Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
AVA
I woke in a cold sweat, my heart pounding, the word "mine" still echoing in my skull.
The journal lay open on my pillow where I'd fallen asleep reading my own words.
I'm so afraid of who I'm becoming. The sentence stared back at me, an accusation written in my own handwriting.
I sat up slowly, pushing tangled hair from my face, my breath coming in shallow gasps.
My pack. My Alphas. My monsters.
Mine.
I'd written that. I'd meant it. Some part of me, some treacherous, broken part, had looked at the four men who had kidnapped me, claimed me, caged me, and thought: mine. The horror of it crashed over me like ice water.
No. No, no, no.
I scrambled out of the nest, my bare feet hitting the cold floor, my whole body shaking.
This wasn't me. This soft, yielding creature who almost smiled at Leo's jokes and felt safe under Caleb's watchful gaze and craved Mason's gentle questions, this wasn't who I was.
They were conditioning me. Breaking me down, piece by piece, replacing my hatred with something softer.
Something weaker. And I was letting them. The carved bird sat on my nightstand.
Caleb had given it to me three days ago, the wood pale and smooth, the wings spread wide in frozen flight.
He'd spent weeks on it. I'd seen his massive hands working the knife with impossible gentleness, coaxing beauty from raw wood, all for me.
When he'd handed it over, something warm had kindled in his ice-blue eyes, and I'd felt his love through the bond like sunlight breaking through clouds.
I'd accepted it. Thanked him. Held it like something precious. I picked it up now, feeling the weight of it in my palm, the smooth grain beneath my fingers. It was beautiful. He'd made it beautiful, for me, because he loved me. That was exactly why it had to go.
I hurled it against the wall as hard as I could.
The bird exploded on impact, weeks of patient work shattering into a dozen pieces.
The delicate wings snapped. The carefully carved feathers splintered.
The body cracked down the center, falling to the floor in broken halves.
I stared at the destruction, breathing hard, waiting to feel something.
Triumph, maybe. Satisfaction. Proof that I was still the woman who had fought them, who had refused to break, who had sworn she would never stop hating them.
Instead, I felt sick.
I shoved the feeling down, buried it deep. This was war. In war, you did what you had to do. You couldn't afford softness. Couldn't afford to let carved birds and gentle questions and almost-smiles erode your defenses until there was nothing left. I had to remind them, and myself, who I really was.
The nest was next.
I tore it apart with my bare hands. The soft blankets they'd given me, the pillows that smelled like all four of them, the cashmere sweaters and silk sheets, I ripped and shredded and threw until the room looked like a storm had torn through it.
Feathers floated in the air from a pillow I'd destroyed.
Fabric hung in tatters from the bed frame.
It wasn't enough.
I moved to the living room, my feet silent on the cold floor.
The books. My precious library hour, the privilege I'd earned through compliance.
I pulled volumes from the shelves and tore pages from spines, scattering paper across the floor like snow.
Poetry, novels, histories—I destroyed them all without discrimination.
Then the kitchen. I swept dishes from the counter, ceramic shattering against tile.
Glasses followed, exploding into glittering shards.
I upended a bowl of fruit, sent a vase of fresh flowers crashing to the ground.
The sound was glorious. Violent. Impossible to ignore.
Through the bond, I felt them jolting awake, their confusion rapidly shifting to alarm, then to something colder. Something darker. I stood in the center of the destruction, surrounded by broken glass and torn paper and scattered debris, my chest heaving, my hands shaking at my sides.
Footsteps in the hallway. Heavy and fast.
Mason appeared first, his golden hair disheveled from sleep, his honey-brown eyes scanning the devastation. He wore only sleep pants, his broad chest bare, muscles tight with tension. I watched his expression shift, watched the warmth drain from his face like water from a broken cup.
"What did you do?" Mason asked, his voice quiet and controlled, more frightening than shouting would have been. His hands clenched into fists at his sides, knuckles white with the effort of restraint.
"What does it look like?" I replied, lifting my chin, forcing defiance into my voice even as my heart raced. "I reminded you what I think of your cage."
Ethan appeared behind him, green eyes sharp and analytical behind his glasses, his dark hair neat even fresh from bed.
He was already cataloguing the damage, I could see his mind working, assessing.
Then Leo, his gray eyes dark with something I'd never seen before, his usual playful smirk nowhere to be found.
His lean body was coiled tight, restless energy crackling off him like static.
Caleb came last, his massive frame filling the doorway, his scarred face utterly blank, wearing a white t-shirt stretched tight across his enormous shoulders.
His ice-blue eyes swept the room, then moved to the hallway, toward my bedroom.
I watched him walk past me without a word, his heavy footsteps carrying him to see what I'd done.
The silence that followed was worse than screaming.
Through the bond, I felt Caleb's devastation hit like a physical blow.
He'd found the bird. Found the pieces of it scattered across the floor, weeks of patient work destroyed in a moment of calculated cruelty.
When he returned to the living room doorway, his scarred face was carved from stone, but his ice-blue eyes were wet. He held a broken piece of the wing in his massive palm, cradling it like something wounded.
"Why?" Caleb asked, his deep voice rough and cracking on the single word, his chest rising and falling with controlled breaths.
"Because you can't buy me with pretty things," I said, the words tasting like ash on my tongue, my stomach churning with nausea I refused to show.
"Because your gifts mean nothing. Because no matter how many birds you carve or books you let me read or dances you make me do, I will never be yours.
I will never stop fighting. I will never—"
"Enough," Mason said, his voice cutting through my tirade like a blade, sharp and final.
He stepped closer, broken glass crunching beneath his bare feet, leaving bloody footprints on the tile.
He didn't seem to notice or care. His eyes were locked on mine, and through the bond, I felt his fury, vast and cold as a frozen ocean.
"You wanted our attention," Mason said, his honey-brown eyes flat and cold, all the gentleness I'd grown accustomed to stripped away. "Now you have it."
"What are you going to do?" I demanded, refusing to back down even as my heart hammered against my ribs, my voice stronger than I felt. "Make me kneel again? Take away my library hour? You can't punish me into loving you."
"Love?" Mason laughed, the sound harsh and humorless, his lip curling with something like contempt.
"You think this is about love? This is about consequences, Avalon.
You destroyed everything you could get your hands on to hurt us.
You smashed something Caleb poured his heart into.
You did it deliberately, cruelly, to prove a point. "
"I did it to remind you who I am," I shot back, my chin lifting higher, my green eyes blazing into his.
"We know exactly who you are," Ethan said, speaking for the first time, his green eyes glittering behind his glasses, his voice calm and clinical despite the chaos around us.
"You're an Omega who's terrified of her own feelings.
So terrified that you'd rather hurt us, hurt yourself, than admit that you're starting to belong here. "
"I don't belong here," I snarled, my hands curling into fists at my sides, nails biting into my palms. "I don't belong to you."
"You do," Leo said, his voice lacking its usual playfulness, his gray eyes dark and serious as they fixed on mine. His jaw was tight, a muscle ticking in his cheek. "And somewhere deep down, you know it. That's what scared you so much you had to do this."
"I'm not scared," I lied, my voice cracking despite my best efforts to keep it steady.
"You're terrified," Caleb said quietly, and the gentleness in his voice was worse than anger would have been.
He still held the broken wing piece, his thumb stroking over the splintered wood.
"You're terrified because you're starting to feel something other than hate.
And you'd rather destroy beautiful things than admit it. "
I had no answer for that. I just stood there, surrounded by wreckage, my bare feet bleeding from shards I hadn't noticed cutting into my skin, my whole body shaking with something that might have been rage or grief or fear.
Mason turned to Ethan, something silent passing between them. "Prepare the room." Three words. Simple. Quiet. They sent ice flooding through my veins.
"What room?" I demanded, hating the tremor in my voice, my eyes darting between them. "What are you talking about?"
"You wanted to know what happens when you push too far," Mason said, turning back to me, his expression carved from stone, his honey-brown eyes revealing nothing. "Now you'll find out."
"You can't—" I started, my voice rising with panic I couldn't quite hide.
"We can," Mason interrupted, his voice final, brooking no argument. "And we will. Caleb, get her feet bandaged. We'll deal with this properly once she's not bleeding everywhere."
Caleb set the broken wing piece carefully on a side table, as if it still mattered, as if he might somehow fix it.
Then he moved toward me, his massive body crossing the debris-strewn floor with surprising grace.
I flinched back instinctively, and he stopped, pain flickering across his scarred face like lightning.
"I'm not going to hurt you," Caleb said softly, his deep voice gentle despite everything, his ice-blue eyes searching my face. "I just want to look at your feet."
"Don't touch me," I hissed, backing away, my feet screaming in protest as more shards dug into tender flesh. Blood smeared across the tile with each step.
"You're bleeding," Caleb said, his voice patient despite everything I'd done, everything I'd destroyed. His massive hands hung open at his sides, non-threatening. "Let me help."
"I don't want your help!" I shouted, my voice cracking, tears burning at the corners of my eyes.
"I know," Caleb replied, stepping closer anyway, his movements slow and deliberate like approaching a wounded animal. His scent washed over me—pine and woodsmoke and something that made my Omega instincts keen despite my fury. "But you're going to get it anyway. That's what pack does."
Before I could protest further, he scooped me up in his arms, lifting me as easily as he'd lift a child.
I struggled, beating my fists against his chest, feeling the solid muscle beneath his thin shirt, but it was useless.
He was too strong, and through the bond, I could feel his love, undiminished, still there despite everything I'd done to kill it.
That was the worst part. I'd destroyed his gift, smashed his weeks of work into splinters, and he still loved me.
Still carried me gently to the bathroom, still set me on the counter with careful hands, still knelt at my feet with tweezers and bandages and infinite patience.
"I hate you," I whispered, tears streaming down my face, watching him pick shards of glass from my bloody feet. His dark head was bent over his work, silver streaking through his hair at the temples.
"I know," Caleb replied, his deep voice soft, his ice-blue eyes focused on his task. His massive fingers worked with impossible delicacy, removing each shard with surgical precision. "I love you anyway."
I sobbed. Ugly, broken sounds that tore from my chest against my will.
I'd tried to hurt them, and I had, I could feel the wounds I'd inflicted through the bond.
I'd hurt myself more. The worst part, the absolute worst part, was that I wasn't crying because of my bleeding feet or the punishment to come.
I was crying because some part of me wanted to take it all back.
Caleb finished bandaging my feet in silence, his massive hands impossibly gentle as they wrapped gauze around my torn soles. When he was done, he looked up at me, his scarred face soft with an emotion I didn't deserve. His ice-blue eyes held no accusation, no anger—only patient, steadfast love.
"I'll make you another bird," Caleb said quietly, his rough voice barely above a whisper. "When you're ready to accept it." Then he stood, his full height towering over me, and left me there, bleeding and broken and more terrified than I'd ever been in my life.
Not of them.
Of myself.