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Riven’s hand wraps around my arm, and he pulls me to a stop before I get to the hallway. His eyes are wary as he asks, “Are we sure this is still a good idea?”

I’m not, but we have to push on. I won’t let Dax continue to wall off his emotions until his relationship with Caelan and Idril—and possibly me—is so broken there’s no way to fix it.

Riven knows as well as I do that this has to be done. So I just nod, pull out of his hold, and jog to catch up with Dax.

We continue down the hall in silence until we come to closed double doors at the end. I can tell where we are by the lock on the outside of the door.

Idril’s room.

Her prison.

It’s a punch to the gut, looking at that piece of hardware and knowing it was installed to keep an Omega locked away.

Except, Fates… we were no better. We locked her away as well. Locked her far away where we didn’t have to see her. Didn’t have to be reminded of our sins.

Out of sight, out of mind, and the only one who had to suffer for our cruelty was the Omega forced to sleep on the floor of an attic.

Riven steps between us and notices the lock right away. His eyes darken, and his expression twists with disgust.

“What a piece of shit,” he snarls. “You lock up your dog, not your fucking daughter.”

“I don’t think Varenthrall can be considered a real father,” I reply, but it’s hard to find a leg to stand on knowing we did the same thing.

Dax pushes the doors open and freezes.

In my wildest dreams, I never expected Idril’s room would look like this.

It’s barren. As in, there’s fucking nothing in here. No furniture outside of a battered desk shoved into a corner. No Nest. No television or photos or bookcases.

Only a thin mattress, covered with a worn sheet, shoved against the wall. At the end of the mattress are two neatly folded shirts and two pairs of cotton shorts.

That’s it.

“Fates…” Riven spins in a slow circle, taking in the room. “This is really her room?”

“It… No. It can’t be,” Dax scoffs, but the sound he makes is unconvincing. “There’s… there’s nothing here.”

He stands in the middle of the room, wearing a shell-shocked expression. His eyes dart this way and that, searching for something that isn’t going to appear no matter how hard he searches.

Then he moves, crossing the bare hardwood toward the closed door in the far corner of the room. He rips it open.

An empty closet, with a single broken hanger.

He pivots sharply, eyes falling on the door of the attached bathroom. Like a man possessed, he makes a beeline for it, hell-bent on… whatever the fuck he’s doing.

The bathroom light flicks on, and Dax shoves aside the shower curtain, exposing a half-full bottle of body wash. He wheels around, hands on his head, clocking the toothbrush and tube of toothpaste placed neatly on top of the sink.

Picking up the stick of deodorant, he rolls it back and forth in his palms, lips pursing as he surveys the small space.

When his eyes lock on the cabinet doors under the sink, he slams the deodorant down and bends over, wrenching the doors open with so much force I’m surprised he doesn’t tear them off their hinges.

He releases a laugh that sounds eerily similar to what I imagine feral hyenas high on meth sound like. It has me peeking around the side of the doorframe, where Daxen’s in the middle of falling to his knees in front of the vanity, grinning like… well… a feral hyena high on meth.

He reaches in with both hands and pulls out⁠—

Handfuls of syringes.

Fates, there must be dozens. Dax’s grin disappears. He stares at them dubiously, like he can’t decide if he’s been betrayed by the syringes or his own fists.