Page 38 of The Omega Switch: Part 2

I woke up, the ache in my chest that I’d carried for more than half a year finally easing enough to let me sleep for more than a few hours. For the first time in just as long, my pack felt steady again.

Fractures still ran through all three of us, and Ivy’s absence occupied the center of our lives. But Ronan and Elias had found their rhythm again. Ronan finally seemed to find peace, his anger and restlessness replaced by a calmer, but still yearning feeling through his bond.

Elias’s guilt eased, and he finally seemed to have faith in his healing skills again after she’d called for him when she needed help. Ronan and Elias spoke more openly now, and seemed more united than they had been even before everything collapsed.

I should have found comfort in that - but I often felt like I was standing outside my own pack, watching from the outside. And the worst part is that I knew it was all my fault.

Ronan had confronted his failures with brutal honesty, and Elias had immersed himself in learning about coercive control and emotional abuse, forcing himself to understand every sign he had overlooked. Both of them had begun building something careful with Ivy, one interaction at a time.

I had done little more than remain at a distance and manage the legal consequences. It was what I knew how to do - years of keeping myself distant and cold made me hard to read. I knew how to run a company, and how to handle legal threats. But I froze at how to compose a simple message to Ivy. The thought of standing in front of her and seeing what I had done reflected in her eyes made me feel like I couldn't move.

Then Elias called one day, saying she’d collapsed from exhaustion. Nothing in the world mattered more to me than her health, and nothing had scared me more than that call. Even though Elias said she’d be fine, the idea that she’d been working so hard by herself made me feel even worse. She’d never have been in that position if we’d just listened. If I hadn’t driven her away and rejected her based on a lie.

Then, I heard about her family planning something. I had gone to the boutique one night because I needed to tell Elias what our attorneys had uncovered about the Carrington family. I hadn’t intended to enter - Elias had made it clear that Ivy had only invited him into her space, and I respected that boundary no matter how desperately I wanted to see her for myself.

But then, the universe sent me a lifeline. Her voice had drifted from the back of the store, soft and disoriented.

“Alpha?”

I froze. I thought she might have been calling for Ronan. But then I saw her back in a small room, her hand lifted toward me, her fever-bright eyes fixed on my silhouette. She cried out again, her voice so full of need and pain that I hadn’t been strong enough to deny her. I would never deny her again.

The instant my fingers closed around hers, the tension in her body eased. Her breathing deepened, and the faint distress in her scent softened until she slipped back into sleep. I sat there, realizing that she had felt safe… with me.

The pain inside me that had been there since the day we discovered her room empty and realized she had disappeared without telling any of us where she was going, finally, finally eased. I knew better than to place too much meaning on a feverish moment. Ivy had barely known where she was. She might not have remembered my face at all.

But I remembered. That moment gave me more hope, more drive to keep going, than anything else.

A few days later, I was in my office when our lead attorney called.

“Hunter, we have a problem.”

I leaned back in my chair, already disliking his tone. “What happened?”

“Nestwell Aesthetics filed an emergency petition against Ivy Carrington’s boutique. They’re claiming she’s manufacturing products based on formulas and intellectual property belonging to the company.”

I gripped the phone, and a fury surged through me so violently that I stood.

“They’re doing what?” I growled, so loudly that I could see some of my staff turn to stare through the office's glass walls.

“They’ve alleged misappropriation of trade secrets, patent infringement, and breach of confidentiality. They’re seeking an injunction to halt sales while the case proceeds.”

I took a breath, my jaw clenched so tightly that it hurt. Nestwell Aesthetics. The name itself made me furious. The Carrington family had built an empire using Ivy’s intelligence while treating her as though she were an embarrassment they were forced to conceal. Now that she had escaped and created something of her own, they were trying to strip that away too.

“What patents are they citing?”

He went on to describe what I knew was Ivy’s work. I crossed to the window as I listened, staring down at the city without seeing it. The patents covered calming lotions, fragrance stabilizers, heat-support products, and skin-safe scents. Those were all Ivy’s work - every last one of them.

“They know she doesn’t have the resources to fight this,” I said.

“That appears to be the strategy,” he said. Of course it was.

The timing was not coincidental. Nestwell had not released a credible new product since Ivy left. The only exception was a heavily fragranced body lotion launched under Arabella’s name, a product so bad that it received complaints about skin irritation and scent headaches within weeks. Arabella’s influence was obvious. The product seemed good in concept, but performed terribly in reality.

Without Ivy, Nestwell had no innovation - and her family knew it. The public would eventually know it too. Ivy’s boutique had become a threat simply by succeeding. Every new customer and every positive review made it harder for the Carringtons to maintain the story that Arabella had been the creative force behind their company.

“What are our options?” I asked.

“Ivy will need independent counsel. She may also have a claim to ownership of the patents and possibly an equity interest in Nestwell, depending on how the work was created and documented.”