Chapter 18
They take Marie to the hospital first.
The emergency room smells like antiseptic and worry. I sit in the waiting area with Eli while Ragon and Drake disappear behind double doors with Marie in another wheelchair. Jasper stands by the windows, arms crossed, watching traffic like it holds answers.
"X-rays," Eli says quietly beside me. "Just to be safe. The ankle looked bad."
I nod. My hands are still shaking.
An hour later, Drake emerges. "Sprained ankle. Grade two. They wrapped it, gave her crutches, told her to ice and elevate. No fractures."
Relief floods through me even though I know it changes nothing.
Marie limps out on Drake's arm, ankle wrapped in medical tape that makes her skin look pale. Her elbow is bandaged too. She doesn't look at me.
In the truck on the way home, Jasper speaks from the third row.
"I'll have to file an incident report."
Ragon's hands tighten on the wheel. "What?"
"You know I work at the registry. Data analysis, compliance monitoring. When there's an injury to a bonded or custodial omega during a pack outing, especially one involving potential inter-omega conflict, it triggers mandatory reporting. I don't have a choice."
Marie's head whips around. "You're going to report her?"
"I'm going to report the incident," Jasper says evenly. "Facts. Timeline. Injury assessment. What happens after that depends on what the facts say."
"The facts say she pushed me," Marie says.
Jasper doesn't answer.
My stomach twists tighter.
The front door ricochets off the wall like it's as scared as I am. Ragon doesn't shove me, but his scent does—smoke and iron and command herding me over the threshold while my breath scrapes at my throat.
"I didn't," I say before anyone can throw the first stone. "I didn't touch her."
The words fall onto the entryway tile and lie there like broken glass.
"Inside," Ragon says, voice a flat blade.
We spill into the living room in a staggered formation—Eli hovering near Marie's chair, Drake crowding her, Jasper closing the door with quiet efficiency. I hang back because the ground in front of me looks like a trap.
The wrap on Marie's ankle is black. Her arm is wrapped in white. Her eyes are still swollen from crying.
Today her eyes flick to me and gleam.
"She was right behind me," she says, pointing like a child identifying a culprit. "She pushed me. I swear, Ragon."
"I didn't," I say again, louder. "I was beside you. There were people everywhere. Someone could have bumped—"
"Liar," she chokes, and the word is small and vicious. "You've hated me since I got here."
"I hate being erased. I don't want you dead."
"Stop," Ragon says, and the floor might as well crack open.
"Let's be rational," Eli says. "The exhibit has cameras. We can request the footage tonight."
"We will," Ragon says without looking at him. "Later."
Later might as well be never when his jaw looks like that.
Drake bristles. "Ragon, come on. She's not—" He looks at me like he's trying to make the math line up. "Vee wouldn't just—"
"You didn't see," Marie whispers. "You didn't feel it."
"I was having a good time! I felt good for the first time in a long time. I did not feel my hands on your back!"
Ragon's mouth ticks. "I'm not interested in hearing the word 'feel' from either of you right now. We are going to restore order before we litigate facts."
He looks at me then, and there's a line in his face I don't see often. Something older, meaner.
My pulse skitters.
"Jealousy. Territoriality. Disrespect. I am not tolerating it anymore."
"I didn't—"
He cuts me off with a slice of his hand. "Stop talking."
The command hits like a pressure drop. My mouth closes with a click.
Marie tucks herself closer to him with calculated fragility. "She wanted to humiliate me. In public. To prove I don't belong here. She wanted everyone to see me fall. Or she wanted to kill me so she could have you to herself again. She can’t stand that I’m your scent match and she isn’t."
"I wanted to see the gorillas eat carrots," I say through my teeth.
"Verena," Ragon says, warning threaded through my name.
"I didn't push her."
Drake's hand lifts and drops uselessly. "Ragon. We should breathe before anyone says something we can't take back."
Ragon turns and sinks his fist into the wall.
The sound is blunt and ugly. Everyone flinches except Jasper, who only tilts his head like he's marking the exact measurement of the dent.
The room drops into suspended quiet.
Ragon shakes out his hand once and looks at me. He doesn't wince. "I am ending this. All of it. Today."
He pivots his gaze to the others. "Eli. Jasper. You will bring her to her room and hold her there."
Eli straightens. "Hold—"
"Hold. She doesn't move. She doesn't hide. She doesn't throw herself at the door. She watches."
My body goes cold. "Watches what?"
Ragon's eyes flick to Marie and back to me. "These games end today. Omegas do not threaten omegas. Omegas do not compete with other omegas. You are going to understand your place. We are going to mark your nest with what this pack is."
The meaning lands with a nauseating drop.
My nest.
My room.
His scent.
Hers.
I step back without meaning to. The wall hits my shoulder.
"No. No. No. Please don't— don't do that. Not there."
Marie inhales like she's smelling victory for the first time. "She needs to learn."
"Ragon," Jasper says, stepping forward, shoulders squaring. "This is crossing a line."
Ragon turns on him so fast my vision blinks. "You still want to be in this pack? You follow my lead."
"I won't stand by while you weaponize an omega's nest. Omega Welfare Act, section five. Nest integrity. You violate it as punishment, you invite the Omega Protection Agency oversight. And you will not like oversight crawling through our house."
Ragon takes one step into Jasper's space. "This is not abuse. This is correction. I'm ending this jealousy tonight. Vee is going to learn to share or have nothing at all."
"You're wrapping cruelty in procedure and calling it structure. If you think they won't smell it on a report, you're dumber than the registry thinks you aren't."
For a second, I think Ragon might actually put his hands on another alpha.
He doesn't.
He pushes out scent instead—thick, punishing pressure that slams into my knees and makes Eli rock back a half-step. Drake swears under his breath.
The whole room feels like a storm just sank into it.
"Eli. Jasper. You will hold her."
Eli's throat works. "Ragon—"
Ragon's scent spikes again, a deliberate hammer. "Now."
Eli's body answers before his mouth can. He moves toward me, hands up, palms open, face carved into apology. "Vee. Please."
I shake my head hard enough the world blurs. "No. Please don't let him— Eli. You know this is wrong."
He flinches like I slapped him. "I know. I'm sorry."
"What are you teaching me," I ask. "That my room isn't mine? That my nest isn't sacred? That you can put her smell wherever you want and I have to call it home? That I have nowhere to go at all? Nothing that is safe?"
"I'm teaching you that pack means everyone. That you don't get to hoard your space like it's a fortress. That nest belongs to this pack, not just you."
"I didn't push her. I didn't. I didn't."
"Hush."
His hands close around my forearms and I am such a coward for how my instinct purrs even now. He doesn't twist. He doesn't dig in. He doesn't have to. My body is already adapting: these are safe hands, obey them.
"Jasper."
Jasper's mouth flattens into a bloodless line. "I will write the incident report myself. And if you want me to sign my name under what you're about to do, you're going to be very disappointed."
"You'll hold. Or you'll walk."
Jasper's eyes flick to mine—resignation and promise both. "I'll hold. And I'll file. But only because I don’t want to leave her alone in your care after this."
"File what," Marie scoffs. "A note that Vee made me almost die?"
Jasper tilts his head toward her with a little court-smile. "A note that we ignored evidence in favor of theater."
Ragon throws one last glance at the wall, at the fist-shaped wound in the paint. Then he turns down the hallway.
"Move."
They move me.
It's not like being dragged. It's worse. Eli's hands are steady; Jasper takes a shoulder. They aren't rough. They aren't cruel. My body goes where alphas tell it.
The hall feels longer than it is. Family photos blur. The rug catches at the toe of my shoe and I stumble. Eli tightens his grip and I hate that it soothes me anyway.
Marie limps along on Drake's arm, not looking at me.
Ragon's scent leads the way—heavy, sure, filling my lungs like smoke.
My door waits.
My room waits.
My nest is a quiet shape on the bed, blankets layered the way my body knows how to layer: soft under, weight over, the little curve on the left where Eli's shoulder fits when he's reading me to sleep.
Ragon stops at the threshold and looks at it like a problem he's already solved.
"Don't. Ragon, please. Not there. Anywhere else. Do anything else. But not my nest. It’s all I have left."
Marie inhales.
Ragon doesn't answer me.
He looks at Eli and Jasper instead. "Hold her. She watches."
Eli and Jasper angle me to the chair in the corner like I'm a fragile painting. My knees go weak when they turn me so I'm facing the nest.
"Ragon," Jasper says one last time. "Don't make me have to call OPA."
"Do your job. I'll do mine. She's under my care. In my pack. What's going to be your pack soon. It's my call. The OPA is the one that allows to registry to pick out alpha guardians for omegas. The registry chose me for Verena out of hundreds of applicants. They saw me as a capable, reliable alpha for her. So go on and call them Jasper. They’ll agree that I know what I’m doing. Vee will be rid of all her jealousy at the end of this. She’ll be better off for it. Happier. She’ll settle down when she learns how to share. "
Jasper exhales through his nose, the sound small and furious. His hands don't leave my shoulder.