“Sloane,” Ma said, getting to her feet with a smile, “come and have some breakfast! You must be starving.”

“Where is he?” I asked, pinning her with my gaze.

The smile faltered, and that told me a lot, as did everyone else’s reactions. The betas’ eyes flicked between us, trying to work out the source of tension, while the alphas just sat there, still as stones, watching everything unfold. And the omegas? There was some of that pity, that scorn from before, but most of all, their eyes remained fixed on the bite mark on my neck. My fingers went up, trailing over it and feeling a flush of heat and shame as I did so.

How could it be like this? How could we have had this moment of complete oneness, where I’d felt like our souls had touched, yet when I woke up, he was gone like I was just a one-night stand? In the centre of my chest was an odd pulling sensation like a slightly off-key note. I was ready to hear the answer to my question, my hopeful heart concocting legitimate scenarios to tear him away from me—security, some catastrophe at the bar, anything. Anything but this.

“Where is he?” I asked again, of all of them this time.

Initially, there were only sidelong looks, making it clear everyone knew but were reluctant to confess, which only made the pain cut deeper. I wasn’t going to like the answer, I knew it.

“I need to know where Jace is, where my mate has gone.” In my chest, the little discordant pull was rising to a roar. I was trying for reasonable, no doubt sounding unhinged, but those words, that seemed to break the spell over the table. There were gasps in response to my announcement, but the two alphas, they remained perfectly still until the one with the black hair, Dane, replied.

“He’s with Ella.”

Ella, the name I’d heard last time, the mysterious woman that kept Jace from committing to me, the name that had driven Jace to a frenzy when he’d beaten on Snake… How could I have erased that from my mind? But where was she last night? Where was she when he…?

“And where the hell is she?” I snapped. I didn’t care what my designation was, I was done with this completely. This and the dead silence that seemed to swallow everything I said, absorbing it until it was like I’d never said a word. “Fine,” I hissed. “I’ll find her myself.”

And so I turned on my heel, ready to flounce out of the room, through the bar, and into the zone beyond, but a voice stopped me in my tracks. Rich and deep like his, but not the same, this one had a rusty rasp to it.

“You go outside, you run the risk of coming across Snake and his fuckers,” Dane said. “He’s got an axe to grind after what happened.”

“Don’t care,” I snapped back.

“She’s not out there,” he continued, and I followed his eyes to the elevator doors.

She was in the building, she lived here, this Ella. She’d probably been sleeping on a floor above us as we… My breath came in noisy gulps, like I’d run halfway around the quarter and back again.

“Fuck it, I’ll take you to her.”

“Dane, we shouldn’t…”

The other alpha, Ryder, looked Dane over as he got to his feet and walked over to me.

“We shouldn’t what?” I asked.

“We shouldn’t interfere,” he replied in a flat voice. “Jace just needs a bit of time.”

“Yeah, that was before he claimed her,” Dane said, then turned back to me. “C’mon, I’ll take you to him.”

And so we got back into the elevator, Dane producing a key and putting it into the required slot before he could select a floor I’d never been to before.

“He keeps her locked down pretty tight,” he said by way of explanation, though it told me little. “Has to make sure she’s safe.”

And me? Where was his concern for my welfare, my safety? I hated being that bitch, but damn me if I wasn’t. Inside, the sense of discord was now flat and empty, and I almost thought that was worse. A small growl formed in my chest, Dane’s eyes shooting my way before he snorted, but before he could say more, the elevator door opened on what appeared to be the top floor, if the view from the windows was anything to go by, but that wasn’t what captured my focus. Through an expansive living area, on the other side of the building, was a balcony and two people sat there, sharing breakfast. The snarl inside me grew, too high-pitched to be threatening, but still, I couldn’t help it.

“Easy, omega,” Dane said. “This isn’t—”

I didn’t wait around to hear his heavily edited version of the events. I strode across the living area, skirting the lounge suite, my eyes caught by a massive bean bag piled up high with a cluster of fabrics carefully woven together—a nest. My head felt light, airy, like it was about to float off my shoulders as I staggered closer.

“Why on earth would you presume that?” the girl said, but right now, I found it difficult to register anything she said. There she was, sitting in the morning sun, seeming to absorb all available light, reflecting it back twice as radiant. Her long blonde hair, her pixie-like features, all the way down to her tiny little toes, she was the poster girl for omegas, the kind they used in movies to tug at your heartstrings.

“But, Ella, when you—” Jace rumbled.

“No ‘but, Ella.’” That cold knife, it drew back and then stabbed deeper as her hand reached out, instantly taken by his much bigger one, enfolding her fingers, then giving it a squeeze. “Jace, my past, my history, my experiences are exactly that—mine. You can’t use them as an excuse to avoid doing what you need to. The girl, Sloane, you know what you need to do.”

I put my hand on the screen door, sliding it open conspicuously enough to shift both their attention to me. I stared them down, the omega and the alpha.

“What do you need to do?” I asked, my voice pure ice. “Just what exactly do you need to do?”

This, this was the moment everything had been building towards. Jace was as hot as a thousand suns and then gone again, over and over. He’d jerked me back and forth, like my instincts had, and I was done with both. I was an omega, I accepted that now, knew right down to my toes that this was who I was, the previous Sloane a skin shed off like a snake does as it grows, but with that came a knowledge. An omega needed an alpha. Could I survive without one? Absolutely. I could march downstairs, quiz the other omegas, find out how they eked out a living here, and follow their lead, eschewing contact with alphas except when my heat reared its ugly head, but as I considered that life, my fingers went to the mark on my neck. A flare of heat and need came with that, but not for any alpha. For him.

I shortened my words this time.

“What do you need, Jace?”

“You.”

The pretty girl who had the same eyes as Jace—his sister, I realised—smiled at that, seemed to feel a hope I didn’t, but I planted my feet, waiting for the rest. There was relief in knowing it was his sister, that he’d been protecting her, but then came a twist of pain from wondering what would have happened if he’d only remained in the bed, held me, and talked to me about this. The omega in me wanted to rush towards him, get swept up in his arms, and be held tight to ease the ache inside me, but I knew now I would never allow anyone into my bed who thought it fine to sneak out on me, right after something as momentous as our mutual claiming. My fingers traced the scarred edges of my mark. I had a mate, the other half of my heart, or did I?

Jace rose, taking steps toward me, yet not close enough to crowd, while his sister slipped through the door beside me, giving us privacy, although I barely spared her a glance.

“I…I’ve never had an omega before you. Never wanted to.” He snorted, then shook his head. “Nah, that’s bullshit, I wanted ’em plenty, but I could hold back everything I felt. Mark, claim, breed.” His lips twisted as he said the words, even as they made me shiver. “That was just alpha bullshit.” But his eyes flicked up, spearing into me. “Until you. I thought you were safe.” He took another step towards me. “I thought you were just this hot little beta in her mother’s dress.” Another step, my breath starting to come in faster as he approached. “I thought you were some uptight chick looking for some alpha dick.”