Lily #2
I keep going. So does he. We don’t talk, but the silence is different. We’re two people doing what makes them feel most like themselves, not needing to fill the air with words.
I add the last details. A crane, another unidentified bird, the shimmer of sunset in the windows. I step back and I’m actually proud of what I’ve made. I’ve done more than just surviving today. I made something that feels real and mine.
I hear the front door open.
Gabriel’s usually the first one home. He stops, barely inside the entryway, doing that thing he does—a quiet, practiced scan, running the room for signs of trouble, for scattered pieces, for evidence the day’s gone sideways.
His gaze lands on Miles first, sprawled on the couch with a sandwich in one hand, perfectly fine.
Then me, at the dining table, hands streaked with paint, canvas propped on the easel like I’m somebody who actually belongs here.
He’s curious, I can tell. He changes course, drifting toward the table instead of the kitchen, eyes locked on what I’m doing. He wants to see it. I feel like he wants proof there’s something in me worth looking at.
I pull the canvas toward me. Turn it away from him, pressing the wet paint against my shirt, not exactly subtle but I don’t care.
“What are you doing?” he says, still standing over me.
“Painting,” I tell him.
“I can see that. Let me look.”
“No.”
It comes out fast, reflexive. I don’t even think about it.
Or maybe I do, but it’s the sort of knowing that’s all knotted up and sore.
This painting is mine. The first thing I’ve made in this house that isn’t about being sick, or scared, or trying to hit some invisible mark of what I’m supposed to be.
Showing it to Gabriel feels like peeling back skin, letting him see a part of me he’s already called worthless.
He doesn’t get to see the parts that aren’t nothing. He hasn’t earned that.
It’s probably stupid. I let Miles see it. And if I’m honest, Miles has been way worse to me than Gabriel ever has. But with Miles, it feels different. His cruelty is a bruise, the kind born from hurt. Gabriel’s is a cut, sharp and on purpose. One can’t help it; the other chooses.
Gabriel’s mouth tightens. He hates hearing no, especially from me. He doesn’t like that I’m hiding a part of myself from him.
Then the front door swings open again. Cyrus and Garrett come in together, trailing a gust of cold air and the scent of the world outside.
They both pause, taking in the whole scene: Miles alive and chill on the couch, me at the table with my messy hands, nobody bleeding or broken.
The relief on their faces is so clear it’s almost embarrassing.
That’s where we are now. A day without disaster is a win.
Garrett heads for Miles first. Drops a kiss on him, checks him over, gets a perfectly dramatic eye roll in return. Then he crosses to me.
“How are you feeling? Headache?”
“Yeah, but it’s not awful. Painting helped take my mind off it.” I wave at the mess of supplies across the table. “I haven’t gotten to do this in forever. It was fun. Probably the best day I’ve had in months.”
His smile feels like sunlight. “Good. That’s really good, Lily.”
Cyrus appears at my other shoulder. “Have you eaten?”
I shake my head. “Didn’t think about it.”
“I’ll get you something.” He’s already halfway to the fridge. “You need to eat.”
“I can do it myself—“
“Didn’t ask.”
He’s already digging out a pan, and I get the feeling that arguing with Cyrus is a losing game.
Gabriel still hasn’t moved. He’s staring at the supplies, the brushes, the open box on the floor. “Did you bring these from the registry?”
“No. They’re a gift.”
“From who?”
“Jeremy.”
Gabriel checks the return address on the box. His eyes flash—a calculation, a little mental tally. Then he looks at Miles.
“Did you open the door while we were gone?”
Miles doesn’t even look up. “Nope.”
“Then how did the package get inside?”
“Lily got it.”
Now Gabriel looks at me. The air chills and the whole room goes tight.
“You opened the front door.”
“The doorbell rang,” I say. “So I opened it. Delivery driver.”
“You opened the front door while you and Miles were home alone. After I specifically said that no one answers the door without—“
“Nobody told me that rule applied to me.”
“Do you have any idea what could have happened?” His voice rises. The armor cracks. “Anyone could have been out there. Brennan, his pack, anyone. And you just open the door, wide open, with my omega right there in the living room?”
“It was a delivery—“
“You didn’t know that when you turned the handle!” Now he’s in full alpha mode, his anger vibrating through the room. “Someone could have come in and taken Miles. Do you get that? Someone could have walked in, grabbed him, and you’d be standing there holding a goddamn clipboard.”
“Gabriel, I didn’t know—“
“How could you be so reckless?” The word stings. “So stupid? Alphas take omegas, Lily. It happens. That’s why we have rules. If you want to risk yourself, that’s your call. But you will NOT risk Miles. Not in my house.”
I bite my lip until it hurts. Tears want out, but I’m not giving him that satisfaction. Not here, not again.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I wasn’t thinking. Didn’t know it mattered.”
Garrett steps forward. “She didn’t know, Gabriel. She couldn’t have. The registry doesn’t work like that. Omegas answer their own doors there. They don’t really warn them about the dangers outside because they expect their future alphas to. Nobody told her.”
Gabriel wheels on him, but Garrett doesn’t budge. Whatever Gabriel was about to say, he swallows it.
Cyrus is watching from across the room, eyes dark and unreadable. Miles hasn’t moved from the couch. He’s staring at Gabriel with a confused expression, like even he thinks this is overkill.
Gabriel breathes then looks at me. And when he speaks again, it’s soft and deliberate. The most dangerous version of him.
“Maybe Miles was right all along. Maybe you’re trying to get him taken. Maybe this whole act—the painting, being sweet, getting close to the pack, cleaning—is just a setup. Maybe you’re trying to clear Miles out so you can finally have what you want.”
“That doesn’t even make sense, Gabe,” Garrett says, dead steady. “She’s an omega too. If someone came for omegas, they’d take her, or both of them. She wouldn’t be opening the door to invite her own kidnapping.”
Gabriel’s mouth twists. There’s a wild shine in his eyes, some mix of tears, rage, the exhaustion of trying to hold together a house that keeps coming unglued.
“Why would they take her,“ he says, “when the better omega is right across the room?”
Everything stops.
“She’s just the reject.”
And that’s it. That’s the moment everything inside me lets go.
My heart falls right out of my chest and straight into the floor.
My lip is trembling, there’s no hiding it, no pretending I’m okay.
That word hangs there: reject. Worse than nothing.
Nothing means you never mattered. Reject means you did, and you weren’t good enough. Return to sender.