Chapter 12 Silas
Lena’s mind was like a filing cabinet. Every detail catalogued, stored clean and vivid, ready to be accessed the second she needed it. The little mute didn’t forget information. She filtered, sorted, and then assembled every detail into more.
On our side, that made her dangerous in a way Marco never could have imagined.
The doc rattled off a list of diagnoses for Lena, most of them so long and clinical they sounded like someone had smashed random syllables together for fun. I couldn’t pronounce half of them, let alone spell them. Apparently, Lena’s mind was special enough to earn an entire collection of labels.
One diagnosis, though, actually stuck with me. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Even I knew what that one meant.
Dr. Hampton broke down her other diagnoses for me in simpler terms. The little mute didn’t think in steps.
She didn’t guess or test or work her way forward.
She saw the whole picture first, even when half the pieces were missing.
Once her brain decided the image existed, the outcome became inevitable. Her hands just caught up afterward.
Now that she had decided to help us, I was beginning to understand exactly what that meant. Once we gave Lena access to the Arca database, arrest records, criminal files, financial reports, surveillance footage, and decades of archived case files, something in her mind seemed to unfold.
She referenced the database against intel she had collected during years of captivity, connecting fragments the rest of us would have dismissed as meaningless noise. Patterns locked into place almost immediately, complete pictures forming in her head before we even realized the pieces fit together.
The PTSD part of her diagnosis was easier to wrap my head around.
Years of confinement and isolation had taught her body what to expect.
Her silence wasn't a weakness. It was preservation. Every time she stayed quiet, every time she didn’t draw attention to herself, she survived another day.
Touch became a warning. Attention became something to fear.
Her instincts taught her to keep quiet, because that was the only way she’d made it out alive.
And every time I thought about what that meant, really thought about it, my temper flared hot.
Her scars were proof enough. Especially the ones on her back.
The long, jagged lines looked like someone had wanted to ruin her for sport.
I could still see it when I closed my eyes, the way they cut through soft skin that should never have been touched that way.
Carved with the type of cruelty taken out on something smaller and helpless.
Knox told me about the other one on her left breast. He only caught a glimpse of it when her shirt slid before she pulled it back up, too quickly for me to see. But he said even from the small part he saw, it was bad. Really bad.
It had to be for Knox to lose control like that. Normally, I was the one who needed to be reeled in, not him.
The knowledge that Lena had adapted to Marco’s torture filled me with a cold, simmering rage. She had reshaped herself to survive, minimizing her presence and disconnecting from her omega instincts.
But captivity did something else, too.
Five years of listening through doors. Watching shadows pass beneath thresholds and overhearing conversations, with nothing else to focus on, turned her brain inward and allowed her to collect everything. Patterns, routines, routes, names, and places were all stored.
Lena identified seven locations where she believed Marco was holding omegas, all based on the intel she had pieced together. When we brought the information to the general, he immediately authorized surveillance on every site and assigned additional personnel to support the operation.
Now, Lena and I sat inside a surveillance van across from some rundown laundromat, watching one of the suspected locations while the rest of our operatives monitored the others. Every team had the same objective: confirm whether omegas were being kept inside.
Lena had fallen asleep in the backseat of the van sometime after 1100, after a long, quiet battle with drooping eyelids. I noticed the tilt of her head as her body finally let go.
I smirked.
Lena finally trusted me enough to sleep soundly in my presence.
The realization warmed my chest as I crossed my arms and shifted in the driver’s seat, trying to get comfortable. It shouldn’t have mattered. It really shouldn’t have. But the quiet trust she offered so sparingly felt dangerously rewarding.
More and more, I found myself trying to coax her out of her shell, to peel back each guarded layer and see who she was beneath the trauma responses.
When we told her about the stakeout, Lena had insisted on coming with us, and neither my brother nor I had wanted to leave her alone for that long, anyway. So here she was, sleeping in the backseat, bundled in borrowed layers, and snoring deeply like she hadn’t slept properly in years.
The van’s door creaked open suddenly.
A large, hooded figure slipped inside with practiced ease.
Knox.
“All set?” I asked, keeping my voice quiet, careful not to wake the little mute.
“Mostly,” he murmured, scanning the van, eyes flicking once to Lena before returning to me. I noticed the upturn of his lips when he saw her head tilted back and mouth open.
He continued, “Got a lot of the equipment staged upstairs. I still need to haul the portable generator. There's no power in the building. Place is a dump.”
“Of course it is,” I muttered. “Let’s move while it’s quiet. Last thing we need is someone clocking us while we're hauling gear.”
Knox shifted, nudging Lena gently with his boot.
She startled awake, her breath hitching, and eyes snapping wide with fear before recognition softened her expression.
“Sorry,” he said, “Time to go, runt. We’re set up.”
She nodded, rubbing sleep from her eyes as she sat up, her hair sticking out in every direction. The little mute wasn’t nearly as silent when she slept. Soft snores slipped past her lips while she was unconscious, sounds she would probably be mortified to know we heard.
For some reason, it made me smile.
We moved out of the van in silence, closing the doors with a final click behind us.
We had parked the van a few blocks over and after a short walk, the abandoned apartment complex loomed ahead, dark and hollow, its broken windows watching like empty eyes.
Bellini had lookouts posted, so we kept to the shadows and blind spots we’d already mapped out using our informant’s intel.
Knox and I worked as we always did, methodically, with no need to speak. Lena stayed between us, close enough to reach if something went wrong, but light on her feet and stealthier than I expected. She followed our lead without hesitation, reading us and adjusting.
She fit in well.
Once inside, I looked around the decaying apartment building and grimaced.
Maybe we should have considered Lena’s comfort a little more before bringing her here.
My brother and I weren’t exactly experienced when it came to caring for an omega, something that had already become painfully obvious during our rocky start with her.
The building was perfect for a stakeout. It had a direct line of sight to the house where we suspected one of Marco’s omegas was being kept. We could easily see everyone who came and went, log faces, photograph vehicles, and record patterns. Nothing would slip past us from this angle.
But the structure was a disaster.
No electricity or running water. Bare concrete and broken windows let the cold creep from every direction. Despite being abandoned, it was the kind of place no one bothered to squat in, because no sane person would willingly spend the night here. Normally, that would’ve been an advantage.
But we hadn’t planned for Lena.
The only comforts we’d brought were an inflatable mattress and a single army blanket. Standard stakeout gear. Enough for two men who rotated rest shifts and didn’t need much sleep to function. Knox and I were used to this. One on watch, one resting, then we'd swap every few hours.
Except this time, there was a third body in the room.
A smaller, freezing one.
And it hit me, not all at once, but slowly as I surveyed the space. Knox and I hadn’t revised our checklist or thought past our usual rhythm. We failed to realize that Lena was unsuited for this cold or this waiting.
While we’d brought all the equipment we needed to surveil Marco’s stash house, we had nothing needed to take care of an omega.
Lena didn’t seem overly bothered at first, sitting a few feet from the small portable heater, a faint smile slipping across her lips as she held her hands out toward the weak stream of heat.
“You okay? Warm enough?” Knox asked from his perch by the window.
She nodded, quick and reassuring.
I had to remind myself that Lena had survived hell for years. This was nothing compared to that. She wasn’t fragile, no matter how small she looked bundled up in oversized clothing.
“You need sleep,” I said gruffly, motioning to the inflatable mattress I’d blown up breath by breath.
She nodded again, and crawled beneath the army blanket, tucking her knees to her chest as if she were trying to conserve body heat.
“So do you,” Knox said quietly. “I’ll take the first shift. Doubt we’ll see much movement this early.”
I laid on the floor beside the mattress, careful not to crowd Lena, stretching out on hard concrete. The heater hummed loudly, working overtime and failing miserably at its job. Cold seeped in from every surface. The kind that settled deep in your bones.
Then I heard it.
A faint, involuntary sound.
Teeth chattering.
The muscle in my jaw tightened as I stared at the ceiling, listening to the steady rhythm of the heater and the unmistakable tremor in Lena's breathing.
She hadn’t bothered to complain or ask for anything.
She never did.
And that, more than anything else, pissed me off.