Her place is small, tidy but lived-in. There’s a faint scent of turpentine under the coffee smell—leftover from whatever paint mixing she was doing earlier. A stack of sketchbooks sits on a narrow table near the wall, and there’s a mismatched pair of mugs in the sink.
“You want anything? Coffee? Tea?” she asks, heading toward the tiny kitchen space.
“I’m good,” I say, and drop onto one end of the small sofa.
She comes back and sits on the opposite one, knees angled slightly away from me. She’s wringing her fingers together, nails digging into her palms, and that alone tells me she’s not okay.
“I know you know about Scott,” she says finally.
I shake my head. “All I know is Boone was concerned. And judging by what I saw today, he has every right to be.”
Her mouth flattens. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
I lean forward a little, resting my elbows on my knees, and reach out just enough to let my fingertips brush hers. Not a grab, not a hold—just the barest connection.
“You sure about that?” I ask, keeping my voice low.
She curses under her breath, stands up abruptly, and starts pacing the narrow strip of floor between the sofa and the window. Her arms are crossed, then uncrossed, her hands sliding into her hair and tugging lightly like she’s trying to get her head straight.
For a moment, I think she’s going to tell me to get out.
Instead, she drops back onto the sofa—closer to me this time—and stares at the floor.
Her shoulders rise and fall in uneven rhythm. I can see she’s weighing whether to open her mouth at all. My instinct is to fill the silence, make it easier for her, but I bite my tongue. She doesn’t need me steering her. She needs me listening.
She keeps her eyes down, tracing an imaginary seam along her jeans. “It’s not… it’s not just Scott,” she says finally, the name brittle in her mouth.
My chest tightens. Boone didn’t give me details, just a look that told me enough to know something ugly sat in her past.
“You know Max was my husband.” Her voice is quieter now, but steadier. “And you know he was a firefighter.”
I nod slowly, careful not to interrupt.
“What you don’t know,” she says, looking past me at some fixed point on the wall, “is that he was part of a pack before I ever met him. Scott was the chief of the station. He was an Alpha like Max, but his position at work meant he held a lot more authority over all of them. Then there was Levi, Trevor, Dalton and Jeremiah. Jeremiah was the youngest of the group, Max’s favorite.”
Her lips twitch like she’s half-apologizing for even saying something decent about one of them.
“Max was—” She stops, swallows, then starts again. “Max was good to me. Not perfect, but… he was kind. He had this way of making me laugh at things I shouldn’t. Always chasing the next big rescue, the next big fire—daredevil, but harmless with me. I was their Omega, and for the first year, they were all gentle. Or at least, I thought they were.”
Her hands knot together in her lap until her knuckles pale. “Then came the first time Max got pulled for a long-duty rotation. Scott volunteered him—said the department needed someone reliable. And while he was gone, Scott and the others came to check on me. That’s what they said. Just to make sure I was ‘taken care of.’”
The way she says those last words tells me exactly what they meant, even before she forces herself to go on.
“I thought it was nice. That they cared.” Her voice breaks. “But it wasn’t care. It was… two days. Two days where I couldn’t leave the bed. Two days where they—” She clamps her mouth shut, tears spilling before the words can.
I feel the urge to stand up, to put my fist through a wall, to drive to Memphis and make sure no one named Scott is breathing by nightfall. But I grip my knees instead. If I let my temper show now, she’ll think it’s aimed at her.
She wipes at her cheeks roughly, like she’s punishing herself for crying. “It didn’t stop there. Max never noticed. He was so tired all the time, so focused on proving himself. And I didn’t want to… ruin him. He was all I had.”
There’s a hollowness in my gut as she keeps going.
“When he died—” She pauses, inhales like it physically hurts. “When he died, they got worse. They’d leave me when I needed them. Leave me when I was in heat, which was better than when they decided to show up. I couldn’t tell which was worse—being alone and vulnerable, or not being alone and knowing exactly what they wanted from me.”
She’s trembling now. It’s subtle, the kind of tremor you’d miss if you weren’t looking for it. But I see it.
“And it’s not like I even know what I’ve been doing the last three years. I just… kept moving. And when this job came up—painting here, far away from Memphis—it felt like an escape. Back there, every Omega knew about me. Knew the stories. Here… here, I’m no one. Off the radar.”
She exhales, but it’s shaky. “I don’t want to be on anyone’s radar. I want to finish my work. Stay away from Alphas. I just want to feel safe in my own skin again.”
