Page 190 of Beautifully Scarred Omega

“The walls are shielded,” Ethan says. “I was calling Pack Hayes as we came in, but the call dropped the moment we crossed the threshold.” He sits down beside me, close enough that his shoulder touches mine. “Someone will notice we’re missing. It’s a matter of time.”

“How did you even find me?”

“I saw your car come in,” Finn says. “I’ve been checking the parking lot all afternoon.”

I stare at him.

He rubs the back of his neck, suddenly looking almost embarrassed. “You said you’d explain tonight. I was hoping you’d come back. When we couldn’t find you inside, we started asking around. One of the lab techs saw you heading downstairs with Lucy.”

“How much time do we have?” I ask.

Ethan glances at his watch. “An hour and forty minutes, approximately, before the samples are compromised.” He looks at me. “We have longer than that before the temperature becomes dangerous for us.”

“So we wait,” I say.

“We wait.”

Max sits on my other side. Finn gives up on the phone and drops down across from me, his long legs stretched out, his back against the opposite unit.

The silence stretches. I look down at my hands.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” I say. My voice sounds far away, like it’s coming from someone else. “About this morning. About where I was.”

Nobody moves, but I can feel all of them watching me. I pick at a loose thread on the hem of my hoodie, rolling it between my fingers.

“Griffin called me this morning,” I say. “He needed me at Sentinel.” I swallow. “They caught my stepfather. He was trying to leave the country.”

I can feel the tightness building in my throat, but I continue.

“He’s been running a trafficking network for years. Selling young omegas.” My voice cracks and I press my knuckles against my mouth for a second, breathing through it. “Sixty-seven victims that we know of. God knows how many more there are. But they finally got him.”

Beside me, Ethan takes my hand and holds it in both of his.

“Sophie.” Finn leans forward, his blue eyes bright and devastated. “You don’t have to⁠—”

“I do.” I look at him. “I need to say this. All of it. Because if I don’t say it now, I’ll put it back in the box where I keep everything else, and I can’t do that anymore.”

Finn nods and wraps a hand around my ankle, his thumb resting where my jeans end.

“He told me about my mother.” The words come out unevenly now, my breathing ragged. “She didn’t leave me.” My chin trembles and I bite down on my lip, hard. “She found his records. She was gathering evidence, trying to bring everything to the authorities. She packed a bag—for both of us. I remember it now, she was packing my things too. She was going to take me and run.”

The room is so quiet all I can hear is my own ragged breathing.

“She never made it.” My voice drops to a whisper. “He killed her. My whole life I thought she abandoned me, and he—he killed her for trying to save us. She wasn’t weak. She wasn’t running away from me. She was brave⁠—”

I can’t finish.

The sob comes from somewhere so deep I didn’t know it was there—broken and raw, all those years of grief landing at once.

Ethan’s arms come around me, pulling me into his chest. His hand cradles the back of my head, his mouth against my hair as he says my name—just my name, over and over.

Max’s hand comes up to my back, moving slowly up and down between my shoulder blades.

Finn shifts closer, his palm moving up to rest on my knee, his thumb tracing small circles over the denim.

“I’m so sorry,” Ethan says into my hair.

“Don’t be.” The words come out between sobs. “It means she never left me. It means she loved me. That she was trying to save me.” I pull back just enough to look at his face. “It means I’m worth saving.”