Page 203 of Beautifully Scarred Omega

The four of us stay like that—tangled and knotted and marked and bonded—and the room smells like all of us together. One scent. Braided and permanent and new.

I close my eyes and breathe and feel three heartbeats pulse against mine, and I think, for the first time in my life, I’m finally home.

CHAPTER 51

Kit

Life isn’t fair. I know that without a doubt.

I have my fair share of pain; some of it remains part of me despite having found my pack, and I know I will always carry it with me, no matter where I go.

But with that pain comes the ability to recognize it in someone else. To see another person’s hurt and feel an immediate connection. Like catching sight of a piece of yourself in a stranger the moment your eyes meet theirs.

That’s what I felt when I met Sophie.

I try not to think about everything she went through. Because I know what pain can take from a person. And I could see how much Sophie had been forced to endure. A lifetime of fighting to stay standing while the world tried to put her in the ground. A lifetime of feeling lost. Of feeling like the only thing she was good for was bleeding.

And I had hoped for her then. I had hoped she would find happiness and a life that felt like hers.

But Sophie wasn’t looking for that. She was looking for the next mission, the next fight—anything to keep moving so she’d never have to stand still long enough to feel anything.

I watched her take assignment after assignment, each one more dangerous than the last, with Griffin, Declan, and Nolan worried sick every single time she went dark.

“She’ll get herself killed one day,” Griffin told me once. We were sitting in a hospital waiting room with flickering fluorescent lights and chairs just uncomfortable enough to keep you from falling asleep. Sophie had been shot. She’d almost died. Griffin’s hands were shaking where they rested on his knees. He looked devastated. Like he’d seen this coming and couldn’t find a way to stop it.

Nolan had been staring at the floor. “She wasn’t supposed to get shot,” he said quietly. “But it was almost like she didn’t try to avoid it.”

Declan had been the one to say it. The thing that we were all thinking but none of us wanted to say out loud. “I have a feeling she wants to die.”

I had cried then. Tears for the found sister I had. For the girl I wanted desperately to keep but knew I couldn’t save, no matter how much I wanted to. Because the decision to live isn’t one that someone else can make for you. I’d learned that the hard way too.

And so I had done the only thing I could.

I had hoped.

“We’re here, sweetheart.”

Griffin’s deep, familiar voice pulls me back. His hand finds mine as the car comes to a stop, and I squeeze his fingers before I let go and step out.

It’s been six weeks since Sophie bonded with Pack Cavill. I know because I remember Griffin coming home early and telling me what had happened. About Lucy, about how she and Fabian had tried to sabotage Synthera, and, most importantly, about Sophie’s heat breaking through and her choosing to bond with them.

He’d been quiet for a long time that night, lying in the dark with his arm around me. Then he’d said, “She’s going to be okay, Kit. I think she’s finally going to be okay.”

And now we’re here, at Pack Cavill’s front door, about to meet the men who changed everything.

I step out of the car. Their house is smaller than I expected, more modest, more homey—flower boxes in the front window, a big wraparound porch with mismatched chairs, a welcome mat that looks genuinely used. I like them already, and I haven’t even met them.

Nolan is already out of the car, stretching his arms above his head. Declan comes around the side, shading his eyes with one hand and tilting his head toward the building visible on the horizon.

“That’s Synthera over there,” he says.

I look. It’s a striking thing—modern and sleek, catching the sun like it was built to be looked at. “It’s really grand,” I say.

Griffin grunts. I don’t have to look at him to know his expression.

We walk to the door together, and I ring the bell.

Sophie opens it less than a minute later.