Emery plucks a bishop from the board and spins it between her fingers. “Finishing school required six hours of chess for ‘strategic thinking.’ I was the only one who didn’t get bored enough to start a fire.”

  Wyatt pokes his head in. “How’s the patient?”

  Bastion glares at him. “Bored. Hungry. Not allowed to take a piss without a chaperone, thanks to Nurse Grey here.”

  Wyatt shifts his gaze to Emery, who winks. “He means, ‘Thank you, Emery. You’re a delight, and I’d be dead in a ditch without you.’”

  Bastion flips him off with his good hand, but even that lacks conviction.

  Emery stands and stretches her arms over her head. “I need to check the soup. Try not to cheat while I’m gone.”

  Emery disappears down the hall, leaving a streak of cotton candy scent in her wake. I don’t realize I’m watching her until Wyatt gives me a nudge.

  “You like her,” he says, low enough that Bastion won’t hear.

  I shake my head, more out of reflex than honesty. “I don’t have to like her. I just have to not hate her.”

  Wyatt shrugs, then grabs a box of crackers from Bastion’s bedside tray. “Whatever you say, man.”

  The next hour passes in a strange, suspended haze. Emery comes and goes, ferrying soup and snacks, fluffing pillows, and refusing to take shit from Bastion even when he doubles down on the snark. She changes his bandages like it’s no big deal. Her touch is matter-of-fact and almost gentle. Wyatt sits in the armchair by the window, pretending to read but mostly just watching the weird new ecosystem take shape around the bed.

  I lean against the wall. There’s no room for me in this little drama, not really, but I can’t make myself leave. If I’m honest, it feels safer here, even with the risk of Bastion throwing a cup at my head.

  When Emery finishes with the bandages, she wipes her hands on a towel and glances up at me. “Do you want to help with dinner, Ranier? Or are you still allergic to the kitchen?”

  I snort. “I’m allergic to being bossed around by a commoner omega.”

  She smiles, full force. “That’s fine. I’ll ask Wyatt. He’s a much better sous chef.”

  Wyatt bows, mock-serious. “At your service, milady.”

  Bastion groans, then flops back on the pillows. “If you guys don’t shut up, I swear I’ll swallow a rook and make you all drive me back to the hospital.”

  Emery laughs, the sound bright and clean. For a second, the whole room softens.

  I follow her to the kitchen before Wyatt can, if only for something to do. The space is cold marble and steel, big enough to host a basketball game. Emery moves with surprising confidence, lining up ingredients with the precision of a general marshaling her troops.

  I hover by the counter. “You’re taking this pretty well,” I say. “Bastion can be a dick.”

  She doesn’t look up. “I have three cousins. All boys. After a while, you learn not to let it get to you.”

  I watch her for a moment. She slices vegetables with quick, efficient strokes, never hesitating. “You’re not what I expected.”

  She sets down the knife and turns to face me. Her eyes are bluer than I remembered. “What did you expect? Drama? Meltdowns? The tragic omega who can’t handle the big bad alphas?”

  I feel my face go hot. “Maybe.”

  She grins. “That’s not me.”

  “I can see that,” I say, and then, because it feels necessary, “We’ve been shitty to you.”

  She shrugs, not unkind. “You’ve been shittier to each other. I just get the splash zone.”

  I almost laugh, and it surprises me. “You’re not afraid of us at all.”

  Emery’s smile fades a touch. “You’re the only ones who should be afraid. I’m here to stay, Ranier. I’m not going anywhere.”

  I feel the words land. Hard.

  “Why?” I ask, and it’s not a challenge, just genuine confusion. “You could go. You could have any pack you wanted.”

  She shakes her head, ponytail bobbing. “No. The Council could blacklist me after what I did at Omega Selection Day. You’re stuck with me, and I’m stuck with you. But that’s not why I’m doing this.”

  I study her face. There’s nothing fake there. Not even the glimmer of calculation I’d expect from someone so determined.

  “I want to belong somewhere,” she says, quiet now. “And I want to win. That’s it.”

  I nod, not trusting myself to say more.

  She turns back to the stove and dumps vegetables into a pot with a sizzle. “If you really want to help, you can set the table. But don’t mess up the forks, or I’ll never let you live it down.”

  I smirk. “You’re a tyrant, Grey.”

  She glances over her shoulder. “You have no idea.”

  We work in companionable silence for a while. I set the table, careful to line up the knives and forks exactly the way she likes it, because I know she’ll check. The soup smells better than anything I’ve had since before Selection, and for a second, I can almost pretend the rest of the world doesn’t exist.

  When we eat, it’s the four of us at the table. Nobody talks much, but nobody leaves, either. The food is good, and even Bastion manages to not complain. Emery eats fast, like she’s worried it might get taken away, but she never lets her eyes drift from the rest of us for long.

  After dinner, I catch Wyatt in the hall. He’s wiping soup from his shirt, but there’s a real smile on his face.

  “She’s going to destroy us,” he says, not bothering to keep his voice down.

  I nod, watching as Emery disappears into the kitchen with a stack of plates. “Yeah,” I say. “She is.”

  Wyatt claps me on the back. “Better to lose to someone who deserves it.”

  I don’t answer. I’m still not sure I believe it.

  But as I stand there, listening to the quiet clatter of dishes and the faintest echo of laughter, I realize something’s shifted. The house feels different. Lighter.

  I retreat to the study and pull the door shut behind me. The walls here are lined with books, and the only light is the honey glow of a desk lamp. I sit at the old oak desk, hands folded, and stare at the grain in the wood until the room stops spinning.

  There’s a blank sheet of paper in front of me. I grab a pen, mostly out of habit, and start to write a list. It’s not names, or plans, or strategies. It’s just the things I know for sure.

  1. Emery Grey is not going anywhere.

  2. The pack is doomed to repeat our mistakes with Charlotte unless something changes.

  3. I am not afraid of her, but I might be afraid of what happens if I let her win.

  I stare at the list until the ink bleeds into the paper, spreading out like veins.

  For the first time in months, I don’t know what comes next. It’s messy, imprecise, like Emery’s laugh or the way her hands move when she gets going. My head tells me to run the numbers, calculate the risks. My gut says she’s the only variable that matters now.

  I put down the pen, half expecting the universe to snap back to order. But the room just gets quieter, the shadows from the lamp longer and softer. There’s a restlessness under my skin, something I can’t solve with work or whiskey or a sharp word. The absence of strategy feels like standing on a frozen lake in spring, every step a question.

  I turn out the light and head for bed, trying to ignore the way every step feels like falling.

  Falling for her.

  CHAPTER 16

  Bastion

  It’s been four days since the car crash and three since the Council’s PR machine blitzed the city with stories about my “heroic recovery” and “resilience in the face of adversity.” It’s also been two days since Wyatt caught me using a fork as a backscratcher and ratted me out to every pack group chat in the tri-state area.

  My arm is healing, sort of. My face looks like I got into a fistfight with a brick wall and the wall won. The only upside is that I’m confined to bed rest, which means I have an actual reason to ignore calls from my grandfather and the racing crew and everyone else who expects me to function at peak alpha at all hours.

  The downside: I am going insane.

  The walls of my bedroom used to be the only place I could breathe. The windows are triple-paned, the soundproofing’s pro, and I spent an entire summer convincing the house manager to get the ceiling painted a shade of blue so deep it feels like night, even at noon. There’s a big TV, a small fridge, and a king bed that could comfortably sleep four grown adults.

  But after four days, the air is heavy. The cast on my arm itches like someone injected it with fire ants. I can smell the faint tinge of bleach from the cleaning crew and the persistent, impossible sweetness of Emery’s natural omega scent.

  Even when she’s not in the room, her scent lingers. She’s been coming in once every few hours to “check on me,” which is code for “make sure I haven’t died or started a fire or both.” Sometimes she brings food, sometimes painkillers, sometimes a sketchbook or a half-done Rubik’s cube. The first time she came in, she brought a balloon animal shaped like a wolf with one ear bitten off. She didn’t explain, and I didn’t ask.

  This time, I hear her before I see her. The soft whump of her sneakers on the carpet, the click of her phone as she types something out—probably a text to Eloise, or a passive-aggressive meme about invalids. She doesn’t knock. She just comes in, her arms loaded with three containers and a glass pitcher of something the color of battery acid.

  I prop myself up on one elbow and ignore the throb in my ribs. “What’s on the menu, Grey? More hospital-grade Jell-O, or did you decide to poison me?”

  She doesn’t look up from her phone. “I was going to make you eggs, but I heard you threw up last time they tried to feed you protein. So, yeah. Jell-O. Sorry to disappoint.”

  She sets the containers on the bed with a gentle thunk and finally looks at me. Her hair’s in two braids today, blue bleeding to purple, and she’s wearing a t-shirt with an abstract wolf face that’s either avant-garde or a printer error. Her eyes scan the room and take in the state of me—shirtless, one arm in a sling, face still swollen—and she smirks.

  “You look like shit, Silverwood,” she says. “But, like, in a conceptual-art way.”

  I bare my teeth, mock-feral. “I could say the same about your color choices.”

  Emery drops onto the edge of the bed, close enough that I feel the fizz of her scent cut through the honey and pine of mine. I try not to flinch. “How’s the arm?”

  “Still attached.” I point to the pitcher. “What’s in there? It looks radioactive.”

  She pours a glass, the liquid thick and blue. “Electrolytes. You’re not allowed to dehydrate on my watch.”

  I take the glass, sniff it, then sip. It tastes like melted gummy bears and regret, but I drink anyway. “You ever try this stuff?”

  “I’m not the one with the death wish,” she says, but her eyes flicker, just for a second, to my chest. I pretend not to notice.

  The silence stretches, but it’s not uncomfortable. Emery opens her own container, starts spooning yellow Jell-O into her mouth with the blank-faced efficiency of someone who’s survived actual trauma.

  I watch her for a minute. She’s not beautiful in the way Council omegas are bred to be—she’s too short, too intense, too unwilling to make herself smaller. But there’s a gravity to her. When she laughs, you feel it in your teeth. When she’s angry, it fills the room like a gas leak.

  “I heard you and Wyatt are running bets on my life expectancy,” I say.

  She swallows. “You were supposed to be asleep when we talked about that.”

  “You’re not quiet,” I say. “Neither is he.”

  Emery shrugs and then licks Jell-O from the spoon. “Wyatt says you’ll snap in a week. I say you’ll make it two, but only if you run out of things to throw at the staff.”

  “Is there a prize?”

  She considers. “Loser has to do all your laundry. Including the stuff you hide under the bed.”

  I grin, sharp. “What makes you think I hide anything?”

  She gives me a look, deadpan. “You’re a Silverwood. You guys invented hiding things.”

  I laugh, and the movement pulls at my ribs. I wince, and she notices, of course. Emery sets down her spoon, folds her arms, and stares at me in that way she has—like she’s taking inventory, or planning how to fix a busted transmission.

  “Are you actually okay?” she asks, voice softer now.

  I consider lying, but there’s no point. “It hurts to breathe. Hurts worse to move. But I’m not dead, so, yeah. I’m okay.”

  She nods, like that’s enough, but the thin press of her lips lingers.

  We eat in silence for a while, the kind that only happens when two people have nothing to prove to each other. When she finishes, she closes the container and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “I brought you something,” she says.

  She digs into the front pocket of her hoodie and pulls out a remote, black and battered, the buttons shiny from years of use. She tosses it to me, and I catch it left-handed, barely.

  “Thought we could watch something,” she says. “Since you’re not allowed to leave the bed.”

  I click the TV on and scroll through the options. Every streaming app is logged in to at least four profiles. The most recent search is “car crash compilation” and “sharks eating people.” I glance at her. “Is this a threat?”

  She shakes her head. “It’s research.”

  “On what?”

  She smirks. “Alpha attention spans.”

  I scroll to horror movies, which is my go-to for anything involving company. I pick the first one with a skull on the cover and hit play. The opening scene is a jump scare, which I enjoy solely for the way Emery doesn’t flinch. She just watches, arms folded, legs crossed at the ankle, like she’s auditing the movie for mistakes.

  “Not a horror fan?” I ask, halfway through a slasher monologue.

  Emery shrugs. “They’re fine. I just get annoyed when the characters make bad decisions. If I was in a haunted house, I’d leave. End of movie.”

  I glance over. “You think you’d survive a horror movie?”

  She nods. “I’d win it.”

  I snort. “You can’t ‘win’ a horror movie.”

  She looks at me, eyebrow raised. “You can if you’re smarter than the ghost. Or whatever. Half the time the killer is just a guy in a mask with daddy issues.”

  I want to laugh, but I want to watch her more. She’s leaning in now, eyes fixed on the screen, but I can tell she’s only pretending to be invested in the plot. She’s waiting for something—maybe a question, maybe an excuse to leave.

  I don’t want her to leave.

  We watch the movie together, shoulder to shoulder. I don’t say anything about the way our arms touch, or the way her scent grows stronger as the room heats up. I don’t say anything when she jumps, just a little, at the second fake-out. I do notice when, halfway through, she rests her hand on the blanket covering my legs and doesn’t move it.

  When the movie ends, she lets the credits roll, eyes glazed. I turn the TV off and set the remote aside.

  “Why’d you really come?” I ask, voice low.

  Emery shrugs, but it’s not casual. “You seemed lonely. Plus, I heard you crying last night. In your sleep.”

  I feel my face go hot, which is embarrassing and infuriating. “Nightmare,” I say. “It’s nothing.”

  She shakes her head. “It’s not nothing. Even alphas have nightmares, Silverwood. You’re not special.”

  I look away. The silence is heavy now, but she doesn’t fill it. She just waits.

  After a minute, I say, “You know, you could’ve been anywhere. You could’ve picked any pack to force your way into on Omega Selection Day. Why’d you stick with this one?”

  She laughs, loud and sharp.

  I shake my head. “I’m serious. You could do better than us.”

  She fixes me with a stare, blue eyes electric. “Maybe I don’t want better. Maybe I want a challenge.”

  I breathe in slowly. The room feels smaller. My heart is pounding, but I’m not scared. Not really.

  Emery leans back with her hands in her lap. “Besides, you’re not as bad as you act. You just want people to think you are.”

  I stare at the ceiling. “You’re not what I expected, either. Omegas are supposed to be soft. Easy to manage.”

  She laughs again. “You ever meet an omega who was easy to manage? If so, send her my way. I owe her money.”

  I glance over, and she’s smiling, but there’s a tightness to it, a restraint that feels new. “You’re like no one else, Emery Grey.”

  She nods. “I could say the same to you, Silverwood.”

  We sit in that, just breathing for a while.

  Then, quietly, she says, “I never got to ask you something.”

  “What?”

  “At Selection,” she says, “after I did my little speech and the Council forced your hand—you looked right at me. For a second, you looked like you actually wanted me here. Is that true, or was I hallucinating?”

  I swallow. “I wanted you here.”

  She’s quiet for a long time, then she nods. “Good. Because I wanted to be here, too. Even if you were all assholes about it.”

  I laugh, the sound raw. “We were. Sorry.”

  She bumps her shoulder into mine. “You’re still an asshole, but less so.”

  “Work in progress,” I say.

  She yawns, then stands up and stretches, bones popping. “I should go.”

  I don’t want her to leave. I want to say something—anything—to keep her here. Instead, I reach out and grab her wrist, gentle but firm.

  “Stay,” I say.

  She looks down at me, eyes wide.

  “Just for a little longer,” I say. “Please.”

  She nods, slow, and sits back down. This time, she doesn’t leave any space between us.

  The room grows quiet again, but it’s not awkward. I close my eyes and breathe in her sweet candy scent.

  She says, “You ever think about what comes next?”