36. Sophie
Sophie
Marcia’s room is small and immaculate, a space that belongs to someone who’s learned to live with very little and made peace with it a long time ago.
A single bed with a quilted coverlet in faded blues, tucked neatly against the wall.
A narrow bookshelf crammed with paperbacks.
A wooden dresser with a lace runner and three framed photographs.
I can’t see the faces from where I’m standing, but the frames are mismatched, the memories inside them clearly worth more than the frames themselves.
The window is open a crack, letting in the cool evening air and the faint sound of voices from the dining hall below. On the windowsill, a small ceramic pot holds a sprig of lavender, dried but still fragrant.
It looks a lot like the shelter room I stayed in all those years ago.
The careful use of limited space, every object earning its place because there’s nowhere to put the things that don’t.
I know this room. I’ve lived in this room, in a different city, in a different life, when I was twenty-one years old and learning how to sleep without screaming.
“Please, sit.” Marcia gestures to the chair beside the window—a worn armchair with a crocheted throw draped over one arm. “I’ll put the kettle on. I have chamomile, or peppermint if you’d prefer.”
“Chamomile is fine. Thank you.”
Marcia moves to the small electric kettle on her dresser.
I sit in the armchair and fold my hands in my lap.
My pulse is still elevated from the confrontation with Max and the suffocating silence in his car.
My stomach is hollow from throwing up in the bathroom.
My head is full of clinical trial reports and adverse event logs and the image of the small, silver-haired woman currently selecting tea bags from a tin, seizing on a table while researchers took notes.
The kettle clicks. Marcia pours two cups, sets one on the small table beside me, and lowers herself into the chair opposite.
“There.” She wraps both hands around her cup, her dark eyes settling on my face. “Now. What would you like to know?”
Direct, no preamble. She knows why Max brought me, and she’s not going to waste either of our time pretending otherwise.
“The clinical trial,” I say. “You’re Participant 03. You had a seizure during the trial for almost two minutes. You were hospitalized for four days.” I keep my voice even. “And then you went back.”
Marcia takes a sip of her tea. “I did.”
“Why?”
She tilts her head, studying me. The lamplight catches the lines of her face—deep grooves around her mouth, crow’s feet fanning from her eyes, the map of a long life etched into a face that must have been striking when she was young and still is now. Her gaze is clear and sharp, unclouded by age.
“Because what they’re working on matters,” she says simply. “More than my comfort. More than a bad few days in a hospital.”
“A seizure isn’t a bad few days. You could have died.”
“I could have.” She says it without flinching.
“I’m seventy, Sophie. I could die tomorrow from a dozen things that have nothing to do with clinical trials.
A stroke. A fall. My heart deciding it’s had enough.
” She sets her cup down. “When you get to my age, you stop being afraid of dying. What you’re afraid of is dying without having done anything that mattered. ”
The words hit somewhere deep in my chest, in a place I don’t let people reach.
“What are they working on?” I ask. “The compound—what does it actually do? All I’ve seen are the adverse event logs. All I know is that omegas are getting hurt.”
Marcia regards me for a long moment, as if she’s deciding how much to tell me.
“How long have you been on suppressants, dear?”
The question catches me off guard. “Over a decade.”
She just nods, slowly, as if I’ve confirmed something she already suspected.
“So you know what it’s like. The daily pill.
The constant vigilance. Knowing that one missed dose, one bad batch, and your scent breaks through, your heats come back, and suddenly you’re a target for every alpha in the room.
” She holds my gaze. “Current suppressants hide and mute what you are. They don’t change it.
Underneath the chemicals, you’re still an omega.
Still one mistake away from being in danger. ”
I don’t respond. She’s describing my life—every single day of the last decade.
“What they’re developing here isn’t a better suppressant.” Marcia leans forward slightly. “It’s something that would give an omega the choice to erase her designation completely. The scent and the heats—not masked. Gone. As if you were never an omega at all.”
I stare at her. My tea is untouched, cooling in my hands, and I’ve forgotten it exists.
“That’s not possible,” I hear myself say.
“They’ve spent twelve years proving otherwise.”
Twelve years. The number echoes in my head, colliding with everything I thought I knew about Synthera and the men I’ve been working alongside for weeks. Hidden all this time behind a company that manufactures heat management tools and knotting devices.
I’ve spent more than a decade tethered to a fragile chemical leash. This would cut it completely. For once, being an omega wouldn’t make me a target.
It would mean freedom. Real, permanent, irreversible freedom.
“Why would they do that?” The question comes out barely above a whisper. “They’re alphas. A compound like that would change everything. The entire power structure. Why would three alphas spend years building something that takes away their own advantage?”
Marcia picks up her tea again and takes a slow sip. When she sets it down, her expression is softer, tinged with something that looks almost fond.
“You’d have to ask them that,” she says.
“But I can tell you what I’ve seen.” She settles deeper into her chair.
“I’ve been at Elaine House for eight years.
When I arrived, this place was barely standing.
Leaking roof, a heating system that gave out every winter.
They were talking about closing the doors. ”
“What happened?”
“Pack Cavill happened.” A small smile. “They didn’t just donate money, Sophie. They rebuilt this place from the ground up. Then they hired a counselor and a nurse and set up a fund that covers housing, medical care, and job training.”
I stare at her.
Pack Cavill did all of this?
Marcia takes another sip of tea. “And this isn’t the only one. There are Elaine Houses in four other cities.”
Everything in me stops.
Four other cities.
I think about the shelter I stayed in almost eleven years ago.
“Are they all connected?”
“They are.”
My fingers tighten around the cup.
“Pack Cavill funds all of them?”
Marcia’s expression softens. “They do more than fund them.”
“I had no idea,” I manage. “None of this is public. How is none of this public?”
Marcia gives me a knowing look. “Because that’s the point, dear.
From what I understand, most of what Synthera earns goes right back into this work.
The shelters and the research. If people knew what they were really doing, there are powerful people who would try to stop it.
” She looks at me steadily. “These are not men who are trying to profit off omega bodies. These are men who are trying to set them free.”
My throat is tight. My eyes burn. I press my thumbnail into the pad of my index finger, hard, focusing on the sharp point of pain to keep everything else at bay.
I think about the words I threw at Max and the way his face went still. He trusted me with the memory of his mother, and I still accused him of being the very thing he’s spent his entire life fighting against.
A wave of shame rolls through me.
“He’s a good man, Sophie.” Marcia’s voice is gentle now. “All three of them are.” She reaches across the space between our chairs and pats my knee. “Whatever you read in those files—whatever brought you here looking like you wanted to burn the world down—the truth is better than you think.”
I look down at her hand on my knee. Small, lined with veins, spotted with age. A hand that has held and lost and endured and still reaches out to comfort strangers.
“I made a mistake,” I say, and my voice sounds like it belongs to someone else. “I saw the files and I assumed the worst. I went to Max and I—”
“You cared,” Marcia interrupts firmly. “You saw omegas being hurt and you got angry on their behalf. That’s not a mistake, dear. That’s a conscience.” She squeezes my knee once and lets go. “The mistake would have been not caring at all.”
I look at her, at the woman who seized on a table and still went back for more. She lives in a tiny room she treats like home. She calls Max dear, and he brings her salted caramel chocolates. My throat tightens so hard I can’t swallow.
“Perhaps it’s best if you talk to Max about the rest,” Marcia says. “I think I’ve said quite enough. And I suspect he’s sitting in that car making himself sick with worry.”
I stand, and she stands with me, and before I know what’s happening she’s pulled me into a hug—brief and fierce, her silver hair brushing my cheek.
“You remind me of someone,” she murmurs near my ear. “Someone who used to think being angry was the same as being strong.” She pulls back, her hands on my shoulders, her eyes bright. “It’s not, you know. Being angry is easy. Being open—that’s the brave thing.”
I don’t trust my voice, so I just nod.
“Come visit me again,” she says. “And bring those boys with you. Max never eats enough when he comes. I worry about him.”
“I will,” I say, and I mean it in a way that surprises me.
I walk back down the stairs, through the foyer, and out through the front door into the evening.
Max is in the car, both hands on the steering wheel, his head tipped back against the headrest. He looks exhausted.
I get in the car and close the door.
He straightens immediately, his gaze locking onto mine, searching my face with an intensity that would have felt like a threat a month ago. Now it just makes my chest ache.