Chapter 38
ELI
My shoulder still remembers where Jess bit me.
Almost three days, and the mark’s shifted from red to deep violet, yellow edging in like a bruise learning to fade. It twinges when I move—more memory than pain. Warm. Alive.
I keep catching myself touching it through my shirt, tracing the curve of her teeth.
I shouldn’t like it this much, but I do.
Most people come back from time off looking tan and relaxed. I come back marked, half-feral, pretending the hum of Nexus feels normal again, even though it doesn’t. Not after discovering what this place possibly did to Jess’s sister and letting Blake skate by if what my gut says is true.
And the fact that Jess could’ve been picked by Blake if I hadn’t rushed her file through to come with us for the ninety-day trial. My pulse goes cold, then hot.
For a second, I can taste blood in the back of my throat. If he’d gotten her… I don’t know what I would’ve done, but it wouldn’t have been legal.
The thought leaves a tremor under my skin. I shove it down, layer by layer, until I’m just… numb again. Nexus likes its people calm and efficient. So fine. I can be that. At least on the surface.
The building’s got that same sterile chill—bleach, recycled air, copper undercurrent that tastes like old wires. Fluorescents buzz overhead, a half-step off pitch, and makes my jaw tense. Even my badge smells wrong. Jess’s scent clung to my hoodie so long it rewired what “home” smells like.
I swipe in. The scanner flashes green, the door clicks open, and I step back into the hive. Rows of cubicles hum with quiet desperation and burnt coffee. I drop into mine, wake the monitor, and let the blue light hit my face.
I should be catching up on reports. The heat leave doesn’t count against my PTO since it’s a biological necessity. But I burned through all my actual vacay time at the bay.
But I’m not here for reports, I’m here for Sabrina.
Easier to dig from inside Nexus than from home—the firewalls are thicker, the data quieter. Nobody watches the guy who never breaks the rules.
My shoulder tightens when I lean forward, fabric grazing the bite. The pressure steadies me, a pulse of warmth under my palm.
For a second, I see her again—eyes dark, breath shaky, skin flushed. The world narrowing to scent and pulse and the sharp, sweet pain of being wanted back. Not just tolerated. Not just useful. Wanted. The way she looked at me like I was exactly what she needed, Beta or not.
I drag in a breath, shake it off, and start typing.
Sabrina Mancini. Enter.
Let’s see what’s left of her.
The search window blinks, cursor steady like it’s waiting for me to screw up. Then an error message appears: No Omega found.
My stomach drops. I type Sabrina’s name again, slower this time, like maybe I got it wrong. Sabrina Mancini.
Restricted.
That’s worse. “No Omega found” could mean a clerical error. “Restricted” means someone doesn’t want her found.
So I check around to make sure my other Nexus’s coworkers are busy, and I use my backdoor to get into the servers.
Just a single entry, date-stamped over seven years ago.
March 12.
Trial assignment initiated.
Alpha: ——— [redacted]
There’s a picture of Sabrina, and my heart stops.
Same dark eyes. Same stubborn jaw. Same way of holding her chin up like she’s daring the camera to try her. She looks so much like Jess that for a disorienting second, I think someone uploaded the wrong file—that I’m looking at Jess seven years ago, younger and harder around the edges.
No one could doubt they’re sisters.
Which explains Blake’s reaction to her and what she told us when they first met at the banquet.
But then there’s nothing else.
End record.
That’s it. No notes. No termination summary. No incident report, which every case is supposed to have—even if someone quits, transfers, or dies.
I’ve seen files for Omegas who moved to different states, changed their names, got married, and disappeared into suburbia. Those files have something. Transfer requests. Exit interviews. Forwarding addresses for final paychecks.
Sabrina has eight words and a photo.
I scroll, expecting lag. Expecting something to load. But the screen just sits there, indifferent, humming in soft blue.
“Come on,” I mutter, leaning closer.
I bypass the archive filters, route through internal indexing—basic stuff. The kind of access I shouldn’t technically have, but nobody notices. My pulse picks up anyway.
Pages flicker. Blank.
The deeper I go, the cleaner it gets—like someone sterilized her existence that even Jess’s parents and lawyers couldn’t get anywhere.
I find one document half-buried in a subfolder tagged Family Contact Log. The scan’s rough, black lines fading, handwritten note barely legible:
Parents arrived again, requesting access to records. Third visit this month. Inquiry denied. Case closed as voluntary departure with assigned Alpha partner.
They kept coming back. Kept asking. And Nexus kept lying to their faces.
I sit back, jaw tight. Seven years ago, an Omega walked through these doors, then vanished.
My fingers hover over the keyboard, then move again, faster. I check timestamps. Pull internal memos. Nothing. Whoever scrubbed this knew what they were doing. There’s no trace left except the smell of bleach and the way my gut twists.
I rub my shoulder absently. The bruise warms under my touch, a quiet pulse through the fabric. Jess’s mark—hers, not Nexus’s. Proof she wanted me, even in Heat, when most Omegas wouldn’t look twice at a Beta—especially one who shares a bed with her Alpha.
But the longer I stare at Sabrina’s empty file, the more I feel the walls closing in.
How many others got “assigned” and never came back?
I trace the chain of authorization. A name flashes for half a second before the system boots me out.
Director-Level Override. Access Revoked.
The cursor blinks at me again, like it’s laughing.
I lean back in my chair.
Fine. If they want to hide ghosts, I’ll learn where they buried them.
The bruise throbs once, hard.
Feels like an answer.
I log back in through a side route—one I built when I first started, just in case curiosity ever outweighed common sense. It does. A lot.
The internal network looks the same: clean interface, soft blue light, the illusion of order. But under it? Ghost code. Hidden trails. People like me are supposed to pretend not to notice.
I open the personnel master list, fingers flying. My pulse steadies into the rhythm of keys. There has to be something else.
Another subfolder flashes open—buried deep enough that only someone who knew how the file architecture used to be laid out would even think to look there.
Inside: one document.
Project Compliance Audit – Subject S.M.
I click.
The file opens halfway, then fragments—text dissolving into static lines. But I catch enough to make my stomach twist.
Behavioral metrics within normal range. Initial pairing deemed compatible. Transfer requested by supervising Alpha due to unanticipated bond intensity. Request approved.
Then the screen blanks out.
Bond intensity.
Transfer requested.
Approved.
Approved by whom?
I scroll back to the header, but the authorization line’s scrubbed clean. Whoever wiped this didn’t just delete data—they wanted it to look like the decision never existed.
I try the recovery protocol.
No luck.
All I get is a mirror message: Access restricted. Director-level authorization required.
My reflection stares back in the screen—tired eyes, unshaven jaw, bruise half-hidden beneath my collar. I look like I belong here. Maybe that’s the scariest part.
This isn’t just some clerical oversight. Someone wanted Sabrina gone.
If they could erase one Omega this completely, what stops them from erasing another?
Not her. Not Jess.
So I cross-reference Blake Callighan in the database. He comes up as a star-Alpha with no Omega match on the surface. Clean record. Glowing recommendations. Perfect compliance scores.
But when I dig deeper, past the PR and into the archive layer most people don’t know exists, there’s redacted files. Half a dozen of them. All tagged with the same phrase: Incident resolved. No action required.
Shit.
He’s done this before. At least six times before, maybe more. And Nexus let him.
I minimize the window, mask my trail, and start a transfer of my own—encrypted copy, mislabeled Expense Reports Q1.
My cursor hovers over the last open file. It’s all fragmented text and half-erased metadata, but it’s something. Enough.
I plug in a flash drive from my pocket—plain black, no label—and start copying everything that isn’t nailed down. Audit logs. Transfer approvals. The half-loaded photo of Sabrina.
I add the cruise footage, too—the one Cassian pulled from that news forum, timestamped the same week she vanished.
It’s not much, but it’s a start.
When I hand this over, I want it airtight. And I’m not doing it alone. Jess deserves to see the truth. So do the others.
If Nexus wants to pretend ghosts don’t exist, they’re about to get haunted.
It took damn near two months for the prosecution to pull everything together—witness lists, surveillance, the forensics from the cruise. Every update felt like a step closer to justice for Jess… and a step closer to a deadline none of us wanted to think about.
After that, waiting for the trial became its own form of hell. Weeks of paperwork, interviews, late-night calls from detectives, all of us pretending we were fine while life kept moving like nothing had blown apart.
Only reason the court date came as fast as it did was because Blake’s father pushed for it—figuring a shorter runway would give the prosecution less time to bury them. Man underestimated just how bad the evidence already was.