasy I’ve had about this moment.
She grips my biceps hard, her legs parting as she drags me between them.
My hands find her hips and I pull her to the edge of the desk, her skirt riding up her thighs, and I can feel the heat of her through my clothes.
She wraps her legs around me and I kiss her harder—her mouth, her jaw, the curve of her throat where her pulse is beating so fast I can feel it against my lips.
“Sophie,” I whisper against her neck. “Sophie.”
Her head falls back, giving me access to more of her throat, and I take it—dragging my mouth along the soft skin, feeling the vibration of another moan building beneath the surface.
“What am I going to do with you?” I murmur against her collarbone.
“Kiss me,” she says.
So I kiss her. Deep and slow and thorough, my hands sliding from her hips up to her ribs, and slowly—reading every micro-expression for any sign of discomfort—my thumbs find her nipples through the thin fabric of her blouse.
She gasps and arches into my hands. Her fingers tighten in my hair and she pulls me closer, her legs squeezing around my hips, and the sound she makes—desperate, almost pained—makes me wonder how long it’s been since anyone touched her like this.
“You’re so responsive,” I murmur against her mouth, almost to myself, my thumbs still moving in slow circles. “Every time I do this, your breathing changes.”
She makes a sound that’s half laugh, half moan. “Are you analyzing me right now?”
“I can’t help it.” I pull back just enough to look at her face. Her eyes are dark. Half-closed. Her lips swollen and parted. “I’m curious, Sophie. I need to know—” My thumbs press gently and her hips roll against mine. “Did you enjoy kissing Finn?”
She pulls me closer instead of answering, trying to kiss me again, but I hold back, watching her face.
“What about Max?” I whisper, pressing my lips to the sensitive spot just below her ear. “Did you enjoy kissing him?”
I keep my thumbs moving in measured circles, and I can feel the heat of her body through the layers between us, answering a question her voice hasn’t yet.
“Sophie.” I kiss her throat. Feel the moan vibrate against my lips. “I need to know.”
“Yes,” she breathes.
“Yes to what?”
“To both questions.”
I inhale sharply. My hands tighten on her waist before I can stop them. “I was hoping you’d say that,” I say quietly.
I kiss her again, my hands sliding back down to her hips, and she wraps her arms around my neck and kisses me back with a ferocity that tells me everything I need to know about how long she’s been wanting this.
“I’ve been wondering what you’d taste like,” I murmur against her lips. Her breath hitches. “What you’d look like.” My lips trace the line of her jaw. “What you’d feel like.”
Her breath breaks on my name. “Ethan—”
“I think about it constantly,” I tell her. “Every time you’re in a room with me. Every time you lean close enough that I can smell your hair. I think about it and I can’t stop.”
Her hips roll against mine and whatever composure I had left disintegrates.
“Sophie.” I press my lips to her throat. “The knotting device Blair gave you—did you use it?”
She goes still. “You know about that?”
“I saw her put it in your bag.” My voice drops lower. “Did you use it?”
“I...” Her voice is wrecked, rough and unsteady. “Yes.”
The image floods my mind—Sophie alone in the dark, legs spread, the device I spent three years developing buried inside her, her back arching off the bed as the knot swells. My hands tighten on her hips.
“Did you enjoy it?”
“Yes.”
“Did you come?”
I grind against her as I ask it, and the head of my cock drags against her core through the layers between us. She moans—unguarded, her head falling back, her legs locking around my hips to hold me there, and I know I’ve hit the right spot.
“Yes,” she breathes. “I came.”
Fuck, I’m going to come just from this. The thought hits me like a warning and I don’t care because she’s pulling me closer, her hips rolling against mine, chasing the friction.
“What were you thinking about?” I ask, because I have to know. I always have to know. I roll my hips against hers and my cock hits that spot again and she gasps, her fingers digging into my shoulders.
“I need to know, sweet girl.”
“I was thinking about you,” she says, and her voice is barely holding together. I keep moving against her and she’s getting closer, I can feel it in the way her thighs tighten around me, in the way her breathing goes shallow and fast.
“And Max. And Finn.” She pulls me closer, her mouth against my ear. “All three of you. Together. At the same time,” she whispers.
“Jesus Christ, Sophie.”
The last tether holding the careful, restrained version of myself in place snaps. I pull her flush against me and kiss her deep, like I’m starving for her, and my hand moves up her side, over her ribs, along the curve of her shoulder—
Between one heartbeat and the next, the woman in my arms disappears. The warmth drains from her body. Her muscles lock, every single one, and she goes from soft to rigid in the time it takes to blink.
Her eyes open.
She’s looking right at me, but she’s not seeing me. Sophie is gone. All I can see is raw, animal terror, and it hits me like a fist to the chest because ten seconds ago she was moaning my name and now she’s looking at me like I’m the thing she’s been running from her whole life.
She shoves me hard with both palms against my chest and I stumble backward into the shelf. She’s off the desk in the next second, her body already turning toward the door.
She runs. The sound of her footsteps, rapid and receding, and then nothing.
I stand in the middle of the archive room, my hands braced against the desk, my arms rigid. Papers are scattered where the folder fell.
And I know immediately what just happened.
My hand found the scar. The one on her right shoulder. The one Finn told us about the night at the club.
I straighten and pick up the scattered papers. Close the folder and place it on the desk where she was sitting, where the warmth of her body is still fading from the wood.
I have spent my life solving problems with data and patience, with the certainty that every question has an answer if you look at it long enough.
But I know that this isn’t a problem I can solve. Whatever made her run isn’t something I can reason through.
And all I can do is hope and wait.