Chapter Thirteen
Ezra
I'm the last one into the kitchen. Kev is already at the sink, hands braced on the counter. Lex paces the length of the kitchen island, his long fingers tapping an absent rhythm against his thigh.
“The falcon cannot hear the falconer,” he mutters. “Things fall apart. The center cannot hold.”
“Lex.” Kev's voice is flat. “Not now.”
“Yeats feels appropriate.” Lex doesn't stop pacing. “Given that our center just collapsed into a corner and won't let us near it.”
Sera stands apart from us, back against the wall near the doorway, arms crossed tight over her chest. Every line of her body coiled with restraint. Watching us the way I'm watching her.
I've never been this close to a female alpha before. Not that I’ve had the chance as they’re so rare.
I've heard of them. Statistical anomalies, one in ten thousand, viewed with suspicion by male alphas who don't know where to slot them.
Her scent cuts through the gardenia still fogging my head.
Crushed basil. Blood orange. Sun-warmed cedar.
Alpha. No question about it. The dominance rolls off her in waves she's barely holding back.
She's tall. Five-eleven, at least. Close-cropped curls, tight coils on the sides with the top left longer. Athletic build, runner's lean strength. A faint scar cuts through her right eyebrow, and her amber eyes miss nothing.
It’s impossible not to notice her.
I can't just stand here. I need to do something and everyone needs to eat. The pantry door creaks when I open it. Chicken stock. Vegetables. Rice. Our omegas are malnourished. They need food. Gentle food. Broth-based, easy to digest, nothing that will overwhelm compromised systems.
Soup. I can make soup.
Lex's pacing falters. “What are you doing?”
“Cooking.” I grab a knife from the block, and the weight of it steadies me. Carrots first. The familiar motion loosens the knot in my chest. Cut, slide, cut again. “They need to eat. So do we.”
Nobody argues. Maybe they're grateful I'm doing something instead of standing here drowning in mate-scent and rejection.
Espie.
Gods. I can't stop seeing her in my mind. Violet eyes huge in that thin face. Wrists so fragile I could circle them twice with my thumb and forefinger. The way she pressed herself against Aubrey like he was the only solid thing in the world.
The way she looked at me like I might shatter her.
My mate. I made a good life with Kev and Lex. Made peace knowing we’d never find our omega. Then we found Aubrey. And now Espie. Small and fierce and broken and mine.
She's terrified of me.
The onion blurs. I blink hard, force it back. Keep cutting. The knife moves through the layers, and I focus on the sound of it, the rhythm. Something I can control when everything else is falling apart.
“What the hell just happened?” Kev's voice comes out rough, scraped raw.
No one answers. What can you say?
Lex stops pacing. “I've never read about this. Anywhere. And I've read everything. Pack formation, scent-match literature, every case study I could find.” He drags a hand through his hair. “There's no precedent. None.”
And we have two traumatized omegas hiding in a corner two floors up, four alphas standing in a kitchen, and no biological shortcut to make us pack.
The butter sizzles when I drop the onions into the pan. The sound grounds me. This is what I know. This is what I can control.
Kev turns from the sink. He finds Sera across the kitchen. “How did you find Espie? What happened to her?”
I stop cutting. The knife hovers over the board, forgotten. I need to hear this. I dread hearing this.
Sera's voice goes flat. Professional. The way people talk when the only alternative is breaking.
“I got a tip about Ethan Wallace's black-site facility.” She uncrosses her arms, then crosses them again, like she doesn't know what to do with her hands either.
“I went in alone. There wasn't time to wait for backup.”
“Alone?” Kev's jaw tenses. “Into a facility run by the man who created modified betas? Alone?”
“Every hour I waited was another hour too long.” No apology in her tone.
“You could have died.”
“I called for backup.” Sera meets his gaze. Holds it. “Thank the gods I didn’t wait. Because I found our omega in a cell. Barely conscious.”
I add the carrots to the pan. The scrape of wood against cast iron fills the silence.
“What did they do to her?” Lex has stopped pacing, frozen by the coffee maker.
“I found her strapped to a table… hooked up to…” She clears her throat. “Fuck.”
Kev's scent goes nuclear. Oakwood burning, whiskey sharp enough to cut through everything else in the room.
I've seen Kev angry before. Righteous fury in the courtroom, cold precision when he's dismantling a corrupt official's testimony.
This is different. This is personal. This is a man who just learned his mate was tortured.
“I'll kill him.” Kev's voice is low. Deadly calm.
“Get in line,” Sera says.
Lex has gone white. The coffee grounds spill across the counter, forgotten. “How long was she there?”
“I don't know exactly how long Wallace had her. Years, from what I can piece together.” Sera's voice cracks. “She was... she's strong. Stronger than anyone should have to be. When I found her, she was unresponsive. I think that… it was only a matter of time before...”
“It would have to have been years in the place.” Kev's voice is hollow.
Sera swallows. “It took a long time to get her to understand I wasn't one of them. She kept waiting for me to...” She stops. Breathes. “She kept waiting for the trick. The trap. The moment I'd turn on her. She still does.”
Nobody moves. The soup bubbles on the stove. The refrigerator hums its low drone. And the four of us stand here, breathing in gardenia and clover and the sharp edge of grief, trying to make sense of a world that just tilted sideways.
Sera's telling this like a report. Facts.
Timeline. Observations. I recognize the technique.
I've used it myself, in the underground clinics, when the only way to get through the horror was to flatten it into data.
But her hands are trembling where they grip her arms, and her scent has gone sharp with grief she's refusing to let surface.
She carried this alone. We looked after Aubrey, praying for him to heal but we had each other. I've stopped moving. The knife sits idle in my grip, and my vision blurs. I blink hard, force it back.
My mate. Experimented on. Alone in a cell with no one coming.
The rage that rises in me is unfamiliar.
I'm the gentle one. The patient one. The one who soothes rather than fights.
Right now I want to find Wallace and tear him apart with my bare hands.
I want to break every bone in his body, one by one, while he screams the way she must have screamed.
Him and any other asshole who dared harm my omega.
I add the stock to the pot. The liquid splashes against the hot pan and sizzles. The soup won't fix anything either, but it's something.
Kev’s rage settles into cold determination. “What do we need to figure out?”
“Everything for our omegas. And our alpha.” Lex's dry humor has an edge tonight. He moves to the coffee maker, starts measuring grounds. His hands are steadier when they have a task. “None of them have clothes. No belongings. Sera followed Espie here with nothing.”
Sera's jaw tightens. “Don't worry about me.”
“Of course we're going to worry about you. That's non-negotiable,” Kev says.
I hide a smile against my sleeve. His shoulders have dropped. He's watching Sera the way he watches a problem he wants to solve, not one he wants to remove.
“What else?” he asks.
“The omegas.” I stir the pot. The smell of chicken stock is starting to cut through the mate-scent fog. “They panicked at the nest room. Wouldn't go near it.”
“Nesting is instinct,” Lex says. The coffee maker gurgles to life. “The most basic comfort-seeking behavior an omega has. If they're rejecting it entirely...”
“Something is very wrong.” I don't sugarcoat it. “Omegas need nests. It's biology. Without them, cortisol spikes, sleep fractures, immune function drops. Long-term, they fail to thrive.”
“So why are they rejecting them?” Kev asks.
“Because they're terrified of them,” Sera says quietly.
We all turn to look at her.
“At Haven. Wallace's operation.” She sets down her coffee mug. “They used nests for punishment. Comfort items became tools. Build a nest, get it destroyed. Or worse.”
“Worse how?” Lex's voice is barely a whisper.
“Build a nest and have someone use it against you. Make you think you're safe, then...” Sera doesn't finish. She doesn't have to.
My stomach turns. Bile rises in my throat.
“Bastards,” I mutter under my breath.
“So they associate nesting with danger,” Lex says slowly. “The softness itself becomes the threat. The comfort becomes the warning.”
“That's… fucked-up.” Kev stops. Starts again. “How do we fix that?”
“I don't know.” Sera's voice is raw. “I've seen omegas with nest trauma before. Most of them never fully recover. They usually choose something that isn’t a nest in the traditional sense and they make it theirs. If at all.”
The soup bubbles. Nobody speaks. “We'll figure it out.” My voice sounds more confident than I feel. “There has to be a way.”
“Maybe.” Sera doesn't sound convinced. “Or maybe we learn to work around it. Build a nest for them in other ways.”
Lex passes out coffee. Sera wraps both hands around her mug like she needs the warmth, even though the kitchen isn't cold.
“There's something else,” I say. “At the OHC. In the common room. When Espie went to Aubrey, he reached back. Whatever Espie is to him, whatever they recognize in each other, it's breaking through when nothing else could.”
“He reached for Sera too,” Lex says.
All eyes turn to Sera.