Page 130 of Beautifully Scarred Omega

“Protocols.” I stare at her. “A seventy-year-old woman seized for almost two minutes and your protocol was to send her to a hospital and then let her come back for more?”

“She chose to continue. That was her decision.”

“What choice does someone have when they need the money badly enough to sign up for this in the first place?”

Evie doesn’t answer. Her eyes are uncertain now, the cheerful warmth dimmed by something that looks almost like discomfort.

“The compensation is generous,” she says finally. “And everything is voluntary. No one is forced⁠—”

“I need a minute.”

I’m already standing and moving toward the door. My legs feel strange—disconnected from my body while the rest of me spirals.

“Sophie, are you⁠—”

“I’m fine. I just—I think I ate something bad. I’ll be right back.”

I don’t wait for her response.

I count the steps to the bathroom. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. My vision is tunneling, the fluorescent lights too bright, the air too thick. Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty.

I push through the door. Lock myself in the first stall. Drop to my knees.

And throw up.

Everything—the coffee Ethan made me, the sandwich from lunch, the biscuits from Evie’s tin—comes up in violent waves. My body heaves and my eyes burn and my hands grip the porcelain hard enough to turn my knuckles white.

Seventy years old. Seizure. Two minutes. Hospitalized. Emergency contact: none listed.

I throw up again.

When it’s finally over, I sit on the cold tile floor with my back against the stall wall and press my palms over my eyes.

Think. Think clearly. Don’t react—assess.

But I can’t be clinical about this. I can’t assess it like a mission parameter or a threat level. This is omegas. Women like me. Women with no one to call when they seize on a table in a billionaire’s lab.

And the men I’ve been spending time with—laughing with, kissing, trusting—they own this company. They approved this. They’re running this. They know omegas are being hurt and they keep going anyway.

I think about Max kneeling on gravel in his suit, buckling my shoe like my foot was something worth being gentle with. The way he told me about his mother like he was handing me a piece of himself he’d never given anyone.

I think about Ethan in the archive room. It’s our job to protect omegas. Every advantage we have comes with a responsibility, not permission. And the way he looked at me when he said it, like he meant every word.

I think about Finn in the kitchen, the night I pinned him against the wall with my forearm across his throat. The way he didn’t fight back and said I will never hurt you, Sophie. And I believed him.

These men held me and made me feel, for the first time in my life, like I might be worth being gentle with.

And they’re hurting women like me in their labs.

I wash my face and rinse my mouth and stare at my reflection until my eyes stop burning and my hands stop shaking.

Then I go back to the research wing.

Evie looks up with concern but I wave her off with a sheepish smile—something I ate, so embarrassing, I’m fine now—and she accepts it because Sophie Dysart is someone who gets embarrassed about things like that.

I sit at my desk and pretend to work for forty-five minutes.

At 4:30, I leave.