2. Sophie
Sophie
Istay in Sentinel’s medical wing for another two weeks.
The nurses change my bandages and keep an eye on my healing wounds. Physical therapists come to help me rebuild muscles that wasted away during my captivity. A doctor explains that some of my scars will fade with time, but the deeper ones that they cut into me on purpose will be permanent.
I don’t cry. Somehow, since that basement in Detroit, I haven’t been able to.
When did everything start going wrong? The question keeps echoing in my head, over and over again, and the memories come flooding through, like water gushing through a weathered dam.
I had just turned twenty-one and my first heat was coming. I could feel it building under my skin, a pressure I couldn’t stop. Unfortunately, my stepfather noticed too.
That’s when he decided I was finally worth something. Good, he said, his lip curling as the first scent of me filled the house. Now someone will actually pay to take you off my hands.
They came for me on a Friday. I remember it clearly because I was ironing my stepfather’s favorite blue shirt, working slowly, careful not to leave a single wrinkle.
The last time he found one, I’d made the mistake of telling him he could iron his own damn shirts.
He held the hot iron against my thigh and told me to do better next time, or he’d give me something worse to cry about.
The television was still on in the next room, some daytime program droning away, as though it were any ordinary afternoon.
There were three of them, and they filled the doorway, alpha scent rolling off them thick enough to close my throat.
I ran. I made it as far as the kitchen before one of them caught me around the waist and lifted me off my feet like I weighed nothing. I clawed at his arms and screamed until my voice cracked, and he only laughed, a low, delighted sound. She’s a hellcat, this one.
My stepfather laughed too, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, watching them carry me out of his house. You’ll have to train her, he said. Just like I did her mother.
Oh, you can bet we will. The one holding me tightened his grip until my ribs ached. This only makes it more fun for us.
They hauled me out into the daylight. I twisted around and swung at the alpha gripping my arm, putting everything I had behind it. He caught my wrist before the blow ever landed, almost lazily, and that was the moment I understood how powerless I really was.
For the first week, they were almost kind.
They gave me a room of my own upstairs. Rourke smiled when he showed it to me and told me to make myself comfortable, that they wanted me to be happy here.
As if I were a guest, and not someone who’d been dragged screaming from my stepfather’s kitchen days before.
I locked the bedroom door and refused the meals they left outside it, convinced that someone would notice I was gone.
But no one came.
When they realized I would never do anything willingly, they moved me to the basement.
This should teach you, Rourke had said, shoving me down the stairs. We paid good money for you. Your stepfather promised us an omega who knew her place. Instead we got a frigid bitch who can’t even produce slick.
They wanted their money’s worth. And they intended to get it.
The first time, I fought so hard Silas had to hold a knife to my throat to keep me still. The second time, I bit Rourke until I tasted the sharp tang of his blood and he broke two of my ribs in retaliation. The third time, the fourth, the fifth—I kept fighting.
And every single time, they took another piece of me with them.
Not just my body. My body I could have survived losing. They took my belief that fighting mattered. My hope that someone would save me. My belief that I was a person who deserved to be saved at all.
They told me the same thing my stepfather had told me for years, that I was worthless and disgusting and not even my own family wanted me and couldn’t wait to be rid of me.
Just like my mother. The thought of her still hurt, even after everything. Maybe more than everything. Because she was the reason I was here. Anger surged through me—fierce and burning and completely useless.
She didn’t even look back, my stepfather used to say, his alpha scent thick with contempt. Left in the middle of the night like you meant nothing. Because you don’t. You never did.
I used to wonder if she still thought about me. If she ever regretted leaving. If she would ever come back. But I don’t wonder anymore... The girl who used to wonder and hope is gone.
But there are some things I learned a long time ago. Hope might get you hurt. Information keeps you alive.
So during my two weeks at Sentinel, I listen. I ask questions, and slowly, piece by piece, I start to understand what Sentinel really is.
They work beyond the law’s reach. They target wealthy, predatory alphas, the ones who buy omegas from trafficking rings that move people across borders like cargo, powerful abusers who hide behind money and connections.
Sentinel finds them all. They extract the victims. And then, quietly, they eliminate the threats.
The world doesn’t know they exist.
Griffin, Declan, and Nolan visit me every couple of days.
Declan brings me thousand-piece puzzles that occupy my hands and calm me down.
Nolan brings me reports on the shelter I’ll be transferred to and practical details about my recovery plan.
Griffin just sits with me sometimes. He doesn’t talk or ask questions.
Like he just wants me to know that he’s there and I’m not alone.
I watch them, and as time passes, an idea starts forming in my mind.
The day I’m discharged, as I’m gathering my meager belongings and preparing to leave for the omega shelter, I stop at the door of my room. Griffin, Declan, and Nolan are waiting in the hallway to escort me out.
“I want to work for Sentinel,” I say.
The words linger in the air. Declan’s surprise fades into quiet concern. Nolan goes very still. Griffin’s expression doesn’t change at all—which tells me he was expecting this.
“Sophie,” he says, “you’re an omega.”
“No shit, Griffin.” I don’t flinch from his gaze. “But I can still help. I could go undercover. You could train me. I know I can do this.”
“It would be too dangerous,” Declan says. “The kind of operations we run—”
“It doesn’t have to be dangerous.” I cut him off. “I know you have military-grade suppressants. I’ve heard Nancy talking about them with one of the doctors. They mask omega scents completely, right? I could take those. No one would even know what I am.”
“It’s not just about scent,” Nolan says. His voice is low and rough. “It’s about training, Sophie. Experience. It takes years of work before we trust anyone in the field.”
“Then train me. Let me prove it.”
Griffin says nothing. He just looks at me, calmly, as if he can afford to wait forever.
“Why?” he asks finally. “Why do you want this?”
The honest answer is complicated. Because the girl I was before Detroit is dead and I need to become someone new. Because every omega still trapped with monsters like Pack Thorne deserves protection. But mostly, because I have nothing left to live for and I need a purpose.
What I say is simpler. “Because no one should have to endure what I did.”
Griffin’s face tightens.
“Take some time,” he says. “Just a few months to recover and get settled in at the shelter. And then, if you still feel the same way, we can talk.”
“I don’t need to recover.” The words come out sharper than I intended. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine, Sophie.” Declan’s voice sounds soft, which makes it worse. “You’re three weeks out of captivity. Your body is still healing. Your mind...”
“My mind is the only thing they didn’t fucking break!” I meet his eyes steadily. “Don’t tell me what I need.”
“Sophie, it’s admirable,” Nolan says, his tone harder now, with less patience.
“You want to help omegas. I get it. But the last thing we need is someone on our mission who is a liability. Someone who freezes at the wrong moment or gets triggered by something they didn’t see coming.
” He holds my gaze without blinking. “Other people get hurt when that happens. Omegas we’re trying to save get hurt. ”
I open my mouth to argue—and close it again.
He’s right.
I hadn’t even thought about that. I’d been so focused on what I wanted that I hadn’t considered the consequences of slipping up.
If I fell apart during an extraction, someone could die because of me.
The fight drains out of me all at once.
“Fine,” I say quietly. “I’ll go to the shelter.”
Griffin’s expression softens, just slightly, and I catch a flicker of relief he doesn’t quite hide. “We’ll stay in touch.” He turns to leave, then pauses. “Take care of yourself, Sophie.”
I pick up my bag and walk out without looking back. The anger inside my chest is a living thing, bright and vicious. Whatever comes next, I know one thing for sure. I didn’t survive that basement for nothing.