Chapter thirteen
Garrett
There’s a trick to not thinking about what you want.
It only works if you don’t let yourself notice what you’re doing.
The trick is to focus on everything else.
The angle of the steering wheel in your hands, the rattle of a loose dashboard vent, how the morning sun hits the passenger window.
You let your mind chew on details—anything to keep from fixating on the simple, biological urge to reach across the cab of the truck and hold the hand of the omega sitting next to you.
Lily’s in the passenger seat, hood up even though it’s not cold in here, knees drawn close.
She’s smaller than she was when she arrived.
Her sweater pooling around her wrists, the bones of her hands pronounced and white against the denim of her jeans.
Lately, she looks like she’s bracing for an impact that never comes.
We don’t talk for most of the drive. The silence is different from the silence at home. In here, it’s private, like the air in the cab belongs to us and nobody else can get in. Out there, silence means you’re waiting for someone to break.
I want to say something. Ask if she slept. Ask if the headaches are better, or if the soup I left in the fridge last night helped at all. Instead, I clear my throat, soft as I can.
“How’s the pain?”
She keeps her gaze on the window. “Not as bad as yesterday.”
“Sleeping?”
She shrugs. “A little.”
Liar. Her scent is flat and gray, like old paper. No nuance, none of the bright or sweet notes that would mean she’s stable. You can lie with your voice, but not your scent. I still want to lean toward that scent. My alpha is screaming at me to.
“You should eat,” I say, because it’s the only thing I have to offer. “After.”
“I know.” A pause. “I just… It’s hard.”
I let that settle. The road curves around a grove of eucalyptus and the light shifts, dappling the dashboard in pale green and gold. I grip the wheel a little tighter.
In my head, I picture how things could be.
Lily in the pack room, in the nest we built with Miles, her pain melting away under our hands.
Gabriel tucking her in at night, reading something dry and boring to her until she fell asleep.
Cyrus patting her back, like he does when he doesn’t know how else to help.
Me making pancakes on Sunday morning and her actually showing up, hungry, smiling, alive.
The fantasy burns hot and fast, then gutters out.
Because I know what comes after. I see it, as clear as the sky: Miles curled up in the corner of the nest, trembling, unable to breathe because the scent of another omega is everywhere.
Miles’s face when he realizes he’s been replaced.
Miles shattering like he did three years ago, only this time there’s nothing left to rebuild.
We’d be the ones who broke him permanently, and there’s no forgiveness for that.
It doesn’t matter how much I ache for Lily. Wanting her is a betrayal of the omega I already have. The omega I already have even if he still refuses to let any of his alphas mark him.
We pull into the parking lot at the OPA for Lily’s appointment with the specialist. The building’s nice, glass and concrete, with a lobby full of carefully chosen art that’s supposed to make you feel calm.
The waiting room is already half-full: a handful of omegas, some young, some old, with alphas hovering at their elbows.
A few betas, too, their faces buried in their phones. Nobody’s talking.
I check Lily in at the desk. The nurse behind the glass doesn’t even look up—just points to a clipboard and pushes it toward me.
“Have a seat. We’re running a few minutes behind.”
We sit in the back row. I keep my hands folded on my knees, careful not to let my knee touch hers, even though the chairs are too close together and her thigh is right there. She keeps her arms tucked, shoulders hunched, gaze fixed on the floor.
There’s a bonded pair across from us—a big alpha with his hand on his omega’s knee, thumb tracing lazy circles.
The omega’s head rests on the alpha’s shoulder.
They look relaxed, at ease with each other, easy contact that’s nothing and everything at the same time.
It should be the most normal thing in the world. It is, for everyone but us.
I remember the Whitfield pack. How Ren’s hand kept sliding to Lily’s body, how I had to sit there and smile through it, pretend I wasn’t two seconds from putting my fist through the wall. Or his face. The rage I felt wasn’t just protective. It was possessive. Mine. You don’t touch what’s mine.
Except she’s not mine. Not really. She can’t be.
“Lily?” The nurse calls her name. We both stand. Lily moves first, fast, like she’s afraid if she waits she’ll lose her spot. I long to follow, but that’s not allowed.
So I wait.
There’s a magazine on the table in front of me. I don’t read it. I turn the pages, one after another, until I get to the end, then start over.
Forty minutes pass. My leg bounces. I count the number of times the alpha across the room touches his omega (thirty-six) and the number of times the omega leans into it (every time).
I wonder how long it would take, if I started now, to undo the damage done to the girl in the office. A lifetime, maybe.
A long time later, the nurse pokes her head out. “Mr. Santos?”
I get up, smooth my jeans, follow her down the hall and into an office.
A man waits at the desk, sleeves rolled up. He rises as I enter, extending his hand. “Dr. Arden Hale.” His voice is lower than I expected. The scent of warm amber rolls off him—authoritative, not threatening.
“She’s in the restroom,” he says. “I asked her to wait in the lobby when she’s finished so we can have a word. Have a seat please.”
I do. The office is neat, everything in its place. There’s a tray of stress balls on the credenza, a box of tissues, and a jar of lollipops that makes me wonder if he works with younger omegas too.
He doesn’t bother with pleasantries.
“Your Lily is in trouble,” he says. “Let me start by saying that she’s given me permission to speak with you about her condition and requested to not be present for it. I think she’s a bit overwhelmed at the moment.”
I nod. “Okay.”
“Her blood pressure is low, her temperature’s borderline hypothermic, her scent is rapidly suppressing.
” He steeples his hands. “This is more than just physical, her mental state is not good either. I suggested clinical alpha exposure to help with her symptoms, but she’s not receptive to the idea.
Even I am hesitant to push it in her particular case but she’s going to need intervention sooner rather than later. ”
I brace myself. “I know. Gabriel, my lead, told me she refused with her regular doctor as well. She’s afraid to attach to an alpha who won’t keep her.”
“She’s wise and she knows herself. This would almost certainly happen.
Attachment to alphas is hardwired into omegas—it’s how they survive.
And Lily has been without consistent touch for a long time.
Her omega will latch onto any stable source of comfort it can find.
It’s the same reason omegas in abusive packs don’t leave—they’re bonded to the very alphas hurting them.
She’s right to be cautious. The problem with clinical exposure isn’t the contact itself.
It’s what happens when it stops. And it always stops.
You get a window of relief, then a harder crash than before when it’s over.
In some cases it accelerates the deterioration rather than slowing it.
For it to actually help her, it would have to be ongoing. She needs a permanent pack.”
“She doesn’t have any other options right now,” I say.
Arden gives me a long look. “She’s living with her scent matches, isn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“Are you—“ he hesitates, then says, “are you touching her? Bonding?”
“No. She’s not ours.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Her omega doesn’t know that. At a biological level, she’s already bonded to you. Introducing outside alpha contact may not even register. Her body knows what it wants, and if it’s not getting it, the system breaks down. She’s deteriorating fast.”
I want to argue, but there’s nothing to argue.
“Has she had contact with other alphas?”
The Whitfield alphas flash behind my eyes. “She went on a date recently. One of the alphas was… touchy.”
“And how did she respond?”
My shoulders drop. “She didn’t like it.”
Dr. Arden nods like he’s not surprised. “Because that wasn’t one of the alphas her omega is screaming for.
She’s at a point where her instincts are pushing her to the fastest way to recover.
There’s nothing faster than getting care from your pack.
This makes me think a clinical setup may not even work for her at all.
We could force it, yes, and her body would respond to an alpha the more she’s exposed to them.
But if she latches on to an alpha she can’t keep… ”
He’s silent a moment, thinking.
“What she really needs is almost round-the-clock alpha care from her matched pack,” Arden goes on. “Soon. If this keeps up, she’ll be hospitalized within a couple of months. Maybe less. If she goes into heat before this is resolved… we’re looking at an even bigger issue.”
I run a hand through my hair. “We’re trying to get her placed. Gabriel’s working every angle. But she didn’t like the one pack she met. And a lot of the packs we’ve contacted aren’t interested because of her history. Plus she obviously doesn’t want to go.”
“She’s dying,” Arden says, not unkindly. “She may not want to go, but she has to if your pack really isn’t going to help her.”
She’s dying. And we’re letting it happen.
I swallow. “What would happen if—hypothetically—her matches touched her? Would it make a difference?”
I don’t know why I asked. I already know the answer. I guess I just need someone to say it to my face for once.