35. Max
Max
Twelve years.
I stare at the document on the table, taking in the official seal in the corner and the signatures lined up along the bottom of the page.
Twelve years of setbacks, of failed formulations and starting over from scratch.
Twelve years of watching Ethan pour his genius into something the world said was impossible, of carrying the weight of this thing on my shoulders every single day since I was twenty-two years old and swore on my mother’s grave that I would finish it.
And now it’s done.
Equinox is approved.
There’s one final step—a formality, really, a rubber stamp from the regulatory board that Ethan and Finn are handling right now downtown. But the hard part is over. The trials are complete. The data is solid. The compound is safe, effective, and ready for production.
In a month—maybe less—omegas will be able to walk into a pharmacy and buy their freedom in a bottle.
I pick up the folder and read the words again, even though I’ve memorized them by now.
Phase II clinical trial: COMPLETE. Efficacy threshold: EXCEEDED. Safety profile: ACCEPTABLE. Recommendation: PROCEED TO MANUFACTURING.
Acceptable. Such a small, bloodless word for the thing that’s going to change everything.
I set the folder down and lean back in my chair. Late afternoon light slants through the windows. Beyond the glass, the grounds stretch out toward the treeline. All of it built on the bones of my father’s estate, where his house used to stand.
I think about him now—I can’t help it. On a day like this, with everything we’ve worked for finally within reach, he’s the ghost I can’t escape.
Theodore Cavill. The name still hangs in boardrooms and university halls, bearing his legacy like a benediction.
But they didn’t know him.
They didn’t see how he looked through my mother or hear the way he spoke to her. The bruises stayed hidden beneath her clothes. Year by year I watched her shrink, becoming a ghost in her own home long before she died.
I did. I watched all of it. And I couldn’t do a goddamn thing.
You thought you won, I think, staring out the window at what I built on his grave. You thought you’d always win. That’s what men like you believe—that power is permanent, that control is forever, that the people you break stay broken.
But I’m still here. And she’s still here, in everything I’ve built. And you?
You’re nothing.
I pick up the folder again. Trace my finger over the approval signature.
This is for her. Everything I’ve done. Everything I am. This is for her.
The door opens.
I close the folder immediately.
Sophie is standing in the doorway.
Her face is pale. Her eyes are bright with fury, or maybe tears.
She closes the door behind her and locks it.
“Max, we need to talk.”
“Sophie,” I say carefully. “What’s—”
“Clinical trials.” The words come out like bullets. “On omegas. Phase two. Participants hospitalized. A seventy-year-old woman who had a seizure and spent four days in a hospital.”
My stomach drops.
She found the files. She found the adverse event logs. She knows about Marcia.
“Sophie—”
“What the hell are you doing to those women?” Her voice cracks on the question.
“How could you test on vulnerable omegas like this? On a seventy-year-old woman? She could have died. And you just—you just kept going. Kept running the trials. Kept recruiting more women to pump full of whatever experimental—”
“Sophie, stop.” I stand. Hold up my hands. “You don’t have the full picture.”
“Then give it to me.” She’s shaking. I can see the tremor in her hands, the way she’s barely holding herself together.
Her voice drops, and what comes out next is worse than the shouting—quiet, wounded, the voice of a woman who trusted someone and thinks she shouldn’t have.
“Explain to me how the man who told me his mother deserved a bigger life can sign off on hurting omegas like this.”
The words land like a blade between my ribs.
“Come with me,” I say.
She stares at me. “What?”
“Come with me. I want you to meet someone.”
“Meet someone?” A harsh laugh escapes her. “What difference will that make? You think introducing me to someone is going to change the fact that you’re experimenting on—”
“Her name is Marcia.” I keep my voice steady, even though my heart is pounding. “She’s the seventy-year-old woman in the file. Participant 03. The one who had the seizure.”
Sophie stops.
“You don’t understand what we’re doing here, Sophie. And I could explain it—I could tell you everything right now, in this room, and maybe you’d believe me. But I don’t think words are going to be enough.” I meet her eyes. “I think you need to hear it from her.”
“Why would I—”
“If you still think we’re the bad guys after you talk to her, I’ll step back. I won’t try to explain or defend myself. You can go to Griffin, tell him everything you found, burn Synthera to the ground.” I swallow. “But just meet her first. Please, Sophie.”
The please costs me something. I don’t say please. I don’t ask—I decide, I direct, I command. Asking makes you vulnerable, gives someone else the power.
But I’m asking now. Because the look in her eyes is unbearable, and I need her to understand.
She doesn’t say anything. She just stares at me with that furious, wounded expression, her arms crossed tight over her chest.
“I’ll be in the car,” I say, reaching for my jacket. “Back drive, like before. If you decide to come.”
“And if I don’t?”
I meet her eyes. “Then you don’t. And we both live with that.”
I want to say more. Want to tell her that I understand her anger, that her fury is the same fury I’ve carried my entire life—for my mother, for every woman whose body was treated like something to be owned rather than respected.
I want to tell her that we built Synthera to fix this.
That Equinox exists because I watched my mother disappear inside a life she didn’t choose, and I swore no omega would ever be trapped like that again.
But the words don’t come. They stick in my throat, too raw, too close to the surface.
“I hope you come, Sophie,” I say instead, and leave before she can respond.
I’m already dialing Marcia before I’m out of the building.
She picks up on the second ring, her voice warm and unhurried, as if she’d been waiting for exactly this call at exactly this moment.
“Max, darling. What a lovely surprise.”
“Marcia, I need a favor.” My stride doesn’t slow.
The gravel crunches under my shoes, and I keep my voice low even though there’s no one around to hear.
“I’m bringing someone to see you this evening.
She found the trial files—the adverse event logs.
She’s angry, and she doesn’t have the full picture. ”
“Ah.” She pauses. “And who is this someone?”
The question is simple. The answer should be simple. A colleague. An employee. The security consultant working on the investigation.
But the words that come out of my mouth aren’t any of those.
“Her name is Sophie. She’s—” I stop walking, staring at the gravel under my shoes, and the truth rises up through my chest before I can catch it. “She’s someone I care about, Marcia.”
There’s a pause on the line. Then Marcia says, softer now, “Bring her. I’ll be ready.”
I hang up and stand there for a moment, the phone still in my hand, the evening air cooling the back of my neck.
Someone I care about.
Maybe I’ve known since the first time she made me laugh. Or since the night I knelt on gravel and buckled her shoe and she put her hand in my hair. In that moment I felt everything she wanted to say and couldn’t.
I care what Sophie thinks of me. And I’ve never cared what anyone thinks of me.
My father taught me that. Taught me, through years of watching him wield power like a weapon, that the only way to survive is to never need anything from anyone. People can think whatever they want.
But Sophie looked at me with hatred in her eyes, and it felt like being gutted.
I pocket the phone and keep walking. By the time I reach the house, I’m moving on autopilot—through the garage, into the car, hands on the steering wheel, eyes on the driveway.
And wait.
Five minutes. Ten. Fifteen. I stare at the empty gravel curve where her car should appear, and the longer I sit here the more certain I become that she’s not coming.
That she’s already back in her room packing her bag, or on the phone with Griffin, or just sitting at her desk staring at those adverse event logs and hating me.
Twenty minutes.
I grip the steering wheel. I don’t beg. I’ve never begged anyone for anything.
Not once in my life. But sitting in this car watching the light fade, I realize I would beg Sophie.
I would get on my knees on this gravel and ask her to let me explain, and the fact that I would scares me more than anything she could do to Synthera.
Because the idea of her looking at me with that hatred forever—the idea of never seeing her eyes crinkle when she laughs, never watching that reluctant smile break across her face—the idea of losing her before I ever really got the chance to know her does something to my chest that I don’t have words for.
Twenty-five minutes.
Gravel crunches.
I look up. Sophie’s car is coming up the back drive. It pulls up beside the garage and stops.
My grip on the steering wheel loosens and I close my eyes for half a second.
She gets out, walks toward my car, her face still closed off, still angry. But she’s here. She came.
She gets in the passenger seat and closes the door without looking at me.
“Drive,” she says.
I drive. Neither of us speaks. Sophie stares out the window with her arms crossed, and I grip the steering wheel and let the silence do what my words can’t.
Twenty minutes later, the shelter appears at the end of a long, tree-lined road—a converted Victorian mansion, three stories of weathered brick and white trim, surrounded by gardens that someone clearly loves. A sign by the entrance reads ELAINE HOUSE.
I pull into the small parking lot and cut the engine.
Sophie looks up at the building, then at me.
“An omega shelter,” she says flatly.
“Yes.”
“Why are we at an omega shelter?”
“This is where Marcia lives.”
Confusion crosses her face.
“The woman from the trial,” Sophie says slowly. “The seventy-year-old. She lives in an omega shelter.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
I unbuckle my seatbelt. “That’s not my story to tell. But she’ll tell you, if you ask.”
I check my watch.
“We’ll wait a few minutes. Dinner’s about to start. Everyone will be in the dining hall.” I pause. “I’m an alpha, Sophie. Walking into an omega shelter unannounced could frighten people. I called ahead and let Marcia know we were coming. She’s expecting us.”
Sophie stares at me. I can’t read her expression. Can’t tell if she’s starting to understand, or if she thinks this is all an elaborate performance.
We wait. Somewhere inside the house, a bell rings for dinner.
I check my watch again, then open my door.
“Let’s go.”
The inside of Elaine House is warm and lived-in—the kind of place that smells like cooking and laundry detergent and the particular comfort of shared spaces. We pass through a small foyer, empty now with the residents at dinner, and up a flight of stairs to the second floor.
Marcia’s room is at the end of the hall. The door is open.
She’s sitting by the window when we walk in, a book open in her lap, her silver hair catching the last of the evening light. When she sees me, her whole face transforms—a smile breaking across her weathered features.
“Max.” She sets the book aside and rises, slower than she used to but still steady. “There he is. My favorite visitor.”
“Marcia.” I can’t help but smile back.
She reaches for me and I let her pull me into a hug—brief, warm, her small frame surprisingly strong. When she pulls back, her eyes go to Sophie, standing uncertain in the doorway.
“And you must be Sophie.” Marcia’s gaze is sharp, but not unkind. “Max has told me about you.”
Sophie’s gaze shifts to me. I don’t react. But Marcia is smart—she’s been reading people her whole life, and I told her more on that phone call than I intended to.
“I’ll wait in the car,” I say. “Take as long as you need.”
Sophie’s brow creases.
This isn’t my story to tell. It’s Marcia’s. And Sophie needs to hear it without me standing over her shoulder.
Marcia reaches out and squeezes my hand. “Thank you for the chocolates, dear. The ones with the salted caramel. You remembered.”
“Of course.”
I turn toward the door. And then I look at her one more time—at Sophie, standing in this room with her dark eyes still burning with anger, still guarded behind walls she’s spent a lifetime building.
But underneath all of that, barely visible, like light bleeding through a hairline fracture—there’s doubt.
The first crack in her certainty that I’m the monster she thinks I am.
Please, I think. Please listen to her. Please understand.
I nod once and walk out.
The door closes behind me, and the last thing I hear is Marcia’s voice.
“Come sit down, dear. Would you like some tea?”
I make my way back down the stairs and through the empty foyer, my footsteps echoing off walls that have sheltered hundreds of women with stories I’ll never know.
I get in the car, close the door, and sit in the gathering dark with my hands on the steering wheel and my heart in my throat, hoping I haven’t just made the biggest mistake of my life.