That’s a lie, but it feels better than the truth.

  I uncap the root beer and pour a little out over the grass. It fizzes, hissing against the wet moss, and I imagine Chris laughing at me for being sentimental. I can hear him, even now: “Get a grip, Wyatt. If you’re gonna cry, at least do it with style.”

  I crouch and rest my elbows on my thighs. The air smells like ozone and mud. I want to tell him everything, but I don’t know where to start. So I just talk.

  “Ranier thinks he’s going to start a revolution with the Council. Bastion wants to run away on his motorcycle, or at least he did before this year’s Omega Selection Day. As for me? I let the best omega I’ve ever met walk out because I was too scared to fight for her.”

  The rain picks up, drumming on my shoulders. I let it.

  “And then there’s the blog. You’d love this part. Turns out I’m an influencer, Chris. A real mover and shaker. So much so that someone—probably Charlotte—hacked Royals Anonymous to ruin Everhart Pack for good. All because I couldn’t let go of being the guy who knows everything about everyone and says nothing. Classic, right?”

  I want to laugh, but the lump in my throat is the size of a brick.

  “I don’t know what you want from me.” My voice is softer now. “I don’t even know what I want from me. Everyone around me was right. I’m just spinning my wheels. Wasting time until something explodes. Well, good news. Everything exploded.”

  A gust of wind rattles the plastic flowers on the next grave over. The crows take off, screaming. I watch them go, then look back at Chris’s headstone.

  “I keep waiting for you to tell me what to do,” I admit. “I keep thinking, if you were here, you’d have some plan, or a joke, or a way to make it all make sense. But you’re not here. And nobody’s coming to fix it.”

  I reach into my pocket and pull out my phone. I thumb over to Royals Anonymous and scroll, watching the numbers go up on the last post. The whole city is obsessed with us. With Emery and her downfall. With me.

  “It’s all noise, Chris. And it’s all mine.”

  For a second, I think I hear him—just a flicker of memory, a ghost-echo in the rain. “So shut it off, idiot,” he’d say. “Just shut it off and go do something real.”

  I stare at the phone. The battery is at three percent. A clear sign if I’ve ever seen one.

  My hands don’t even shake as I delete every single post and meme I’ve ever posted. I delete the blog account right before my phone battery dies.

  A weight is lifted from me as the screen goes dark. I smile up at Chris’s headstone. “Thank you, brother.”

  I walk over to the river lining the cemetery. The water is brown, restless, and too shallow for secrets but deep enough for this. I wind up and hurl my phone as far as I can.

  It arcs, tumbles, splashes. Gone.

  I watch the ripples until they fade. Then I turn back to the headstone.

  “Guess that’s it.”

  No more hiding. No more running. If I fuck this up, at least I’ll know it’s my own fault.

  I head back through the cemetery, lighter than when I arrived. As I reach the street, I feel for my phone before remembering it’s gone. No way to call, no way to text. The future is terrifyingly, exhilaratingly blank.

  I start walking.

  Time to find out what happens when I stop living like a punchline and start living for real.

  The nice thing about showing up unannounced at your ex’s place is that it forces everyone to be honest. The downside is, sometimes the honesty is a slow, grinding kind—the kind that makes you wish you’d stayed home and read the comments section instead.

  Charlotte’s house is the same kind of old as every house in this district: white-painted brick, four steps up from the sidewalk, with a postage-stamp yard and a tree that’s mostly dead. The storm door is propped open by a stack of mail she’s never bothered to pick up. I guess if you torch your reputation in every Council circle, bills don’t seem as urgent.

  I ring the bell, mostly for the pleasure of hearing it echo through the thin walls. Charlotte answers faster than I expect. I guess the spy cams she set up are still working.

  “Wyatt Whitlock,” she says, voice slick as butter and twice as likely to clog an artery. “Here to grovel, or just audit my recycling bin for incriminating evidence?”

  She looks good. Or, more accurately, she looks curated. There’s no sign of surprise, only the faintest flick of her eyebrow.

  “Neither.” I step past her. “I wanted to see if you got what you wanted.”

  Charlotte invites me inside. I follow. She closes the door and then leans against it, arms folded, like she intends to keep me here against my will. “You mean destroying the Everhart pack? Oh, sweetie, that was just the icing.”

  Her living room is immaculate. Every pillow is fluffed and every bookshelf organized by some private logic. There are no pictures of us. Or of anyone, for that matter. I take the guest chair, the one I always hated, and let the silence bloom.

  “I don’t think you care about the icing,” I say. “I think you just wanted out.”

  Charlotte sighs like I’m a fool who’s just figured out something remedial. “Of course I wanted out. You think I liked being window dressing at fundraisers? Getting introduced as ‘the omega’ even when I was headlining the event?” Her eyes cut to me, sharp. “It’s the same reason you run that blog, you know. To feel like you exist outside of the script.”

  I nod, because she’s not wrong. Even if I’m changing that as of today.

  “I just don’t get why you had to take everyone else down with you. Bastion’s still cleaning up your mess from before. You could have just… left.”

  Charlotte smiles, sharp and white. “You never did understand me, Wyatt. If I’d just left, they would’ve replaced me by the end of the week. Probably with someone like Emery. You think I’m going to let my whole life’s work be erased by a press release?”

  “No,” I admit. “But you didn’t have to nuke the world on your way out.”

  She shrugs. “That’s where you and I differ. You always think there’s a way to walk away without casualties. I know better.”

  Emery was the casualty today. And Bastion. And Ranier. Charlotte has no idea what she’s talking about.

  Quiet settles between us like dust while I decide if it’s worth arguing her point.

  Charlotte tilts her head. “Is this the part where you threaten me? Or beg me to retract all the posts?”

  I shake my head. “No. They’re already gone, as is Royals Anonymous. I just wanted to see if you’re done.” It occurs to me that I never really actually accused her. I came here to see if she had done this, but she admitted it fully without recourse.

  Charlotte laughs, a quick, brittle sound. “Done? I’ve been done since the day you and Bastion picked me up from that Council house. But you keep coming back, like a dog that never learns.”

  She’s right about that, too.

  I ask the one question that remains. “So why did you leak the draft? The one about Emery. What did you get out of that?”

  Charlotte tilts her head, like she’s genuinely puzzled. “You mean, besides the chaos? I was just… accelerating the inevitable.”

  Charlotte will never let go. This is affirmed with every word she speaks. Which is a shame, because there will always be a part of me that loved the girl she was when we were younger.

  “Congratulations. You won.”

  She gives a little bow, hair falling in a perfect curtain over her cheek. “Thank you.”

  I look at her, really look, and realize I don’t feel anything. Not anger, not hurt, not even nostalgia. Just a weird, hollow pity, like seeing a mean kid at the playground who’s finally run out of people to bully.

  I stand. “We’re done, then.”

  Charlotte blocks the door with one hand, eyes narrowed. “That easy, huh? No threats, no promises?”

  I meet her gaze. “Just… don’t come after us again. If you do, I’ll stop pretending we’re not the same and I’ll torch everything you’ve ever cared about. And believe me, I know what you care about.”

  Charlotte considers, then moves her hand. Maybe this was what she wanted. The drama. “Fair enough.”

  I’m almost out the door when she calls after me.

  “You’re a coward, Whitlock,” she says, but there’s no heat in it. “Always were.”

  I shrug. “Better than being a ghost.”

  As I walk away, I realize I’m smiling. Not because I won, but because—for the first time in a long while—I don’t owe Charlotte a damn thing.

  The sky is clearing as I hit the street. There’s a sense of weightlessness, of gravity gone optional. I almost want to call Bastion and tell him it’s done, but my phone is at the bottom of a river.

  Instead, I head home. To whatever comes next. To my pack, if they’ll have me. To Emery, if I can ever figure out how to apologize.

  The future is no longer a punchline. It’s simply a beginning… if we can put Everhart Pack back together.

  CHAPTER 32

  Bastion

  It takes me an unfortunate amount of time to realize that I’m driving around aimlessly in search of Emery. At first, I think I’ll be able to spot her cotton-candy hair anywhere, but I don’t. Then I just drive because I realize with a sinking feeling in my heart that I’m not sure where Emery would go.

  Home, I guess. But maybe not if her parents really weren’t the biggest fans of her joining our pack.

  It’s only a few hours in that I finally realize I’m incredibly stupid. Eloise, Emery’s best friend. She’d go there. I’ve spent nearly my entire life with my pack so having friends outside of them isn’t a thing. There are the guys who are always at races, but they’re more acquaintances than anything else. I’ve never had a best friend outside my pack.

  Emery is lucky. And I’m lucky as hell that I remember Emery telling me vaguely where Eloise lived. The houses are easy to find. They’re settled against the lake just like Emery said. But I do not know which is Eloise’s home.

  So I knock. I knock on every single door at every house until, finally, a familiar blonde with narrowed green eyes stares me down. “What are you doing here?”

  I’m actually so shocked to see Eloise that my mouth goes dry for far too long. I swallow. “I think it’s rather obvious. Is Emery here?”

  Eloise’s eyes grow dark. “How did you even find me?”

  I let out a dry laugh. “I knocked on every door until you answered.”

  Eloise raises her eyebrows. “In the city?”

  I point past her. “Emery mentioned you lived in a multi-family home near the lake. Please, is she here?”

  Finally, Eloise relents. Her body relaxes but I can tell in the tone of her voice that she’s only humoring me. “She is. She’s okay. And she might even want to talk to you. But I told you all the day Emery got to your manor that if you hurt her, I’d hurt you.”

  I nod. “I know. And we deserve it. But there’s been a massive misunderstanding, and I want clear it up at the very least.”

  Eloise considers me for a long moment. She’s fiercely protective of Emery, and I admire that about her as Emery’s alpha. Hopefully still her alpha. The fact that’s not guaranteed breaks something deep within me.

  Eloise steps out of the way and ushers me into her home with a wave of her hand.

  I enter. Eloise’s home isn’t a fancy manor, but it’s homey and cozy and everything I sometimes wish we were allowed to make the manor. A lot of Eloise’s style reflects Emery’s, which doesn’t surprise me considering how close they are. But what I don’t expect to see are all the canvases lining the walls like Emery’s studio nest. Eloise must be an artist, too.

  I follow Eloise wordlessly until Emery is in view. She’s sitting on a cozy couch in the living room with her knees tucked under her chin.

  My lips part in a gentle smile when I see her, safe and at home here. “Emery.”

  “Hi Bastion.”

  Eloise makes a production of crossing the room and giving Emery a shoulder squeeze before leaving again to give us privacy. I’m not so dense as to assume it’s not for my benefit—a warning that if I so much as raise my voice, I’ll have an artist’s palette embedded in my skull.

  I kneel beside the pile of blankets and my omega. I’m not good at this, but there’s no playbook for being the villain in someone else’s story, however short-lived and unintended.

  I lower my voice, careful. “I’m not here to bring you back if that’s not what you want. I just… need you to know what happened.”

  A sniff, so faint I almost miss it. But she’s watching me. She’s listening. There’s still a chance.

  “Okay,” Emery says. “Eloise and I… we decided there was a chance that maybe Wyatt was hacked or something.”

  Good. So there’s that assumption there already. But it won’t help the whole truth, and Emery deserves nothing but the whole truth.

  I settle on the floor in front of her and cross my legs. “There’s no good way to say this,” I start. “But the post? The draft? It was Ranier.”

  Emery’s eyes narrowed. “Ranier?”

  I hold up a hand before she says anything else. “He found Wyatt’s phone after our debut event and donor drive. Ranier wrote the draft but never posted it. Didn’t even think it would go anywhere. But Charlotte got into the admin queue and leaked it. Wyatt didn’t know. He’s an idiot, but not that kind.”

  I wait. Emery doesn’t move. I keep going.

  “I know that doesn’t make it better. I know it doesn’t change anything. But you have to believe me, none of us wanted to hurt you. Especially not like this.”

  A low voice, muffled against her knees. “He still meant it. Or he wouldn’t have written it.” She lets out a dry laugh. “Did he write it before or after he gave me his claim mark?”

  I nod, slow. “Ranier’s been raised his whole life to think that legacy is more important than anything. It’s what his dad drilled into him. And when he gets scared, he gets cruel. But that’s not all he is.”

  Emery’s eyes are slivers of blue above her knees. “What is he, then?”

  I think about the answer. About the way Ranier looks at the world—like it’s a test he’s always about to fail. But there’s also the way he sat up with Wyatt the night Christopher died. He was the only person who didn’t try to fix it.

  “He’s an idiot. But Ranier would rather break his own ribs than watch someone he loves get hurt. He’s just never learned how to do both. To love and not destroy.”

  Emery shifts. The blanket falls away from her face. “And what about you? What’s your excuse?”

  I shake my head. “None. I didn’t try to stop Ranier at first when we were put together as a pack. But I love you, Emery. I don’t want this to break us. I know it hurt you though, and your hurt is valid. But Wyatt didn’t do this.”

  Emery sits up. Her cheeks are red, eyes rimmed in pink, but she looks at me and I see something flicker there. Not forgiveness. Not yet. But something.

  I lean forward. “You’re the best thing that’s happened to me. You know that, right?”

  Emery shakes her head, like I’m lying.

  “It’s true. You have the patience of a saint, the healing touch of an angel, but more than that—you see us. You see me, and Wyatt, and even Ranier, and you’re not afraid. You were never afraid, even when we were doing everything we could to push you out.”

  Emery looks away, picking at the hem of her sleeve. “You make it sound easy.”

  “It’s not,” I admit. “But you make it look that way.”

  There’s a silence, thick and uneasy, but Emery doesn’t retreat. She just sits there, breathing.

  After a minute, she says, “What happens now?”

  I shrug. “Up to you. If you want to come back, the nest is yours. If you want to burn the house down, I’ll bring matches.”

  She almost smiles. “That’s dramatic.”

  “Have you met me?”

  Emery actually smiles, just a little. It gives me permission to have hope. Hope that we all really did fall in love. And while sometimes miscommunications and arguments happen, it’s not the end-all be-all. The important part is that the truth is out there.

  Emery nods. “I just… need time. To think. To breathe.”

  “You can have all the time you need.” As long as you come back to us. I don’t say it despite wanting to because I know how it could sound. Emery’s decisions are her own. They always have been. But fuck. I don’t know what I or the pack will do without her.

  Emery chews her lip, then glances at Eloise who’s appeared in the hallway, watching but not interrupting. “There’s a PR event tomorrow. For the shelter project. I promised I’d go.”

  I stand, careful not to loom. “I’ll be there. We all will if you want us there.”

  She nods, and it’s shaky, but it’s a yes. I’ll take it.

  I turn to go, but at the door I pause and look back. “Hey, Emery?”

  Emery looks up.

  “I’m not good at this. But I mean it—I’ll bring the matches.”

  She laughs, quiet, but it’s enough.

  I leave the apartment, shoes squelching on the stairs, and step out into the cold. It’s no longer biting. It’s invigorating.

  This is how you start over.

  CHAPTER 33

  Emery

  The invitation is printed on linen paper thick enough to file as a weapon, but the real message comes through the watermark: House Everhart’s sigil, flanked by the less-prestigious but much more photogenic crests of the city’s other top packs. The font is script, the ink a midnight blue that stains my fingers when I run my thumb over the RSVP.

  I told them I would go. I want to go. But my nerves are coiled tighter than on Omega Selection Day.

  I miss my alphas. God, I miss them. But I am nervous to see what’s become of us since yesterday. And I’m terrified to see what the press will do after the viral post that nearly ruined everything.