Chapter Thirty-Nine
Rhea
T he heat is still there. Like a nosy neighbor watching from behind the blinds. Not loud enough to ruin my life, but present enough to make sure I don’t forget she knows everything I did this week.
The ache between my thighs is dull now - less wildfire, more glowing coal. Still there. Still obnoxious. Still making me second-guess standing up too fast.
I shift under the blankets, every muscle sore like I spent the weekend hiking with bricks strapped to my thighs.
My skin’s sticky in places it shouldn’t be. My scent is a mix of pheromones, shame, and what I can only describe as alpha-marinated.
And I am wearing Lucian’s damn shirt again, which has officially crossed the line from sexy to swampy.
I groan, peeling it away from my back.
“Okay. I’m a biohazard.”
I sit up, ignoring the various noises my joints make like they’re trying to unionize.
Another shower will help. Probably. Maybe. Hopefully.
Either way, it’s happening before I lose all human dignity.
When I finally step out, I feel more like myself. Sore, tired, a little hollow, sure; but me . Like a crime scene that’s been scrubbed, though the chalk outline’s still visible.
I tug on a clean shirt, tugging at the hem as it falls to my mid-thigh.
And then, because I apparently have zero survival instinct, I go looking for them.
There’s no handle from this side of the door; only a smooth, matte panel embedded into the wall beside it.
I stare at it.
Right. Because this place isn’t creepy at all.
Still… something about it feels obvious.
Obvious enough that I’m meant to figure it out.
I press my palm flat against the panel, and a soft click answers me - mechanical and smooth - followed by a quiet hiss as the door seal releases.
I blink.
That was… suspiciously easy.
Still, I don’t hesitate. I slip into the corridor and let the door fall shut behind me.
The house is too quiet, too clean . Every surface polished, every corner squared. No scuff marks. No fingerprints.
Just money, power, and a whole lot of unsettling calm.
I step into the hallway, the sound of their voices tugging at something low in my chest.
Bond-related? Self-destructive tendencies? Who can say?
I creep forward. I’m not spying exactly. I’m… doing recon.
I stop halfway down the hall, not too far from the sitting room entrance. Their voices are sharper now - clipped, heated, low and tense.
Theo. Ash. Kai.
And Lucian.
I lean in just enough to hear more clearly - so consumed in their own bickering that they don’t even sense my presence.
Typical.
But then I hear him . His voice slices through the rest - cold, clean, and final.
“I’m not tying myself to something unstable. I don’t mark illegal Omegas, and I don’t take what three other Alphas have already touched.”
And just like that, my soul falls through the floor.
I don’t gasp. Don’t scream. Don’t even blink. I just… fold. Emotionally. Internally. Like one of those fainting goats that hears a loud noise and drops dead.
I slap a hand over my mouth before something escapes - a sob, a scream, a very justified stream of profanity. My other hand clutches Lucian’s swamp-shirt like it’s riot gear.
The bond flares in my chest like I swallowed a firework - sparks, smoke, no oxygen.
And yeah, I’m aware I shouldn’t be eavesdropping.
But he shouldn’t be an asshole in surround sound.
Used. Illegal. Unstable.
What am I, an unlicensed nuclear reactor?
A flare of scent breaks off me, raw and unfiltered, a wounded snarl of pheromones spilling into the air at his rejection.
He doesn’t want me.
My legs feel like they’re made of glass. Not in a poetic, tragic-heroine kind of way - more like I’m two seconds from face-planting and possibly taking a sconce down with me. I press harder into the wall, forehead against the cold plaster, trying not to let the sound of Lucian’s voice echo through my skull like a migraine in progress.
I want to scream. I want to cry. I want to sue for emotional damages.
I want to set this whole goddamn house on fire and watch it burn down to ash and ego.
Instead, I pivot like a woman possessed, Lucian’s tragically oversized shirt billowing around me like the world's saddest superhero cape. My bare feet slap the tile with maximum drama. I don’t slow down. Don’t rethink it. Don’t even pull the shirt down even though it’s clinging to parts of me like it’s emotionally attached.
Screw dignity. I’ll circle back to that later.
My bare feet slap the tile, echoing louder than they should, but I don’t care.
Let them hear me coming.
Let them know I’m done hiding.
I storm into the sitting room like I’m headlining a very unstable TED Talk.
Four Alphas. One Omega. Zero chill.
Their voices cut off the second I step through the archway. I stride in, all feigned confidence and determination - like I’m not half-dressed, like I don’t still smell faintly of heat and heartbreak.
Like I’m not hanging on by the thinnest thread of self-control I’ve ever had.
Theo’s eyes widen slightly, and he's already moving like he wants to come to me, check on me. Ash sits up straighter in his chair, brows low with concern, and Kai’s mouth drops open into a half-smile, caught somewhere between impressed and oh no .
Meanwhile, Lucian looks at me like he can’t believe I had the audacity to exist.
I plant myself in the center of the room like I belong there.
(Narrator: She did not belong there. She was mostly legs, hair, and spite.)
“Everyone good?” I ask brightly. “You all got your dramatic alpha monologues out of your systems ? You all got your jabs in already, or should I leave and come back later with popcorn, wearing something tighter?”
Theo flinches. Ash coughs. Kai makes a sound suspiciously like a laugh he’s trying to eat.
Lucian, of course, doesn’t move. Wouldn’t be surprised if he started monologuing about spine rigidity next.
“Don’t stop on my account,” I go on, stepping further into the room. “I mean, I love nothing more than hearing four grown men, all of whom have literally been inside me, discuss my value like I’m some ancient vase that got passed around at an estate sale.”
Ash clears his throat. “Rhea -”
“ No ,” I snap, and the sharpness of my voice surprises even me. “ Don’t . Don’t look at me like I’m going to break. I already did. And I got back up.”
Lucian watches me from across the room, jaw tight, expression unreadable. The air around him is all tension and power and cold calculation, but it doesn’t freeze me the way it did before.
It just pisses me off.
“I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” I say, turning to face him directly. “But turns out your house is wired like a sound tunnel.”
Theo shifts slightly, his eyes wide and worried. Kai mutters something that might be “ oh shit ,” but he’s grinning, as always.
Lucian stares me down like I’m the unruly variable in a carefully balanced equation.
“You overheard a private conversation,” he says, like that’s going to magically undo the words he said.
“Oh, I heard you just fine,” I snap. “Would you like me to quote the highlights? I particularly liked the part where you said I was unstable and used. That was really nice. Very father-of-the-bride energy.”
His jaw ticks. Just a little.
“If you’re going to throw tantrums every time someone -”
“Don’t finish that sentence unless you want this shirt burned off me in real time.”
Ash coughs hard. Kai mutters “ please do ” under his breath.
“I just think it’s impressive,” I go on, “how fast you flipped. One minute you’re inside me calling me yours, the next you’re acting like I’m roadkill that wandered in through your security gates.”
Lucian doesn't blink. “You weren’t meant to hear that.”
“Well, congrats, Vale. You built your whole legacy on control and forgot about acoustics.”
Kai actually snorts.
“And you know what?” I keep going, because someone has to. “I'm glad I heard it. Because now I know. I know exactly where I stand with you. Somewhere between legally complicated and emotionally inconvenient.”
Silence.
Lucian is stone. A beautiful, cold, marble statue of disappointment.
Theo shifts toward me, slow and careful.
“Rhea,” he says gently, “do you want some real clothes? I can -”
“I’ll get them.” Lucian cuts in, teeth clenched. He sounds like it’s taking every ounce of his willpower not to combust. “They’ll be left in the room. You can change in private.”
“ Aw ,” Kai mutters, “how thoughtful.”
“Oh, so now you want to be helpful,” I add.
Kai fans himself with a throw pillow. “This is everything to me.”
Lucian ignores us both as he turns on his heel and strides from the room.
The door closes behind him with a satisfying click, and a beat of silence follows.
“Damn, Bambi,” Kai breathes. “Remind me never to get on your bad side.”
Ash exhales hard. “That wasn’t… gentle.”
“Wasn’t meant to be,” I say, turning back toward the three remaining alphas. “And for the record, I may not know what the hell’s happening to me, but I’m not going to let anyone decide my worth for me. Not Lucian Vale. Not anyone .”
Kai slouches deeper into the arm of the couch.
“You know, you’re terrifying when you’re pissed. In a hot way.”
Ash snorts. “Shut up.”
Theo stops just close enough to touch - but doesn’t. Not until I nod.
His fingers brush the back of my wrist. Light. Steady .
“You didn’t imagine any of it,” he says gently.
“Thank you,” I say, then clear my throat. “Look, I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what this makes me. Rare-pack Omega? Illegal? Instinct-blown wreck in heat? Maybe all of the above. But I’m not going to sit here while someone else tries to decide I’m not enough.”
“You are,” Ash says simply.
“I know,” I say. “But it helps hearing you say it.”
Kai clutches his chest. “You guys are gonna make me feel things. Gross.”
“Good,” I tell him. “Maybe start with accountability.”
They laugh, and the tension ebbs. A little.
Not fully, but enough.
“ Okay ,” Kai says, raising both hands. “So what’s the play here? Lucian’s out, the rest of us are in, our omega’s wearing nothing but a war crime of a shirt -”
Ash growls. “Shut up , Kai.”
Theo just looks at me.
No.
Not even close.
But I nod again, because for the first time in a while, I don’t feel like I’m disappearing.
“I’m getting there.”
My jaw aches from clenching it so tight. My eyes burn.
“I just… I need time. Okay? I need to be alone. For now.”
Theo’s face softens. “Of course.”
“You know where we are,” Ash says.
Kai just salutes me with two fingers, weirdly gentle for once.
“You earned your silence, Bambi.”
I leave the room without another word.
*
I stumble back a step, then another.
Great. Here come the shaky legs again. Not from heat this time - no, that would be too on-brand - but from something colder. Sharper.
The ice-bucket-to-the-chest kind of humiliation that creeps in behind your ribs and settles like a permanent roommate.
It floods my chest like ice water, sinking straight to the pit of my stomach.
The shirt I’m wearing clings to me like a brand.
It still smells like him. Like betrayal, wealth, and cedar-scented ego. I want to tear it off. I want to rip it in half and use it to mop the floor -
Or maybe just set it on fire and toast a marshmallow over it while Lucian watches.
From hell.
I want to not care. Fuck, I want to be above this. To toss my hair and strut out barefoot with unfazed pop-star energy and no regrets.
But no. My chest is caving in like I’m a balloon someone sat on. My ribs feel two sizes too small. And my heart - my idiot, codependent, betrayal-kink-having heart - still reaches for him through the bond, as though to say, maybe he didn’t mean it?
But oh, he meant it.
The bond, though? It doesn’t care. It doesn’t give a single solitary shit about logic or dignity. It’s just there, like some clingy ghost cable that wraps around my soul and starts tugging the second I try to move on.
But I’m done. I have cried - oh, I have cried - for people who didn’t choose me. I have wept for men who thought I was too much while still trying to take pieces of me for free.
I am not doing that again.
Lucian Vale wants all or nothing?
Then he gets nothing.
Let him keep his silence. His control. His stupid bespoke suits and five-million-dollar abandonment issues.
I’m not his little omega doll to hoard and hide and punish for not waiting politely in a corner. I’m not a prize that got damaged in transit.
My heart still pulses painfully, still thudding out a desperate beat for someone who just spit me out like I was already ruined.
But I’m not. I'm not shattered, nor am I broken.
Even bleeding, even bare, even standing in a shirt that suddenly feels like a lie -
I am the whole goddamn fire, and fire doesn’t ask for permission - it just burns.
And if he thought he could light me up, walk away, and still keep my warmth without getting burned; then that’s on him.
I didn’t ask for any of this, and I certainly didn’t ask for him to want me. I was quite happy with him being a fantasy, forever.
But he did . He leaned in, he let me feel something, he let the bond happen - and now what? He's punishing me for letting someone else love me too, even though he knew all along I wanted them all?
The bond between us thrums, raw and ragged like it’s trying to apologize.
It doesn’t get to. Not today.
Let it ache. Let him feel it.
Let every breath without me taste like ash.
Because I may be bleeding. I may be raw. I may be standing here in a wrinkled shirt that reeks of his cologne and a temper hotter than the sun -
But I’m still standing.
Wanting him doesn’t mean I’ll shrink for him, and I swear, if Lucian Vale thinks he can build a throne out of my bones and call it love, he better be ready to choke on the crown.