Chapter 23
I wake up to yelling.
Not the usual raised-voice, playful-arguing over who drank the last of the coffee. This is full-chested alpha shouting, overlapping, tearing into the quiet like claws through fabric.
For a second I think I'm dreaming, my neck kinked sideways in the chair, green throw tangled around my ankles. Then Ragon roars something wordless and a picture frame rattles on my wall.
Nope. Awake.
My back protests as I unfold out of the chair. The room smells like stale lemon cleaner and the faint ghost of smoke. Still no urge to make a nest. Still nothing in me reaching for blankets.
I crack my door.
The noise hits harder.
"...not happening," Ragon snarls from the living room. "No alpha is getting near my omega unsupervised, I don't care what letters he has after his name—"
"That's the point, Ragon," Eli fires back, voice ragged. "He's a specialist. He has letters. Training. Tools we apparently don't. I'm a fucking medic and even I'm clueless."
I pad down the hall in my socks, instinctively light on my feet. They're so loud they don't hear me.
The living room is a battlefield.
Ragon stands in front of the TV, shirt rumpled, hair a mess. Eli's pacing like a caged thing, shirtless, scrub bottoms hanging low, dark circles carved under his eyes. Jasper is stationed near the bookshelf, arms folded, expression tight.
Marie is curled in Drake's lap, knees drawn up, eyes swollen. She looks like she's been crying for a while. Not the pretty, strategic tears. The ugly ones.
Everyone's scents are a tangled knot. Smoke and citrus and sharp antiseptic and salt. There's almost none of mine in it.
I hover in the doorway, unseen. I could turn around. Go back to my chair.
Instead I lean against the frame and listen.
"I talked to Arden last night," Jasper is saying, voice edged. "After he filed his preliminary report. He's willing to keep working with us. With Vee. He wants to give us actual tools instead of leaving us to flail our way into more damage."
Ragon's lip curls. "He insulted me in my own home and then tried to poach my omega. We are not inviting him back to—"
"For fuck's sake, no one is poaching anyone," Eli snaps. "He was making a point. You shut him down so hard the only way to shock you was to threaten what you value."
"I value my whole pack. Not some outsider's opinion. And I'm not letting another alpha take her into a room alone and—"
"He wants one-on-one sessions," Jasper cuts in. "Yes. That's literally his job, Ragon. You don't sit in on my therapy, do you?"
"That's different."
"How? Because you don't think of me as vulnerable enough to need guarding?"
Marie lifts her head from Drake's chest, tear-streaked and furious. "Enough. Both of you, just shut up. That man is never coming back into this house. I don't care what he promised you."
Drake's arms tighten around her automatically, thumb rubbing soothing circles on her knee. "Hey, hey. Easy, honey."
Ragon's scent rolls toward her, softening around the edges. "No one's forcing anything on you, sweetheart. We're not letting him in here to make you feel unsafe."
Eli whirls on him so fast I can almost hear his vertebrae pop.
"That," he says, shaking, "is exactly the problem."
Ragon's brows slam together. "What?"
"You hear Marie say she feels unsafe and you go soft. You soothe. You accommodate. Vee begs you to stop and you punish. Marie tells us to shut up and you cradle her. Vee raises her voice and you drag her to her nest and—"
"Don't. Don't rewrite—"
"I'm not rewriting anything. I'm pointing out the pattern. Marie snapped just now. At me. At Jasper. You didn't roar. You didn't ban touch. You didn't order us not to comfort her. You soothed her."
Marie grimaces. Drake goes still.
Ragon opens his mouth. Closes it. For a second he looks more stunned than angry.
"That's not the same," he says, but it sounds weak.
"It is," Jasper says quietly. "The behavior is different, sure. The response is not. Marie lashes out, you see fragility. Vee lashes out—if she even did—and you see threat. One of them gets tucked into your chest. The other gets exiled from her own bed."
"I didn't realize. It's the scent match. The pull. It makes everything feel bigger. Louder. I didn't—"
"Of course you didn't," Jasper says. "That's why Arden told us to get outside perspective. Knowing you're biased doesn't make you evil, Ragon. Refusing to adjust when you see the bias does."
Marie jerks upright in Drake's lap, eyes blazing. "I am not being put out. I'm the scent match. I'm important. I didn't ask for any of this and I do not deserve to be sent away because Vee can't handle being an omega anymore."
The words land hard.
Ragon's gaze snaps to her. "No one said anything about putting you out,” but his tone is careful now. "Arden only suggested—"
"Arden suggested removing the trigger from the environment," Jasper says. "That means Marie. At least temporarily."
Marie rounds on him, eyes wet. "I'm a person, not a trigger."
"You're both. So am I. So is Ragon. That's the point. The fact that she can't even look at your door without hurting means your presence hurts her. That doesn't make you a villain, Marie. It makes the situation untenable."
Marie throws up her hands. "I won't do it. I won't be shoved into some sad little apartment like a dirty secret while Vee monopolizes my alphas and paints herself as some tragic wounded bird."
My stomach twists. I'm half tempted to applaud the creativity on that metaphor.
Ragon rubs a hand over his face, fingers digging into his eyes. "It wouldn't be like that. It would be temporary. Just while we get Vee stable. I'd still— we'd still take care of you." His jaw tics. "We could cover rent. Make sure you're safe. Visit. It's not exile, Marie."
Drake stiffens. "You want us to just send her off to live in some apartment? Like we're divorcing her? There has to be a better way."
"If you have one, I'm listening," Jasper says. "Besides the current strategy of 'pretend time will fix it'."
Their scents are starting to spike and clash again.
That's enough.
"Stop," I say.
Four heads whip toward me. Marie and Drake startle; they hadn't clocked me in the doorway.
I step into the room, fingers slipping into the hem of my oversized t-shirt. I resist the urge to fold them.
"I'm awake. And since you're all shouting about me, I'm pretty sure I get a vote."
"Vee," Eli breathes, shoulders sagging with relief and dread.
"Verena." Ragon's voice gentles instantly. "We didn't mean to wake you, sweetheart."
"You did. But that's okay. Better than waking up to someone in my bed."
I walk around the edge of the coffee table and lean my hip against the arm of the farthest chair, keeping distance between us like a moat.
"You don't have to send Marie away. I'm fine."
"No, you're not," Eli says immediately.
"I am. At least enough that I don't need you uprooting your lives for my issues."
"You shed your nest," Jasper says. "That is not an 'issue,' Vee, it's—"
"I don't hurt. I'm functioning. I'm cooking, I'm cleaning, I'm gardening. I'm not having meltdowns. You don't need to rearrange yourselves for me. I can handle it."
"That's not what 'fine' means," Eli mutters.
"And if someone has to go, it doesn't need to be Marie. She's right, she didn't ask for this. You found her, you wanted her, you picked her. She shouldn't be exiled for being exactly what you wanted."
Marie stares at me like she can't decide if she's grateful or suspicious.
"You're our omega too," Drake says, sounding wrecked.
I shrug. "If my being here makes things this messy, then send me away. Put me in one of those little apartments. I can get a job. Buy a plant. Maybe get a cat if I'm feeling ambitious. I could be content."
The room goes absolutely still.
Ragon looks like I slapped him.
"You think we're going to drop you off at some complex and visit on weekends? You are not going anywhere."
"Why not? You said it yourself, Arden's pack would take me—not that I want to go. Or the registry would find somewhere. Or I could ask to live independently."
"You know how often they approve that," Jasper says quietly.
"I don't care about the odds. I care that no one else gets upended because my instinct brain decided it's done functioning. I can pretend I'm a beta. I already feel like one."
Ragon moves closer, slow. He stops a few feet away, hands hanging empty.
"You're part of this pack," he says. Every word sounds dragged out of him. "Not a rental. Not a placeholder. Part. We all... we all love you, Vee."
My chest tightens. Not from swooning. From the whiplash of hearing the word applied to a person they watched break.
"You love the idea of me. The omega version. The one I was before all this. The soft, baking, nesting, purring thing that made you feel like good alphas for five years. But the fact is, Ragon, you don’t need me anymore.
Marie is what you need now. You just don’t like the idea of losing me.
Of failing me, maybe. I don’t know if you love this. "
I gesture at myself. At the t-shirt and leggings and faint dark circles. At the steady hands and flat scent.
"This is you too," Drake says hoarsely. "You are more than whatever you think you're supposed to be."
"It doesn't matter," Ragon cuts in, and for once there's something like panic in his scent. "You're not being shipped off to live alone with a cat, Verena. We are going to fix this. With you. Not around you."
He turns his head sharply. "Jasper. Call Arden. Tell him I was... wrong." The word comes out like chewing glass. "Tell him he's welcome back if he's still willing."
Jasper exhales, slow. Relief loosens his shoulders. "I already texted him this morning. He said he'd be available for a follow-up call today if you changed your mind."
"Good. Make it happen. I'm not throwing him out again."
Marie makes a strangled sound. "Ragon—"
He looks at her, expression pained but firm. "We need help, Marie. He's the one offering it."