Gabriel #2
She’s in her room. The door is open a crack, which means she heard the truck.
She’s waiting. She’s always waiting—for orders, for news, for the next hit.
Waiting for me to come in and tell her that her alpha is giving her away to the first pack that’ll take her.
That he doesn’t care if she’s happy as long as she’s gone.
I stand in the doorway.
She’s sitting on the bed, hands folded, eyes red but dry. She’s been crying, but she stopped when she heard me. She wants to hide that part from me. She doesn’t trust me to make it better. She trusts that I’ll make it worse.
She’s right.
“You can stay,” I say. “For now.”
It sounds like mercy.
It isn’t.
She blinks. Whatever she expected, it wasn’t that.
“The Carrs are out of town right now. When they’re back, you’ll see them again. That’s not a request. I’m also setting up a meeting with another pack. You need options. You need to decide.”
She nods, slow.
“But there are rules, Lily. No more comfort from my pack. No more purring, no more crawling into anyone’s bed. You take your medication and you manage your pain like an adult. If the headaches are bad, you call the doctor. You don’t go to Garrett. You don’t go to Cyrus. You don’t come to me.”
Each sentence lands like I mean them to. Each one cuts a little bit more of her hope away. I see how she absorbs them: the flinch, the tightening of her hands, the way her chin wobbles.
“This isn’t punishment,” I add, which is the lie we’re both forced to swallow.
It feels exactly like punishment. “It’s clarity.
The closer you get to my pack, the harder it is when you leave.
And you are leaving, Lily. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you can start something real with a pack that can actually keep you. ”
“I understand.” So quiet I barely hear her. Like she’s already learned not to take up space.
She’s ready to become the ghost I’m asking her to be again.
I should walk away. The deal is made. The lines are drawn. I should turn and go hold Miles and pretend this doesn’t feel like ripping out my own ribs.
I turn for the door.
“Gabriel?”
I stop.
“Thank you for your generosity.”
Five words, delivered calm and even, stripped of bitterness or fire or any of the fight she’s shown before. Just gratitude. Real gratitude, for being allowed to exist in a house that doesn’t want her. For a few more days of borrowed time.
She’s thanking me for tolerating her. Like she’s sorry for breathing my air. She doesn’t even know that I’m not letting her stay by choice. If Jeremy had said yes, she’d already be gone.
I want to cross the room. I want to sit beside her, pull her close, purr until the gray leaves her face and the color comes back to her skin.
I want to tell her she isn’t a burden. That she’s the thing my body has been hunting since before I knew what it meant to need.
I want to bite her—not just hold, but bite, claim, carve my mark into her so deep that no one, not the Carrs or the registry or Brennan Foster, could ever take her away.
I want all of it. Every instinct in me wants all of it. And I’m still walking away.
I don’t move.
“You’re welcome,” I say, and the words taste like ash.
I leave. I close her door gently, like you do when you know the minute it latches, the person inside will start to cry.
I stop in the hall, lean against the wall, eyes squeezed shut.
I chose this.
Miles. His face last night. The screaming, the panic, how he went limp under my bite like he’d been cut loose from himself. How he clung to me after, fists twisted in my shirt, sobbing that he knew this would happen. That she’d take us and he’d be replaced.
Lily. Her quiet “I understand.” The gratitude for being allowed to exist.
Two omegas in my house. One I promised to protect. One I’m failing, every minute, by keeping that promise.
I push off the wall and head for the pack room. Miles is inside, in the nest, curled tight around a pillow. He looks up when I come in. Eyes swollen, raw, searching.
“She’s staying a little longer,” I tell him. “Not forever. Just until the Carrs are back. Then she’s gone.”
His face twists. “You said today. You said—“
“I know. The Carrs are out of town, Miles. It’s just a few days. That’s all.”
“You promised. Send her somewhere else. I don’t care where. Give her to that Foster pack. It doesn’t matter where or who.”
“I promised to protect you. I’m keeping that promise. She won’t touch any of us. She won’t be near you. She’ll stay in her room and meet with packs and then she’ll be gone.”
Miles stares at me. “You want her to stay.”
“No.”
“Liar.” A whisper that hits like a scream. “You all want her. I can see it. Smell it. Every single one of you wants her, and you’re just waiting for me to break so you have an excuse.”
“That’s not true.”
“Then why does the house smell like her? Why does the truck smell like her? Why does Garrett still smell like her? Why do you smell like her, Gabriel? You smell like her right now, walking in here, standing by my nest, smelling like the omega you said was nothing.”
I have no answer. He’s right. Her scent is on me—in my hair, my clothes, even the leather of my watch. It’s the dimmed version she carries when she’s sick, but it’s hers. I’ve been breathing her in since day one and nothing erases it.
“She’s nothing,” I say. But the word is hollow. A wall I’m trying to hide behind.
Miles watches me for a long time. Then he rolls over, pulling the blanket tight.
“Go away, Gabriel,” he says. “You smell wrong.”
I leave.
In the hallway, I catch the echo of Lily’s breathing through her door. Shaky, uneven—the sound of someone who’s sobbing and can’t quite stop.
I know exactly what would fix this.
And I’m the one refusing to do it.
I keep moving.
That’s all I do now. I keep moving past the closed doors of people I’m hurting, telling myself it’s for the best. Hoping that if I say it enough, eventually it’ll be true.
It hasn’t worked yet.