Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
MASON
She'd been in the bathroom for three hours.
I stood outside the door, listening to the silence on the other side, feeling her through the bond. Despair. Fury. A desperate, clawing need to escape that made my chest ache, not with guilt, but with the knowledge that she was hurting herself by fighting this.
She'd come around. She always did. She just needed time to remember what we meant to her.
"She's not coming out," Caleb said from behind me, his voice a low rumble.
He'd been standing in the hallway since she locked herself in, still as a statue, his ice-blue eyes fixed on the bathroom door with that patient intensity I'd come to recognize.
He'd spent half the night outside this door, talking to her, and I'd felt their conversation through the bond, his brutal honesty, her reluctant fascination.
"No," I agreed, my tone calm. "But she will."
"She told me she'd never forgive us," Caleb said, no distress in his voice. Just fact. "I told her she would. Eventually."
"And she will." I turned to face him fully.
Through the pack bond, I felt his certainty—the same unshakeable conviction he'd carried since the day we first saw her.
Caleb had always been the most patient of us, despite his violent exterior.
He'd watched her for three years without breaking.
A few more weeks of resistance wouldn't shake him.
"She reached for me in her sleep last night," Caleb added, his deep voice quiet. "Before she locked herself in here. Her hand found my arm. She was reaching for me."
"She's fighting what her body already knows."
"She'll stop fighting." Caleb's ice-blue eyes met mine, absolute certainty burning in their depths. "She loved us once. She'll love us again."
Those words. He'd said them to her last night, through the door. I'd felt the truth of them resonating through our pack bond, felt all of us remembering the girl she'd been before Elena filled her head with fear.
"Kitchen," I said, gesturing for him to follow. "We need to talk. All of us."
Ethan and Leo were already there when we arrived. Ethan sat at the table with a cup of coffee, his green eyes calm and calculating as always. Leo leaned against the counter, arms crossed, his usual playful smirk replaced by something more serious.
"How is she?" Leo asked, his gray eyes searching my face for answers.
"Locked in the bathroom. Refusing to come out." I moved to the coffee maker, pouring myself a cup with steady hands. Through the bond, I could still feel her—that constant awareness of her presence that would never fade now. "We need to establish some ground rules."
"Ground rules," Leo repeated, one dark eyebrow raised. "She's ours now. What rules do we need?"
"Rules for us," I clarified, turning to face them. "We have what we wanted. Ava is claimed, bonded, ours in every way that matters. But having her isn't the same as keeping her."
"She can't leave," Leo pointed out. "The bonds would make it impossible. She'd be in agony within days."
"Physically, no. She can't leave." I took a sip of coffee, letting the heat ground me.
"But there's more than one way to lose someone.
We could break her so completely that there's nothing left.
We could make her hate us so deeply that she spends the rest of her life as a shell, going through the motions but never truly ours. "
"That won't happen," Ethan said, his voice cool and certain. He set down his coffee mug with a soft click. "The bonds will work in our favor. Every day she feels our love, our devotion—it will wear down her resistance. Biology is on our side."
"Biology will help," I agreed. "But it's not enough. I don't want an Omega who submits because her body gives her no choice. I want Ava, the real Ava, to love us the way she used to."
"She will," Caleb said, his voice a low rumble of absolute certainty.
He'd settled against the wall near the doorway, arms crossed over his massive chest, watching us all with those patient ice-blue eyes.
"I told her last night—she loved us before.
Before her mother taught her to be afraid.
Before she built all those walls. That love didn't disappear. It's still there."
"What did she say?" Leo asked, curiosity flickering in his gray eyes.
"She said it was different. That she was a child. That she didn't know any better." A ghost of something, not quite a smile, crossed Caleb's harsh features. "But I felt her through the bond when I said it. There's still something there. An ember. We just have to fan it back into flame."
"Caleb's right," I said, drawing their attention back to me. "She loved us once, and she will again. But only if we do this right."
"So what are these rules?" Leo asked, leaning forward with interest. I set down my coffee and met each of their gazes in turn.
"First: the nest remains sacred. We always ask permission before entering. That's her space—the one place she has any control. We don't take that from her."
Nods from all three. Even Caleb, who I'd expected to push back, simply inclined his head in agreement. He understood patience better than any of us.
"Second: physical punishment requires my approval.
" I looked at each of them, Ethan with his clinical detachment, Leo with his unpredictable moods.
"She's going to test us. She's going to push back, refuse to eat, try to escape, do everything in her power to make us regret claiming her.
When she does, we don't lose control. We correct her behavior, but we don't hurt her. "
"Define 'hurt,'" Ethan said, his green eyes sharp.
"No permanent damage. No breaking bones, no scarring, nothing that would harm her long-term." I held up a hand preemptively. "Discipline is fine. Consequences are fine. But we're not savages. We're her Alphas. Our job is to guide her, not destroy her."
"She needs to understand there are consequences," Caleb said, his deep voice measured and calm, not pushing back, simply stating fact. "If she thinks she can defy us without repercussions, she'll never stop fighting."
"She won't think that," I assured him. "There will be consequences. But measured ones. Controlled ones. If she refuses to eat, we feed her ourselves. If she refuses to sleep in the nest, we carry her there. If she refuses physical contact, we hold her until she stops fighting."
"And if she tries to hurt herself again?" Caleb asked, and I felt the memory flash through our bond, her blood on his hands, her nails tearing at her own throat, the wild desperation in her eyes.
"We restrict her freedom until we can trust her," I said firmly. "She doesn't leave our sight. She doesn't have access to anything she could use to harm herself. We keep her safe, even from herself."
Caleb nodded, satisfaction settling into his features. "Good."
"Third rule," I continued. "The goal is for her to love us. Not just submit—love. That means we court her. We remind her why she adored us when she was young. We give her reasons to choose us, even though she doesn't have a choice."
"She used to follow me around the house like a little shadow," Leo said, a small smile playing at the corner of his mouth. "Used to bring me books she thought I'd like. She was so eager to please."
"She used to leave drawings outside my door," Caleb added, his voice soft with memory. "Seek me out when the house felt too big. She fell asleep on my shoulder once, when she was twelve. I sat there for three hours, afraid to move."
"She trusted us," Ethan said, his green eyes distant. "Before she learned to be afraid. Before her mother died and she decided she had to do everything alone."
"She'll trust us again," I said. "We just have to be patient. Show her that we're not going anywhere. That fighting us is pointless—not because we'll hurt her, but because we'll never stop."
"How long?" Leo asked.
"As long as it takes," Caleb answered before I could, his voice carrying that same patient certainty he'd shown last night. "We have all the time in the world. She doesn't."
I nodded, feeling the truth of it settle into my bones. "Eventually, fighting the bonds will exhaust her. And when she stops fighting, she'll feel what we feel. She'll understand."
"What about her work? Her life outside the cabin?" Ethan asked, ever practical.
"Doesn't exist anymore," I said. "Leo handled it—her apartment is gone, her job doesn't expect her back, her phone is at the bottom of a lake. As far as the world knows, Ava Lexton disappeared."
"And David?" Leo asked. "He's going to want to see her eventually."
"Not until she's settled. Could be weeks, could be months. When she's ready to be around other people without trying to signal for help, we'll reintroduce her to the family." He told them with a sigh.
"The family knows," Ethan pointed out. "About the claiming. About all of it."
"They know, and they approve." I thought of David's face when I'd called him last night—the quiet satisfaction, the approval in his voice. "He's wanted this for her since the day Elena brought her home. He knows we'll take care of her."
"Better than her mother ever did," Leo muttered, and I felt the agreement ripple through all of us.
Elena had failed Ava. Had filled her head with fear about Alphas, had kept her isolated and suppressed, had convinced her that independence meant being alone.
Elena had done everything in her power to keep Ava from us and she'd almost succeeded.
But Elena was dead now. And Ava was ours.