Page 48 of Torment Me Knot
The Alphas move fast. Kev grabs blankets. Ezra transfers the smoothies to cups with lids. Lex holds the back door open. Sera watches us, waiting, letting us set the pace.
We walk toward the door together. I step onto patio pavers and the sun hits my face and I stop breathing. Warmth, real warmth, soaking into my skin. I tip my head back. Close my eyes. Let the light pour over me.
The garden is everything Kev promised. High brick walls on all sides, climbing plants softening the stone. The warmth feels good. So good. Heat sinking into muscles, loosening things I didn't know were tight. Aubrey sighs. The sun touches his skin and the tension around his mouth eases. The furrow between his brows smooths out.
I don't know if this is just a different kind of cage.
I don't know if these alphas will stay patient forever, or if the gentleness will eventually curdle into something ugly.
But Aubrey stands beside me. I'm not alone anymore. I have hope. An omega and alphas on my side. And now the world can hurt me more than it ever has before.
Chapter Seventeen
Kev
Iwalked into the kitchen a minute ago with Ezra right behind me, and Espie froze mid-step.
Her shoulders locked. Aubrey's hand fisted in her sleeve.
Four alphas in a house that's supposed to be safe is still four alphas.
I saw the flinch. Made the call. Told Ezra and Lex to stay outside with them, give the omegas room to breathe.
Sera said she'd grab the smoothies they'd left on the counter and be right out.
She's still here beside me, staring at our omegas through the kitchen window.
Espie and Aubrey walk the perimeter of the garden. Espie pauses near the flower bed. She reaches toward a white bloom, then stops. It's a white gardenia, wide open. Her shoulders lock. Ezra moves slowly, every step telegraphed, giving her plenty of time to track him. He picks the bloom and holds it out to her. She takes it slowly. Carefully.
Ezra's smile breaks across his face, brilliant, unguarded. I haven't seen him smile like that in months. I stop breathing for a second. Such a small thing, a flower, and Ezra looks like somebody just handed him a miracle.
“Holy shit.” I'm not sure I meant to say it out loud. My throat's tight. I'm not going to cry in my own kitchen over a flower. I'm not. “When's the last time either of them saw the sun, do you think?”
“Haven records logged her as deceased seven years ago. Wallace took her and she wasn't seen as a person. Just inventory. Property doesn't get sunlight,” she says.
Property doesn't get sunlight.The phrase sits in the kitchen like a body.
“Has she said anything about what happened to her?” I’m almost afraid to ask, but I need to know.
“She doesn’t need to.” Sera gives me a side glance. “I've seen bad. I've seen worse. That place was something else entirely. Not to mention the scars all over her body.”
“Fuck.” I clench my fists so I don’t punch the countertop.
Aubrey's still so broken. They both are. They both are, and every instinct I have screams at me to wrap them up and hidethem away. Build walls so high nothing can touch them again. That's not healing. That's just a prettier cage.
She watches me for a beat. “You're allowed to be angry, Kev. I’m fucking enraged.”
A special kind of evil goes after the people who can't fight back, and our entire society makes space for it. Makes it easy. We'vedesignedit easy. None of this should have happened. Not to her. Not to Aubrey. Not to any of the most vulnerable people in our world. We built the walls around the wrong people and dusted our hands.
“How is she not like Aubrey? After what you just described. After what they did to her. How is she walking around in my garden right now and not... gone. Wherever Aubrey went.” I shake my head. “Nothing we did got through to him. Until her. So how is she still in there?”
Espie's still holding the flower, Aubrey pressed close to her side with an actual smile on his face.
Sera doesn't answer right away. The basil in her scent shifts, softens at the edges.
“I ask myself that every day. I don't have a good answer.” Her voice is quieter. “I've got a theory. I don't love it. Their scent-match is doing things I haven’t seen before. Biology isn't supposed to work that way. And yet here they are, settling each other in ways no alpha in this house has been able to. I keep wondering if being broken the same way rewired them. I don't know. I want to ask David Maverick. He's seen more omega survivors than anyone I know. If anyone has a frame for this, it's him.”
She just laid out the whole theory and left herself out of it. Like she wasn't the one who pulled Espie out of that facility, like she wasn't the reason any of this is happening at all.
