5. Bianca
BIANCA
Three days into our mountain prison, and I’m losing my fucking mind.
Rain beats on the cabin roof for the third straight day. The sound drives into my skull like nails. I press my palms against my ears, but it doesn’t help. Nothing helps.
I’m curled on my narrow bunk, staring at the knotted wood ceiling while Mom sorts through wet hiking gear. The single room feels smaller every hour.
“Storm should break tomorrow,” Mom says, hanging another soaked jacket on the line we’ve strung across the cabin. “Roger thinks we’ll have clear skies by afternoon.”
I grunt.
She glances at me, worry creasing her forehead. “Honey, you need to eat.”
The protein bar she left on my nightstand sits untouched. Just thinking about food makes me nauseous.
Dr. Montgomery’s words circle my brain like vultures. Your omega will never awaken.
I haven’t had the heart to tell my mom the ugly truth.
I press the heels of my hands against my eyes.
Three days without hearing from them. Three days of silence that gets heavier every hour. The last thing they knew about me was that I fell at the party and got hurt. Nothing about what I needed to tell them. Nothing about us.
What are they doing right now? Are they thinking about me too?
My phone sits dead on the nightstand. There’s no point in checking it—we’re buried so deep in these mountains that civilization might as well be on another planet.
“Bianca.” Mom sits on the edge of my bunk, the mattress dipping. “Talk to me.”
I can’t.
She reaches over, brushing my hair away from my face.
“Whatever it is,” she says quietly, “it’ll be okay.”
I want to believe her. God, I want to believe her so badly it hurts.
She squeezes my shoulder. “Roger mentioned there’s a ridge about three miles from here. Sometimes hikers pick up cell service there.”
My head snaps up. “Seriously?”
“If the weather clears tomorrow, you could hike up there.” Her eyes search my face. “Is that what you need? To make some calls?”
“Yes.”
“Then that’s what you’ll do.”
The trail winds upward through a forest still dripping from the storm.
Mom packed me trail mix, a protein bar, and water this morning, along with Roger’s hand-drawn map and strict instructions to stay on the marked path.
Four hours max, she’d said, blue blazes to the fork, then right to the ridge.
I promised to be careful, to pay attention, and to keep my phone off until I reached the overlook to save battery.
But careful is the last thing I feel as mud sucks at my boots with every step. My legs shake. It’s been three days of very little eating or sleeping… anxiety swallowing me whole and holding me captive.
I have to stop twice to catch my breath, leaning against wet tree trunks while my heart pounds so loud, it’s the only thing I can hear.
By the time I see the rocky outcropping ahead, my lungs are on fire.
The ridge opens up before me—a jagged shelf of stone jutting over the valley. Mountains roll into the distance, still shrouded in mist. Under different circumstances, it might be beautiful.
But I didn’t come here for the view.
My hands are practically vibrating with nerves as I pull out my phone and power it on. The screen lights up, searching for a signal.
Nothing.
I move across the rocky ledge, arm stretched high, turning in slow circles. Come on. Please. I need this. I need them.
One bar flickers into existence. Disappears. Comes back.
I freeze, afraid to breathe and lose it. Messages start downloading, the phone buzzing against my palm like a trapped insect.
My eyes scan desperately for their names in the notifications. Group chat. Freddie. Owen. Tristan. Weller. Anyone.
Nothing from them.
But there’s Whitney’s name, bright and cheerful among the alerts.
Whitney
OMG B!!! You’re not going to BELIEVE what happened!!!
My finger hovers over the message. A chill seeps through me. Whitney never uses that many exclamation points unless she’s about to drop a bomb.
I tap the message open, still holding my arm at the awkward angle to maintain the signal.
Whitney
So graduation night I went into HEAT! Out of nowhere!
! Daddy thinks all the excitement and stress of the day plus being around so many alpha scents must have triggered it.
.. anyway, the guys helped me through it and WE BONDED!
All four of them!! I hope you’re not mad, B.
I know you had a little crush but that’s just biology for you!
There are TONS of other alphas who would be interested, don’t worry!
The words swim on the screen. I blink hard and read them again.
The guys helped me through it.
WE BONDED.
All four of them.
What the actual fuck?
My vision tunnels. The phone screen wavers like I’m looking at it underwater.
This isn’t real. This can’t be real.
A new notification pops up—a group message thread with dozens of numbers I don’t recognize. My finger moves without conscious thought, tapping it open.
Dr. Robert Montgomery is pleased to announce the bonding of his daughter, Whitney Elizabeth Montgomery, to Weller Dashwood, Tristan Barrett, Frederick Miller, and Owen West. The pack bond was formed during an unexpected heat cycle. Ceremony announcement to follow.
The formal language makes it worse somehow. Official. Permanent. Real.
Names I don’t know flood the thread below—congratulations, excitement, celebration. Like it’s some fairy tale ending instead of the destruction of everything I thought I knew.
How could they? How could they fucking do this?
These are the same guys who’ve been part of my life since I was three years old.
Winston’s best friends since kindergarten.
I’ve loved them for as long as I can remember, and what did I do?
I waited. Like some pathetic, desperate little girl, I waited for them to make a move. To want me. To pursue me.
All these years of secret yearning, of hoping, of thinking maybe someday they’d see me as more than Winston’s baby sister. What was I waiting for? Some magical moment when they’d suddenly realize I existed?
God, I’m so fucking stupid.
And they didn’t call. Didn’t text. While I spent three days going out of my mind with worry, wondering why they’d gone silent, they were… fuck. I can’t.
Did they even think about me at all? Did it even cross their minds that I might be waiting to hear from them? Or was I that forgettable, that easy to just... erase?
The silence makes sense now. The alphas got a working omega. They don’t need me anymore.
Are men that controlled by their dicks? That desperate for the nearest available place to stick it? I thought they were different. I thought that what we had meant something. I thought they were better than every other asshole with a knot.
They’re worse. I fucking trusted them wholeheartedly. With every cell in my body.
The betrayal burns through me. Not just that they bonded with someone else. That they bonded with her. Whitney. She knew. She fucking knew how I felt about them and took them anyway.
Another message catches my eye, an unknown number.
My finger moves to open it.
A video file loads.
The image is dim and grainy, but I know those hands. That hair. Bodies moving together in low light. Whitney’s back arched. Multiple figures around her, skin against skin…
I can’t see their faces clearly, but I don’t need to. I’d know them anywhere.
I feel myself shatter. I feel all my pieces break apart, and I know without a doubt I will never be whole again.
I drop to my knees and vomit onto the stone, everything inside me rejecting this reality. But the video keeps playing on the cracked screen, silent but devastating.
The sobs start then, harsh and ugly, tearing out of me. Each one doubles me over, stealing what little breath I have left. They build and build until I’m drowning in them, until they’re the only sound in the entire world.
I get enough air around the sounds coming out of me. They consume me, shaking my entire body like I’m coming apart from the inside out. And maybe I am. Maybe this is what breaking feels like—not clean, not quick, but messy and loud and endless.
My eyes burn and everything hurts. Still, they keep coming, wave after wave, until there’s nothing left inside me but the sound of me wheezing for air.
With a scream that shreds my throat, I grab the phone and smash it against the rock. Again and again, the images are burned behind my eyelids, seared into my brain forever.
I stagger to my feet and hurl the weapon used to destroy me over the edge of the ridge. It arcs through the air, catching sunlight on its shattered screen before disappearing into the trees far below.
“NO!” The scream tears from me, a primal sound of anguish. “NO, NO, NO!”
I collapse, fists pounding the unyielding stone until my knuckles split and blood smears across the rock. Physical pain doesn’t register. Nothing registers except the void opening inside me, swallowing everything I thought was real.
The necklace they gave me burns against my skin like a brand.
My fingers close around it and yank hard. The chain snaps, cutting a mark into my skin. I stare at the tiny charm in my palm. It went from meaning everything to meaning nothing.
I should crush it. Throw it. But my body won’t cooperate. Instead, I shove it deep into my pocket where I can’t see it. Where I don’t have to remember what I thought it meant.
The devastation sinks deeper than bone, hollowing me out from the inside.
I curl onto my side on the cold stone, empty of tears, empty of screams. Empty of everything that used to make me human.
Time dissolves. I don’t know if I lie there for minutes or hours. The sun moves overhead, but I’m lost in the darkness behind my eyelids, floating in a space where pain has no beginning and no end. Where I am nothing. Where I feel nothing.
I fade out, consciousness slipping away like water through my fingers.
Sounds begin to trickle in from somewhere far away. My mother’s voice, high with panic. Footsteps pounding up the trail.
“Bianca? BIANCA!”
Hands touch me, turn me. Mom’s face swims into view, eyes wide with terror.
“Honey, what happened? Why are you bleeding? Where’s your phone? Talk to me.”
I stare through her, past her, to the empty sky beyond. There’s nothing left inside me to give her. No words to explain the death I just experienced—not of body, but of soul.
They aren’t mine.
And I am hollow, hollow, hollow.