Chapter Sixteen
T he distress pheromones hit me like a wall as they spoke to me, so thick I could almost taste the acrid tang of fear on my tongue. It coated the back of my throat, tightening around my chest until I sat frozen, my body trembling with the force of emotions I'd tried so hard to outrun.
My eyes flicked around the open space, taking in the furrow between Blake's brows. They halted mid-motion as I stood up, heads swiveling to face me. For a long, drawn-out moment, no one moved, the air seeming to vibrate with relief and apprehension.
Blake recovered first. He took a measured step toward me, then another, approaching with the caution one might use with a skittish, wounded animal. In some ways, I suppose that's what I was, an omega broken by a world intent on caging me. His hand lifted, hovering a hairsbreadth from my shoulder, not quite touching. The heat of his palm seeped through my thin shirt, and I fought the urge to lean into that radiating warmth.
"We thought something happened to you," he said, his usual smooth voice roughened with an emotion I couldn't name. Concern, perhaps, fear even? Genuine fear, not just the instinctive need to shelter and shield that all alphas felt toward omegas. This was deeper.
A shudder rippled through me, tears stinging my eyes and blurring my view of his chiseled face. I blinked hard, a few drops escaping to trail down my cold cheeks. My breath hitched on a shallow, suppressed sob, the tight bands constricting my lungs, unraveling thread by thread.
I'd spent so long running, hiding, keeping myself closed off from any connections that could be exploited and used against me. But seeing them like this, scenting the edges of anguish beneath the surface of their strength, I realized I couldn't do it anymore. Couldn't keep them at arm's length, couldn't keep fleeing from the tentative trust and unspoken feelings growing between us with each passing day.
Blake's resolve crumbled as my first tear coated my lips, finally closing the distance, curving his arm around my shoulder and drawing me in until my face pressed into the solid wall of his chest. The crisp scent of him, the warm scent of his skin beneath the cotton, filled my nostrils, chasing away the lingering fear. His arms folded around me, engulfing me in safety and comfort, even as I shook with the force of my quiet cries.
I don't know how long he held me, one hand cradling the back of my head while the other rubbed soothing circles down my spine; deep purrs echoing through his chest. Long enough for the sharpest edges of my terror to dull, for my breathing to even out, and for my tears to slow. Long enough for me to gather the tattered remains of my courage.
Slowly, I uncurled from his embrace, though I didn't step out of the circle of his arms. Zach and Anders had drawn closer, radiating protective concern mixed with cautious relief. I met each of their gazes, seeing my pained understanding mirrored there.
I couldn't keep doing this to them or myself. They deserved better than half-truths and evasions. They deserved to know why the shadows never seemed to leave my eyes, why I shied away from any mention of my past. Why I jumped at sudden noises and flinched from certain touches.
Swallowing hard, I forced the words past the lump in my throat, my voice thready but determined.
"I need to tell you something."
WHEN WE ARRIVED AT the penthouse, I perched on the edge of the living room couch, spine rigid and hands clasped in my lap to hide their trembling. Across from me, the alphas had arranged themselves in a loose semicircle. Anders on the low coffee table, knees almost brushing mine, Zach sat loosely on the plush rug, and Blake stood with his shoulder blades pressed to the wall, arms crossed over his broad chest.
Three pairs of eyes pinned me in place, their gazes sharp as claws and just as unrelenting. The tension rolled off them in waves. Tight jaws, clenched fists, a restless shifting of weight that betrayed the calm they tried so hard to wear. They didn’t touch me. Not yet. But their presence crowded the air, thick and heavy, like a storm waiting to break.
Each second dragged, stretching thin over the pounding in my ears. My hands wouldn’t stay still. Fingers coiling tight, nails digging into my skin as if the pain could ground me. Words tangled at the back of my throat; caught on old scars, I didn’t dare show. I swallowed hard, but it only made the fear worse.
A soft, broken whine slipped out before I could stop it.
Anders flinched like he’d been struck, his hands jerking toward me before freezing mid-reach. His scent spiked, the chaotic nature of flowing water as it threatened to drown me in its wake.
I clenched my jaw, forcing air through my teeth like it was the only way to stay upright. And when I finally spoke, the sound scraped out of me, thin and torn, barely more than a shadow of a voice.
"It happened when I was sixteen."
The words tore free before I could stop them. Ragged and breathless, splintered things that tasted like blood and ash on my tongue. I didn’t speak them so much as bled them out, a flood of memories I’d buried deep, too deep. But now they came clawing their way to the surface, sharp-edged and screaming.
I told them about the night the rogue alphas came.
Not told—no, I saw it again, felt it in my bones. The creak of floorboards right before the crash, wood shattering as the door exploded inward. Their silhouettes filled the frame, hulking and hungry, eyes gleaming like coals in the dark before they dragged me outside in nothing more than a nightie. Heat-slick musk rolled off them in waves. Predatory, choking. Turning the air thick and wrong. I could still taste it, coating the back of my throat like rot.
I was just a girl. Just an omega barely ripe.
My first heat had come like a curse.
I remembered crawling under the rusted skeleton of our old car, its belly caked in oil and dirt. Gravel carved into my skin, my knees and palms raw and stinging. I held my breath so long my chest screamed for air, but I didn’t dare make a sound. Not with my mother crying out. Not with that sound, that wet sound, flesh giving under bone.
My father’s growl had been guttural, frantic. But it hadn’t stopped them. Nothing did.
Laughter, low and cruel, rippled through the house. Pleas turned to sobs. Sobs to silence. And the silence was worse.
I blinked hard, but their faces blurred anyway. Not the rogues. Them . My three alphas in front of me now. Their horror mirrored my own, but it didn’t matter. My vision twisted, doubled, their features swallowed by memories.
I saw my father stumble, jaw slack from a blow so violent his head snapped back like a rag doll. My mother’s face... Gods, her eyes . Locked on mine, even through the dark. Bright with terror. Burning with love.
“ Run, baby .” Her lips moved in silence, painted with blood.
And then the crack, sharp and final, and the sound of her body hitting the earth like a sack of meat.
The sharp drag of breath hit my lungs like a slap, dragging me back from the edge, from blood and gravel and gunshot echoes. The present snapped into place, the air in the room thick and trembling.
They were still there. Still watching me.
Blake looked like he might tear the world apart with his bare hands. His lips peeled back in a snarl that didn’t belong on a man. It belonged to something wild and ancient. His chest rose and fell like he was barely keeping the beast in check, fingers twitching at his sides, hungry to crush. If someone had walked through that door, he wouldn’t have waited for a name... he’d have buried them.
Zach's half-smile had vanished. His mouth was pressed into a thin, hard line that brought out the sharp angles of his jaw. His scent had soured with rage, acrid and electric.
And Anders...
It was Anders who broke something in me.
His eyes glistened, not with pity. Never that. But with a pain that mirrored mine. He didn't move, didn't speak, but I could feel it pouring off him, both thick and suffocating. It wasn’t just empathy. It was understanding, like my words had torn open something inside him too.
The silence pulsed between us, heavy with all the things they didn’t say. Rage crawled the walls like insanity, restrained only by the years they’d spent learning how to leash their instincts. But it was there. Just beneath the surface. Primal. Violent. Mine.
And I hated the part of me that wanted it.
My throat worked, dry and raw, and the tiny sound of swallowing felt too loud in the charged stillness.
"I ran," I whispered, shame and terror mingling bitterly on my tongue. "I ran, and I didn't stop. I couldn't... I lost everything. My parents, my home, any chance at a normal life."
My lungs seized, icy bands tightening around my ribs. I sucked in fast, unsteady breaths, fighting the encroaching touch of panic as I forced myself to continue.
"I've spent the last two years hiding. Never staying in one place too long, never letting anyone get close." A shuddering inhale, a half-sob. "I couldn't risk them finding me. Couldn't risk someone else getting hurt because of what I am."
The truth of it hung in the air, surrounding us. My biggest secret, my greatest shame, laid bare at the feet of the only three people who'd started to crack the ice around my broken heart.
I watched them from beneath damp lashes, waiting for the condemnation, the pity, the disgust I'd always feared. But it never came. Instead, something shifted in their postures, a subtle unfurling of muscles and clenched jaws.
In that moment, sitting with the ragged pieces of my past scattered between us, I felt the first stirrings of something I'd thought lost to me forever... hope.
The alphas' fury was a tangible force in the silence following my revelation. Their ragged breaths and tense muscles betrayed the protective rage boiling just beneath the surface. The air crackled with it, and I felt myself tense in response, even as some small, vulnerable part of me yearned to burrow into the safety of their anger, to let it shield me from the demons of my past.
Blake's growl exploded through the silence. A grating, feral sound that sent shivers racing down my spine. His perfect blue eyes flashed with anger. His features sharpened as his lips peeled in a snarl. Beside him, Anders sucked in a sharp breath, one hand shooting out to grip Blake's forearm in warning even as a matching rumble built in his own chest. Zach shifted with predatory grace, body angling to put himself between me and the perceived threat, a low snarl weaving between his clenched teeth.
The force of their combined aggression was staggering, a primal tsunami that battered against the flimsy walls of my composure. A choked whimper caught in my throat, and their gazes snapped to me, identical expressions of dismay flickering across their faces as they registered my fear.
As if a switch had been flipped, the violent tension drained from their bodies, jaws unclenching as they attempted to gentle their demeanor. The growls and snarls petered into soothing croons, a soft symphony of comforting notes that settled over my skin like a weighted blanket. An irrepressible shudder wracked my frame as the furious pressure eased.
"That's why I've been so afraid," I confessed brokenly, the words tasting like shattered glass on my tongue. Hot tears spilled down my cheeks, salt stinging the delicate flesh beneath my eyes. "I don't want to be controlled or forced into something. I can't..."
My voice cracked and splintered, and Anders was suddenly kneeling before me, stormy eyes brimming with compassionate warmth. His palms engulfed my icy hands, chafing gently until pins and needles chased away the numbness.
"I can help you work through this trauma, if you'll let me," he murmured, holding my gaze like it was an anchor mooring him to the earth. "Not just as a therapist, but as someone who loves you, Summer. Deeply." My bottom lip wavered again.
The raw conviction in his tone wrapped around my lungs, squeezing until my next exhale burst out on a ragged sob. Zach swooped in to perch on the couch at my side, one arm draping ever so carefully over the quivering slope of my shoulders.
"I swear to you, Summer, on everything I hold dear. I will never force you into anything, princess. Not now, not ever." The uncharacteristic seriousness that was etched into the lines of his face ignited a spark low in my stomach, an ember of hope that bloomed inside.
And then Blake was there, lowering his hulking frame to cradle me from behind, pull me into his chest, kissing the top of my head. "None of us would ever force you into anything," he stated, quiet but certain. “You’re safe with us, sweetheart. Always and forever.”
The combined weight of their sincerity crashed over me like a tidal wave, and I sucked in a shuddering breath, filling my lungs with the intoxicating blend of their combined scents. Turning my face into the warm curve of Blake's throat, I instantly soothed, drawing the rich, woodsy musk deep into my body.
My nostrils flared. Tipping my head back, I exposed the silken length of my throat in an unmistakable gesture of trust. It sent ripples of tension reverberating through their powerful frames.
I let my eyes flutter closed and breathed them in again. Blake's soft lips skimmed my hairline, and a line of tender kisses pressed over my cheeks. Large hands cradled me, steadying me as I trembled with the force of my emotions. My body began to heat in response, curled in the desire for their touch, their knot. A whimper left my lips, a need for more. But they knew. They knew not to push anything, that the time would come when I begged for all of them.
My senses swam with the heady incense of their musk. The whisper of their reassurances filled the spaces between my rattling breaths and pounding heartbeats, until I eased into a sense of harmony. Of home.