Chapter 38
Vee
I wake up surrounded.
Malcolm on my left, one arm heavy across my waist. Rhys on my right, his warmth a wall.
Finn curled up at the foot of the bed, already awake by the sound of his breathing, just lying there.
The nest is complete around us—every shirt, every scent, the smell of pack that I've been building without quite deciding to.
Except one.
The empty space on the other side of Malcolm where Alex would be.
I stare at the ceiling and let myself feel it. The wrongness of it. The negative space where someone should be.
Then I get up.
Downstairs is quiet. I make coffee because my hands need something to do and stand at the counter watching it brew.
They come down one by one. Finn first, then Malcolm, then Rhys. Nobody says much. Malcolm checks his phone. Sets it down. Checks it again. The second time Finn puts his hand over it on the table. He doesn’t take it, just covers it, and Malcolm leaves it there.
That's the whole morning. Just that.
The empty chair sits at the end of the table and we orbit it without meaning to, the way you leave a bruise alone.
At nine-fifteen Malcolm's phone rings.
He has it to his ear before the second ring.
"Chase,” he says. "Tell me where he is."
A pause. I can hear Chase's voice but not the words.
Malcolm's jaw tightens. "I don't need to talk first, I need the address—"
Another pause.
"Chase—"
Longer pause. Malcolm's expression shifts. Something changing in it that I can't read yet.
"Fine," he says. "Come."
He hangs up.
We all look at him.
"He found Alex," Malcolm says. "But he wants to talk first."
"About what?" Finn asks.
"He didn't say." Malcolm sets the phone down, his face blank. "He said there was an emergency meeting this morning about Alex's case."
Everything goes quiet.
"What kind of meeting," I say.
"He didn't say," Malcolm says again. "He's on his way."
The forty minutes until Chase arrives are the longest forty minutes I can remember.
Malcolm lasts about eight of them before he picks up his phone and tries to call Chase back. Finn takes the phone. Malcolm tries to take it back. Finn holds it out of reach with the patience of someone who has been doing exactly this for years.
"Give me—"
"No."
"Finn—"
"He's on his way. Calling him won't make him drive faster."
"It'll make me feel better."
"It won't." Finn puts the phone in his own pocket. "Talk about something else."
"There's nothing else."
"Then sit."
Malcolm sits but he does not sit. He taps the table with his fingers. Stands up. Sits back down. Looks at his watch. Looks at Rhys.
"Don't," Rhys says, without looking up from his coffee.
"I wasn't—"
"You were going to ask me to go look for him."
"You don't know that."
"You were."
Malcolm closes his mouth.
I put my hand over his on the table.
He stops moving.
Looks at me.
"Whatever Chase has to say," I say. "We hear it first. Okay?"
He exhales and nods. Then turns his hand over and holds mine.
We wait until the familiar car pulls up and we all exhale at once.
Chase comes in with the expression I've learned to read by now—the professional neutral that's working harder than usual. He sets his jacket over the chair and sits down, and he looks at each of us before he speaks.
"Alex's case was reopened this morning," he says. "New information."
Nobody speaks.
"Marie requested an emergency meeting with the board." He pauses. "She threw enough of a fit that they agreed to speak to her."
"Marie," Malcolm says.
"Marie." Chase laces his fingers on the table. "She had information about the night Alex was arrested. About what actually happened."
Rhys tenses beside me.
"She was there," Chase says. "She was with her mother that night. She saw everything."
"It’s been like… ten years," Malcolm says. "She would have been—"
"Young. Yes. Maybe twelve." Chase looks at Rhys briefly, then back at the table.
"She told the board that she saw the alpha who confronted her father.
That her father threw the first punch when he was called out for hitting her mother.
She said what happened was defense—of himself and of a helpless omega against her abusive mate. "
The room is quiet.
"The board pushed back," Chase continues. "Her parents are registered as betas, her mother couldn't have been an omega." He pauses. "Marie said the paperwork was falsified. That her mother was an omega in a pack that treated her badly. That her father killed her mother later in a fit of rage."
Everyone pauses as it sinks in. Her mother… murdered by her father.
I remember what Marie told us at Ragon's. Early on, before everything went wrong. That her parents were strict. That they treated her like a trophy.
"Chase," I say. "Marie told us once that her parents sold her to her first pack."
Chase nods slowly. "If what I’ve learned about her so far is true, most of what she told you is probably false but that part actually sounds likely.
She was definitely lying to the registry about her parents being betas to match the paperwork.
" He pauses. "I've been investigating Marie for months.
Before she was ever sent to Ragon's. There were patterns in her behavior that didn't fit.
But that's not what this is about right now. "
He pulls out his tablet.
"I put the board meeting on hold and pulled Marie's file.
The watermarks and stamps were fake. The entire documentation of her parents' designation was fabricated.
" He sets the tablet down. "I asked Marie if she could prove any of what she was claiming.
She said not unless I wanted to ask around the Hollows.
She claims everyone there knew her family. "
Rhys's face goes white.
I look at him.
His jaw is set, his hands flat on the table.
"That's where I found Rhys," Malcolm says. "The Hollows. That's where he was when I—" He stops.
"I know," Chase says.
The Hollows. A district on the edge of town that everyone knows by reputation and most people avoid. Shady businesses. Connections to human trafficking that go back years.
"I did check her story," Chase continues. "The man she claims is her father is currently in prison. Not just for the murder of his mate—which is documented—but for charges involving human trafficking. Both alphas and omegas."
The word sits in the room.
Rhys doesn't move.
"The board checked his file," Chase says.
"It corroborated her. Omega daughter named Marie.
And a younger son, also omega." He pauses.
"That's the only brother Marie has. The man claiming to be her brother when she was dropped off at Ragon's home isn't really related to her.
She refuses to say who he actually is at this point.
Her real brother, the omega, went missing after the father was imprisoned.
He'd been staying with a woman named Mel that claimed to be their cousin. Marie said she was no cousin of hers."
Mel. The woman to came to take over my kitchen and belittle me not long after Marie arrived at Ragon’s.
Rhys goes very still.
Chase looks at him.
"Mel," Rhys says, quiet. "She ran logistics for the ring." He looks at the table.
The silence that follows has a different quality.
Chase nods. "Marie wouldn't elaborate on Mel, but she knows more than she's saying." He pauses. "That's a thread I'm going to keep pulling."
I think about Marie at Ragon's in those early weeks, before everything became war. How she looked sometimes when she thought nobody was watching—tired in a way that didn't match how I usually saw her.
"The board," Finn says. "What did they decide?"
Chase looks at him. Then at all of us.
"After learning about the falsified paperwork, the father's criminal record and Marie's corroborating testimony—they were embarrassed.
Again." His expression is dry without quite being satisfied.
"They've been embarrassed twice now in close succession because of their omega handling.
They don't like it." He pauses. "They agreed to overturn Alex's flag, on the condition that no further incidents occur. "
Malcolm makes a sound.
"It's not a perfect condition," Chase says. "But it's real. The flag is gone."
Nobody speaks.
The flag is gone.
I sit with that. The thing that has been the wall between Alex and everything he wanted for ten years. Gone. Because Marie—Marie, who I watched destroy my life in Ragon's house for months—demanded a registry meeting and threw a fit until they listened to her.
"There's one more thing," Chase says.
He reaches into his jacket pocket and produces a folded piece of paper. He holds it out to me.
"She asked me to give this to you," he says. "I haven’t read it."
I take it.
My name is on the outside in handwriting I recognize from the grocery lists Marie used to leave on the counter at Ragon's. Neat and slightly slanted.
I unfold it.
Vee,
I did what I had to do. But I failed anyway, in the end, so you got hurt for nothing at all.
Ragon's pack was never good for you. They're too much like me. I hope your new pack is better.
I'm sorry I hurt you, Vee. I never wanted to hurt another omega. But I'd do it again. Every time.
I read it twice.
Then I fold it carefully and set it on the table in front of me.
"The last thing she said to me," Chase says. "'Vee doesn't know it, but she's one of the lucky ones. She got away.'"
The kitchen is completely silent.
"What does that mean?" Malcolm asks.
"I don't know yet," Chase says. "But I'm going to find out."
We sit with that. I sit there absorbing everything—Alex's flag lifted, Marie's cryptic note, the revelation about the Hollows, a missing omega boy, and Chase's determination to uncover the full truth.
I picture Marie standing in that registry building, demanding to be heard, her motives unknown.
Why would she help us? She had nothing to gain.
She hurt me. She'd do it again.
She also did this.
Both things. At the same time.
I think I understand that more than I expected to, but still not enough.
But Marie’s problems are hers and I have to deal with my own.
Rhys's hand finds mine under the table.
I look around at all of them. Malcolm with his jaw tight and his eyes bright. Finn with his hands wrapped around his mug, staring at nothing at all. Rhys steady beside me, like he always is.
We can rebuild.
We can have Alex back.
The thought arrives slowly, like something too big to process quickly. The flag is gone. There's no legal barrier anymore. Nothing standing between Alex and his pack. Nothing standing between Alex and me.
Nothing except Alex himself and whatever he's decided to do with his sacrifice now that the sacrifice isn't necessary.
I look at Chase.
"Take me to him," I say. "Now."
Chase looks at Malcolm. At Finn. At Rhys.
Then back at me.
"Alone," I say.
Malcolm opens his mouth.
"Alone," I say again.
He closes it.
Chase gives a single nod, pushes back from the table, and retrieves his jacket from the chair behind him.
I follow him to the door.
Behind me I hear Malcolm say something low to Finn and Finn's quiet response. Then the sound of Rhys not saying anything at all, which means he's already decided this is right and is letting it be.
I get in Chase's car.
We drive.