52. Max
Max
When Sophie enters the atrium tonight, she looks nothing like the woman who first set foot in Synthera.
Her hair is loose around her shoulders in dark waves, the way she wears it at home now.
The green dress catches the light as she moves, fitted through the waist before falling in a long, elegant line to the floor, and a silk scarf is draped across her throat, concealing the three marks beneath it.
She’s in heels, moving through the crowd with an ease I’ve never seen from her before.
But it’s her eyes that stand out most.
She’s not wearing the brown contacts. For the first time, she’s standing in a room full of people with her real eyes uncovered, pale, clear green, matching the dress and unmistakably her mother’s, from the photograph she finally showed us. And she looks like herself.
Completely, unapologetically herself.
It wasn’t hard to convince her to come tonight.
We all knew it made sense. The bond, the engagement, our wedding plans that Finn has more or less taken over, the ceremony only three months away.
Soon enough, all of it will be public, and Sophie knows there’s no real way to keep the world from finding out forever.
Better to let them find out on our terms.
As if she can feel me watching her, she looks up, and our eyes meet across the atrium.
Just like always since I marked her, the bond pulses between us, a thread running beneath everything and connecting us even from opposite sides of a crowded room.
I feel her through it as naturally as I feel my own heartbeat.
Hello, little one.
Her emotions wash through the bond and into me.
Excitement. Happiness. Just Sophie, completely here with me.
I can’t help smiling at her, and she smiles back before turning to Evie, who’s saying something animatedly with both hands.
“It’s time,” Finn says, appearing at my shoulder.
He’s in black tie, looking every bit the part, and the grin on his face belongs to a man who has been waiting for this moment and has absolutely no intention of wasting it.
I straighten my jacket and glance at Ethan. He nods, steady as always.
I step up to the microphone.
Conversations fade as faces turn toward me, and the crowd gradually settles into silence.
“Thank you for joining us,” I say. My voice is even and clear, carrying easily through the atrium. “I’ll keep the formalities brief, because I think most of you would rather be drinking.”
A ripple of laughter moves through the room.
I talk about Equinox—the trials, the disruption to our research and the fact that we’ve now fully recovered from it. I talk about the threat to Synthera carefully, without names, giving them only the facts. An insider attempted to sabotage the project. They were caught and they are now in custody.
And as I watch them listen, I think about Sophie sitting on the floor of a storage room, telling us she should have been better.
I think about how wrong she was. And despite everything, some part of me is grateful, because if none of it had happened, Sophie might never have walked through our door. I don’t let myself think about what life would look like without her. I already know the answer, and it’s unbearable.
Ethan speaks next. He is precise and thorough and loses approximately thirty percent of the non-scientists in the audience within the first two minutes. Finn rests a hand briefly on his shoulder, Ethan recalibrates, and the thirty percent return.
I love him for both the thoroughness and the recalibration.
Then Finn steps forward.
“There’s one more thing,” he says.
He holds the room without trying, completely relaxed, making every person feel like he’s speaking directly to them.
“And it’s considerably more interesting than pharmacokinetics.”
Ethan gives him a look and Finn grins.
“A few months ago,” Finn says, “a woman walked into this building and turned our whole world upside down.”
He pauses, and his expression turns unexpectedly tender.
“In the best possible way.”
He glances at me, and I step forward to stand beside him.
“We didn’t know what we were getting when she first arrived,” I say. “I don’t think any of us could have been prepared for her.”
I look across the atrium at her.
“She is the woman who changed everything. She—”
I stop, the knot in my throat catching me off guard.
I think about the basement in Detroit and the scars on her body and the girl who came home from school and found her mother gone.
Everything she survived. Every wall she built to keep herself safe.
And then the night she tore those walls down, one by one, and handed us everything she’d been holding.
I swallow hard and keep going.
“She changed everything,” I say. “That’s the only way I know how to say it. Nothing has been the same since she walked through our door.”
“She changed us,” Finn says beside me, his hand finding my shoulder and squeezing once. His voice is quiet now, the humor gone. “All three of us. More than I think any of us knew we needed.”
The room seems to hold its breath with us.
“We would like to announce our bond,” Ethan says.
A murmur moves through the crowd, soft at first, then spreading as people exchange glances.
“And our engagement.”
Ethan says it simply, his voice calm, but there is nothing casual about it. We all knew what this moment would mean, but hearing the words out loud, in front of everyone, hits me harder than I expected.
Sophie is looking at us across the atrium. A smile breaks across her face, and even from here I can see tears beginning to gather in her eyes.
I’m ready.
She’s standing with Evie, a champagne glass in her hand, and Evie is looking around, trying to work out which woman in this atrium we are talking about.
“Sophie.” My voice drops into something I’ve only ever used in the dark, softer than it ever is in public, but right now, I don’t care who hears it. “Thank you for saying yes.”
I raise my glass, and Ethan and Finn raise theirs beside me.
“To Sophie,” all three of us say.
The room turns.
Every face in the atrium orients toward her, and beside her Evie lets out something between a gasp and an incredulous laugh, one hand flying to Sophie’s arm.
Across the room, I can see every person who has meant something to us.
Kit is crying and laughing at the same time, her glass raised high. Griffin, Nolan, and Declan raise theirs beside her. Celine lifts her glass with an expression of pure delight. Roberto holds his wine aloft, grinning, pride shining in his eyes.
And then there is Rosa, Ethan’s mother, the one who gave me a place I could call home all those years ago.
She presses her hand to her heart, her drink forgotten.
She’d cried when she met Sophie—silently, her hand pressed to her mouth, the other reaching out to touch Sophie’s face with a gentleness that made Ethan take his glasses off and look away.
It reminded me so much of the first time I met her—the same open arms, the same immediate, unconditional warmth, as if loving the people her son loves was the simplest thing in the world.
Our family.
Through the bond, I can feel all of them—Sophie’s joy, bright and overwhelming, Finn’s fierce pride, Ethan’s quiet, steady love—and I know, with absolute certainty, that this is the happiest moment of my life.
The room erupts, and we step off the stage, making our way through the crowd. People are clapping, some of them cheering, and all I can see is her.
Sophie is watching us come to her, champagne glass in hand. She’s smiling, her green eyes bright with tears, and the look on her face—like there is nowhere else she’d rather be—is something I know I’ll remember for the rest of my life.
I reach her first and cup her face in one hand, pressing my lips to her cheek, my thumb tracing her cheekbone.
Ethan takes her free hand and brings it to his lips, his gray eyes soft behind his glasses.
Finn tucks a strand of dark hair behind her ear, kisses her temple, and murmurs against her skin, “You look incredible, sweetheart.”
Sophie looks at me, at Ethan, at Finn, and then out at the people watching her—seeing her as she is, not the woman she let the world see when she first walked through our doors.
And I watch her do the bravest thing I have ever seen her do.
She reaches up and unwinds the scarf from her throat.
Our marks are there for anyone to see, dark against her skin.
She lifts her glass.
She lets them see her.