Chapter 22
Jasper
Arden's office is on the third floor of the Omega Protection Agency building. It’s a corner office with big windows. The kind of space that says he's good at what he does.
I stand outside the door for a full minute before I knock.
My phone has seventeen missed calls from him and twenty-three unread texts. The most recent one just says: Please.
I've been avoiding him since Vee's heat. Since she ended up on that porch alone, burning up, vulnerable, while I was fifty feet away doing nothing.
I knock.
"Come in."
He sounds steady. Professional. The tone he uses with clients.
Not with me.
Never with me.
I open the door.
Arden is behind his desk. Dark hair pushed back like he's been running his hands through it in frustration, eyes focused, button-down with the sleeves rolled up and no tie.
He looks tired.
The tension in the room is immediate. Thick enough to choke on.
"Jasper." He says my name like a statement. An accusation.
"Hey."
"Sit."
I sit.
The silence stretches. He doesn't fill it. He just watches me with those sharp eyes that see too much.
"Why have you been avoiding me?" he asks finally.
The question is simple. The answer isn't.
I look at the desk between us. At the files stacked there, the legal pads covered in his handwriting, the framed photo in the corner I can't see from this angle but know is there.
"Guilt," I say.
"About Vee."
"Yeah."
Arden leans back in his chair and studies me. "You did what Chase asked. You stayed in that pack and you built the case."
"That's not all I did."
The words come out before I've decided to say them.
Arden goes still.
"What do you mean?"
I look at him. At the face I've known for over a decade. The man who slid into a library chair at two in the morning and fixed my citations without being asked and never really left after that.
"Do you remember," I say slowly, "sophomore year? That seminar on omega autonomy?"
Arden's brow furrows slightly. "Of course."
"You stayed up all night helping me with my thesis. The one about registry reform and the fundamental right of omegas to choose their own futures." I pause. "You told me my argument was good. That my instinct for this was right."
"I meant it."
"I know." I exhale. "I've spent my whole life believing what I wrote in that thesis. That omegas deserve better. That alphas have a responsibility. That the system is broken and needs to be fought. It’s why I work took a job at the one place the system is most broken.
To maybe find a way to help from the inside.
" My voice comes out rough. "I built my identity around that belief.
It was the thing I was most sure of about myself. "
"Jasper—"
"I'm leaving the pack," I say. "When this is over. When the hearing is done and Vee is somewhere safe, I'm walking away."
The color drains from his face.
"What?"
"I've made up my mind. You can tell Chase for me. Or not, and I'll tell him myself."
He's out of his chair before I finish the sentence, moving around the desk. He stops in front of me, arms crossed, and the professional calm is entirely gone.
"Explain yourself," he says. "Right now."
His growl seeps into his words.
It makes my spine want to curve. Makes every instinct in me scream to submit to the more powerful alpha.
I look up at him.
"You know what Chase told me to do during Marie's heat," I say.
"He told me to stay in that room. To keep Ragon from bonding Marie.
I had my hand on the door—I was going to leave; I was going to go check on Vee—and Ragon threatened to kick me out again.
Chase sent me the text after I asked and I stayed. "
"Yes," Arden says. "That part I know."
"What I've never told Chase," I say. "What I've never told anyone…"
Arden waits.
"The rut hit me," I say flatly. "I'd been in that room for days with Marie's heat hormones. Three alphas already deep in it. And Ragon—" I stop. Exhale. "He saw it happening and he used it. He pushed Marie toward me and she was in heat and I was already—"
I stop.
My hands are shaking. I press them flat against my thighs.
"I slept with her," I say. The confession hangs in the air between us, heavy and irretrievable. "I broke our promise. The one the three of us made. That we'd never sleep with an omega. Not unless she was ours."
The silence after that is a different kind.
Arden doesn't move.
"I know what that promise meant," I say.
"I know what it cost all three of us to make it.
I know how long you and Chase have held to it.
" I sound like I’m fraying at the edges now.
"I believed in it. I still believe in it.
The idea that there's something sacred about saving that for the person you're supposed to have.
That it means something." I shake my head.
"And I broke it. In a rut, in a room I shouldn't have been in, with an omega who wasn't mine. Because I wasn't strong enough."
Arden is still standing in front of me. Still not moving.
"So not only did I stand by and fail Vee," I continue, "not only did I keep myself at arm's length from her because I was scared and I called it principle when it was cowardice—" My voice drops. "I ruined myself anyway. For nothing. For an omega I didn't even love."
I look up at him.
"You and Chase deserve an omega. You've waited for her. You've held to the promise. You've done everything right." My throat closes. "I won't stand in your pack as the alpha who failed and make you carry that weight when you could have something clean. I won't take that from you."
For a long moment Arden doesn't speak.
Then he moves.
He's in front of me in two steps and his hands frame my face before I can draw another breath.
"Stop," he says.
Low. Controlled. The register he keeps beneath everything else, the one that makes the air in the room change.
"Arden—"
"Stop talking and listen to me."
His thumbs press against my jaw. His eyes are right there, close enough that I can see all of it—the anger, the grief, and something underneath both that I don't have a name for.
"You listen to me," he says. "Because I am only going to say this once and you are going to hear it."
I wait.
"You were in an impossible situation. You were in rut, in a room full of heat hormones, with two alphas already gone and a pack lead who deliberately engineered the conditions to break you.
" He sounds controlled but barely. "If it had been me in that room, if it had been Chase…
do you think the result would have been different? "
"You're stronger than—"
"I am not stronger than a rut I didn't choose in a situation I couldn't control.
" His grip tightens slightly. "And if the positions were reversed, if it had been me or Chase who'd broken the promise under those exact conditions—would you be sitting here telling us to leave the pack? Would you, Jas?"
The question hits.
I don't answer.
"Would you?"
"No," I say, barely audible.
"No." He repeats it. "You would not. You would say exactly what I'm saying to you now. That we're human. That we're alpha. That being alpha doesn't mean being made of stone. That one moment under impossible pressure doesn't define what we are."
His forehead drops to mine.
"You have spent your entire adult life fighting for omegas," he says, quieter now.
Still the dominance in it but something warmer running underneath.
"You wrote the thesis at twenty. You went undercover.
You spent months in that house watching someone suffer and you did everything Chase asked because you believed it was right. You did not walk away."
"I should have done more. I was afraid to get too close to her when she was probably destined to go to Alex's pack. I was a coward. I didn't want to fall in love. But I should have done more."
"Yes," he says plainly. "And you know that. And you'll carry it. But carrying it doesn't mean destroying yourself. It doesn't mean walking away from the people who love you."
"The promise—"
"Is something we made together," he says, firm. "And the three of us decide together what it means. What counts and what doesn't. That's not your call alone to make." He pulls back just enough to look at me. "And I'm telling you my call."
Then his mouth is on mine.
The kiss hits like everything held back for too long finally given somewhere to go. Months of distance compressed into this. His hands move from my face to my shoulders and I clench my fists in his shirt because I need something to hold onto.
He kisses me like an argument I can't counter.
When he pulls back we're both breathing hard. He stays close, hands on my shoulders, eyes on mine.
He grinds down against my lap. Deliberate. I'm already hard and he knows it.
Then his mouth is at my neck. Teeth. Enough to sting. Enough to leave something I'll feel tomorrow.
Finally he pulls back.
"You are not leaving this pack," he says. Each word its own sentence. "I am not losing you over something that happened in a room Ragon built to break you. I am not letting your guilt cost us years of everything we've been working toward. You deserve an omega. Say it."
I shake my head.
His dominance flares. The growl is back. "Say it now."
The command in his voice makes my throat close up.
"I deserve an omega," I force out.
The words taste like a lie.
He presses his lips to my forehead. Then he steps back, goes around his desk, and sits down.
He picks up his pen, the professional mask back in place like the last twenty minutes didn't happen.
"I'll see you next week," he says. "Don't be late."
I stand on shaky legs and walk to the door.
"Jasper."
I stop.
His expression is open. Soft in the way it only ever goes for me.
"I meant what I said. I'm not losing you."
I nod.
Then I leave.
The walk back to Ragon's house takes twenty minutes.
I spend it thinking about everything he said.
About the thesis, and what I told him. How he looked at me when I said it and didn't flinch.
Arden is good. He's always been good. He saw the best version of me when I was twenty years old in a library and he's never stopped seeing it even when I can't find it myself.
That's why I have to go.
Because he deserves that version. The one who wrote the thesis. The one who kept the promise. The one who never wavered.
Not this. Not what I’ve become.
I lied to him.
Not in words he can point to. He didn't ask directly if I was staying and I didn't say I was. But I let his certainty land on me and I nodded. I let his mouth on mine mean what it always means, and I did not tell him the truth.
I'm still going to leave.
I reach Ragon's house as the sun is setting.
Eli is in the kitchen. He looks up when I come in.
"How'd it go?" he asks.
I sit at the table and drop my head into my hands.
"That good, huh?"
"I told him I'm leaving the pack. When this is over."
Eli is quiet. "What did he say?"
"He told me I wasn't."
"And?"
I look up. "And I agreed. To make him stop."
Eli holds my gaze for a long moment. "You're still going to leave."
"Yes."
He doesn't argue. He knows me well enough not to.
The kitchen settles into quiet, shadows stretching as the last light fades outside.
"Jasper," he says finally.
"Yeah."
"You know this is punishment, not principle or sacrifice." He says it carefully. "This is you deciding you don't get to have what you want because you made a mistake."
I look at him.
I don't argue because he's right.
But I'm doing it anyway.
Because Arden and Chase deserve their dream of an omega. They've held to what they promised. They've waited and built something worth having.
I won't be the reason they don't get it.
I go to my room and lay on the bed in the dark.
My phone buzzes.
A text from Arden: I love you. We're going to figure this out.
I read it three times. I don't delete it.
I just set the phone face down on the mattress and sit in the silence, holding the weight of what I've already decided.
Arden is going to be furious when he finds out the truth of it.
He's going to say I'm punishing myself.
He's going to be right.
And it still isn't going to change anything.
Because Arden deserves better than what I am right now. So does Chase.
I'm starting to think the hardest thing I'll ever do isn't staying in that room during Marie's heat.
It's walking out of Arden's pack knowing I finally told him the truth and he forgave me anyway.
And choosing to leave despite it.