51. Kit
Kit
Life isn’t fair. I know that without a doubt.
I have my fair share of pain; some of it remains part of me despite having found my pack, and I know I will always carry it with me, no matter where I go.
But with that pain comes the ability to recognize it in someone else. To see another person’s hurt and feel an immediate connection. Like catching sight of a piece of yourself in a stranger the moment your eyes meet theirs.
That’s what I felt when I met Sophie.
I try not to think about everything she went through.
Because I know what pain can take from a person.
And I could see how much Sophie had been forced to endure.
A lifetime of fighting to stay standing while the world tried to put her in the ground.
A lifetime of feeling lost. Of feeling like the only thing she was good for was bleeding.
And I had hoped for her then. I had hoped she would find happiness and a life that felt like hers.
But Sophie wasn’t looking for that. She was looking for the next mission, the next fight—anything to keep moving so she’d never have to stand still long enough to feel anything.
I watched her take assignment after assignment, each one more dangerous than the last, with Griffin, Declan, and Nolan worried sick every single time she went dark.
“She’ll get herself killed one day,” Griffin told me once.
We were sitting in a hospital waiting room with flickering fluorescent lights and chairs just uncomfortable enough to keep you from falling asleep.
Sophie had been shot. She’d almost died.
Griffin’s hands were shaking where they rested on his knees.
He looked devastated. Like he’d seen this coming and couldn’t find a way to stop it.
Nolan had been staring at the floor. “She wasn’t supposed to get shot,” he said quietly. “But it was almost like she didn’t try to avoid it.”
Declan had been the one to say it. The thing that we were all thinking but none of us wanted to say out loud. “I have a feeling she wants to die.”
I had cried then. Tears for the found sister I had. For the girl I wanted desperately to keep but knew I couldn’t save, no matter how much I wanted to. Because the decision to live isn’t one that someone else can make for you. I’d learned that the hard way too.
And so I had done the only thing I could.
I had hoped.
“We’re here, sweetheart.”
Griffin’s deep, familiar voice pulls me back. His hand finds mine as the car comes to a stop, and I squeeze his fingers before I let go and step out.
It’s been six weeks since Sophie bonded with Pack Cavill.
I know because I remember Griffin coming home early and telling me what had happened.
About Lucy, about how she and Fabian had tried to sabotage Synthera, and, most importantly, about Sophie’s heat breaking through and her choosing to bond with them.
He’d been quiet for a long time that night, lying in the dark with his arm around me. Then he’d said, “She’s going to be okay, Kit. I think she’s finally going to be okay.”
And now we’re here, at Pack Cavill’s front door, about to meet the men who changed everything.
I step out of the car. Their house is smaller than I expected, more modest, more homey—flower boxes in the front window, a big wraparound porch with mismatched chairs, a welcome mat that looks genuinely used. I like them already, and I haven’t even met them.
Nolan is already out of the car, stretching his arms above his head. Declan comes around the side, shading his eyes with one hand and tilting his head toward the building visible on the horizon.
“That’s Synthera over there,” he says.
I look. It’s a striking thing—modern and sleek, catching the sun like it was built to be looked at. “It’s really grand,” I say.
Griffin grunts. I don’t have to look at him to know his expression.
We walk to the door together, and I ring the bell.
Sophie opens it less than a minute later.
For a second, I almost don’t recognize her.
Her hair is down. It’s such a small thing.
But I have never seen her wear it that way by choice—it was always pulled back and contained.
A habit, I think, from years of needing to be ready to move at a moment’s notice.
And now it’s loose around her shoulders, soft, and she’s smiling—open and so achingly real that for a second I forget what I was going to say.
I pull her into a hug instead.
“Sophie,” I manage.
“Kit.” Her arms come around me, tight and fierce. “Kit, you came.”
“Of course I came,” I say into her shoulder.
She pulls back, laughing, and ushers us inside.
Griffin had shown me their files after the sabotage, so I recognize all three of them immediately.
Max appears first, coming down the hallway. He’s broader and more imposing than I expected, but the way his face softens when he sees Sophie tells me everything I need to know. He shakes hands with Griffin, Nolan, and Declan, then turns to me, his green eyes warm.
“Kit. We’ve heard a lot about you.”
Ethan is right behind him—glasses, gray eyes, a calm that seems built into him. He greets us politely, his hand settling briefly at the small of Sophie’s back as he passes.
Then Finn comes out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a towel, grinning.
“Food’s almost ready—and nobody sets foot in that kitchen until I say so, I mean it.
” He pulls Sophie into a kiss on the way past that is brief and makes her laugh, and I have to look away as I feel my throat tightening, because I’ve never heard her laugh like that before.
The house smells like garlic and herbs and something sweet baking, and there are books everywhere—stacked on shelves, piled on side tables, a paperback left open on the arm of the couch. Shoes by the door. A hoodie draped over a chair that is clearly Sophie’s.
I think of her apartment, the last time I was there, right before she started her assignment at Synthera. It had been so bare, more like somewhere she slept than somewhere she actually lived.
This is nothing like that. People live here. People who love each other live here.
By the time we sit down for lunch, I have to swallow past the tightness in my throat and we haven’t even started eating.
I sit between Griffin and Nolan, watching, and I can’t stop watching.
They all hover in their own ways. Max finds quiet reasons to stay near her, refilling her glass before she asks and passing dishes her way first. Finn keeps making her laugh, nudging more food onto her plate when he thinks she isn’t looking.
Ethan notices when she gets cold and brings her a cardigan, laying it over her shoulders without a word.
And to my amazement, Sophie lets them. More than that, she leans into it.
Lucy and Fabian come up over the main course.
“Sentencing is next month,” Griffin says. “All three of them. Lucy, Fabian, and Marcel.”
“Good,” Sophie says. Her fork doesn’t even pause.
“Marcel gave up everything,” Declan adds. “How Lucy recruited him, how they planned the whole thing. Sang like a bird once he realized Lucy wasn’t coming to save him.”
“Fabian too,” Griffin says. “Access logs, cloned keycards, the data he’d copied. All of it.” He glances at Sophie. “It’s done, Soph.”
Sophie nods. “Let me know if you need anything from me for the sentencing.” Then she turns to Finn and asks him to pass the bread.
Not long ago, she would have been running the debrief herself, demanding every detail, unable to let go until every loose end was tied. Now she asks for the bread.
I catch Griffin’s eye across the table. He sees it too.
The conversation flows easily, lighter than I expected, warmer. Finn tells a story about the first time they made Sophie brunch, and how she’d eaten so many pancakes that he’d quietly started a second batch without saying anything.
“I was hungry,” Sophie says, flushing.
“It was seven pancakes, Soph,” Finn says. “We counted.”
Sophie swats him on the chest. He catches her hand and kisses it, grinning, and the look she gives him is so fondly exasperated it makes my heart ache.
She glows.
She looks nothing like the woman I watched lying in a hospital bed, pale and remote and utterly unreachable. She looks like someone who has come home after a very long time of not knowing where home was. Relaxed in a way I have never seen her. Content in a way I never dared to hope for.
I’m reaching for my wine when I catch Max glancing at Finn and Ethan, both of them giving the smallest nod back. Max pushes his chair back and stands, and the table goes quiet instantly.
“Kit. Griffin. Nolan. Declan.” His green eyes move around the table, and there’s an easy warmth there that I suspect most people never get to see.
“We asked you here today for several reasons. To say thank you—for being here, but also for taking care of Sophie all these years. For being her family before we were.”
Sophie’s eyes are bright. He looks at her, and the composure on his face softens into something so tender it makes my breath catch. Beside him, Finn and Ethan rise from their chairs.
“When we first met Sophie, we weren’t sure what to expect,” Finn says. “But one thing’s for sure—none of us expected to find what we found with her.”
“And we feel grateful every day that she chose us,” Ethan adds quietly.
And then, one by one, they go down on one knee.
Sophie’s hand flies to her mouth.
“Sophie.” Max’s voice is steady, but I can see his hands shaking from where I’m sitting. “Will you marry us?”
“Officially,” Finn says, his blue eyes bright. “So the whole world knows you’re ours.”
“We love you,” Ethan says quietly. “And we would very much like to spend the rest of our lives with you.”
She is already nodding—emphatically, tears spilling down her cheeks—reaching for them with both hands, touching Finn’s face, Ethan’s jaw, saying yes, yes, of course, yes, obviously yes—
Finn reaches into his pocket and pulls out a ring box. He opens it smoothly, like he’s practiced this a dozen times.
The ring is enormous. The stone catches the light and refracts it in approximately forty-seven directions. It must have cost a fortune, and it’s the least Sophie-like object I have ever seen.
Sophie stares at it, the eager nodding gradually slowing as her eyes move over the enormous stone. I watch her expression shift, the delight still there but edged now with uncertainty, as though she’s searching for the right reaction and hoping no one notices.
“Right,” Ethan says. He reaches into his own pocket and pulls out a second box. “We thought you might feel that way.”
He opens it. Inside is a plain white-gold band with a single small diamond set flush into the metal so it won’t catch on anything.
It’s understated and elegant and completely her.
“That’s the one,” Sophie says immediately.
“I know,” Ethan says.
They’re on their feet then, all three of them reaching for her at once. Max cups her face and wipes the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs before he kisses her forehead, while Ethan slips his arms around her from behind and kisses the top of her head, eyes closed as he holds her close.
“I told you so,” Finn says to no one in particular.
“You picked the large one,” Ethan points out.
“As a point of comparison. For the bit.” Finn gestures between himself and Sophie. “For this moment, which is working beautifully, I’d like to note.”
“Finn,” Sophie says.
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“Shut up and kiss me.”
He does—pulling her in by the waist and kissing her until she’s laughing against his mouth. Max goes next, slower, his hand cradling the back of her head. And then Ethan takes her face in his hands and presses his lips to hers so gently that I have to look away because I’m crying too hard to see.
Griffin’s arm comes around me. Nolan is looking at the ceiling in the way he does when he’s trying not to feel something. Declan is smiling like he expected this.
Ethan slides the band onto her finger. Sophie looks down at it, turns her hand in the light.
“The large one is going back,” she says.
“It’s already gone,” Ethan replies.
Sophie looks up at us—at me, at Griffin, at all of them—smiling, and I don’t think I have ever seen her look so completely at peace.
She found her pack. She found herself.
And I know, without a single doubt in the world, that Sophie has finally, truly, found her reason to live.