Now, Lena and I sat inside a surveillance van across from some rundown laundromat, watching one of the suspected locations while the rest of our operatives monitored the others. Every team had the same objective: confirm whether omegas were being kept inside.
Lena had fallen asleep in the backseat of the van sometime after 1100, after a long, quiet battle with drooping eyelids. I noticed the tilt of her head as her body finally let go.
I smirked.
Lena finally trusted me enough to sleep soundly in my presence.
The realization warmed my chest as I crossed my arms and shifted in the driver’s seat, trying to get comfortable. It shouldn’t have mattered. It really shouldn’t have. But the quiet trust she offered so sparingly felt dangerously rewarding.
More and more, I found myself trying to coax her out of her shell, to peel back each guarded layer and see who she was beneath the trauma responses.
When we told her about the stakeout, Lena had insisted on coming with us, and neither my brother nor I had wanted to leave her alone for that long, anyway. So here she was, sleeping in the backseat, bundled in borrowed layers, and snoring deeply like she hadn’t slept properly in years.
The van’s door creaked open suddenly.
A large, hooded figure slipped inside with practiced ease.
Knox.
“All set?” I asked, keeping my voice quiet, careful not to wake the little mute.
“Mostly,” he murmured, scanning the van, eyes flicking once to Lena before returning to me. I noticed the upturn of his lips when he saw her head tilted back and mouth open.
He continued, “Got a lot of the equipment staged upstairs. I still need to haul the portable generator. There's no power in the building. Place is a dump.”
“Of course it is,” I muttered. “Let’s move while it’s quiet. Last thing we need is someone clocking us while we're hauling gear.”
Knox shifted, nudging Lena gently with his boot.
She startled awake, her breath hitching, and eyes snapping wide with fear before recognition softened her expression.
“Sorry,” he said, “Time to go, runt. We’re set up.”
She nodded, rubbing sleep from her eyes as she sat up, her hair sticking out in every direction. The little mute wasn’t nearly as silent when she slept. Soft snores slipped past herlips while she was unconscious, sounds she would probably be mortified to know we heard.
For some reason, it made me smile.
We moved out of the van in silence, closing the doors with a final click behind us. We had parked the van a few blocks over and after a short walk, the abandoned apartment complex loomed ahead, dark and hollow, its broken windows watching like empty eyes. Bellini had lookouts posted, so we kept to the shadows and blind spots we’d already mapped out using our informant’s intel.
Knox and I worked as we always did, methodically, with no need to speak. Lena stayed between us, close enough to reach if something went wrong, but light on her feet and stealthier than I expected. She followed our lead without hesitation, reading us and adjusting.
She fit in well.
Once inside, I looked around the decaying apartment building and grimaced. Maybe we should have considered Lena’s comfort a little more before bringing her here. My brother and I weren’t exactly experienced when it came to caring for an omega, something that had already become painfully obvious during our rocky start with her.
The building was perfect for a stakeout. It had a direct line of sight to the house where we suspected one of Marco’s omegas was being kept. We could easily see everyone who came and went, log faces, photograph vehicles, and record patterns. Nothing would slip past us from this angle.
But the structure was a disaster.
No electricity or running water. Bare concrete and broken windows let the cold creep from every direction. Despite being abandoned, it was the kind of place no one bothered to squat in, because no sane person would willingly spend the nighthere. Normally, that would’ve been an advantage.
But we hadn’t planned for Lena.
The only comforts we’d brought were an inflatable mattress and a single army blanket. Standard stakeout gear. Enough for two men who rotated rest shifts and didn’t need much sleep to function. Knox and I were used to this. One on watch, one resting, then we'd swap every few hours.
Except this time, there was a third body in the room.
A smaller, freezing one.
