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My shoulder burned where Chase’s teeth threatened the skin. It wasn’t a bonding mark, but with a little pressure it could have been. But that wasn’t what set me on edge.

Baylark Pack stared at me like I was their solution to an endless hunger. Did their bellies ache for want of me? Did they lie awake at night and wonder about different timelines, whether we could have made it work in another one? Maybe we’d stared at the same sky, and nursed the same hurts.

My creaky fan in the corner brought the tang of their mingled scents. Distress was painted on the sagging lines of their bodies. Determination whittled to a toothpick. It was Lloyd who I couldn’t look away from. He was here. In The Barracks. A place he vowed never to return to.

“Drink this.” Thorn burst into the room and slammed a coffee cup on the side table next to me.

Walden snatched it out of reach with a click of his tongue, replacing it with a glass of chilled water. Where had he even gotten ice blocks from, and why was he confiscating my caffeine?

“Hey,” I pouted.

“You were just attacked. The last thing your nervous system needs is caffeine.”

“Is this scruffy alpha a doctor, lamb?” Thorn arched a dark eyebrow. He looked even more menacing with the scratch across his cheek.

“No.” I fought a smile as Walden’s expression turned murderous. He scrubbed at his messy stubble.

“Don’t you know omegas need spoiling, especially when they’re distressed?” Thorn plucked the coffee from Walden and ferried it back to me. “Drink.”

Clay wrapped a blanket around my shoulders, making the mark Chase left throb. My one-bedroom apartment had never had so many people inside it before. I was the only one seated on the couch. After things settled, everyone kept their distance.

Lloyd was crushed into the ratty armchair Clay had found for me because he didn’t like my couch. His bag crushed to his chest like a lifeline. Pan and Ajax perched on the side, the former like a laconic wraith. All angles and shadows. Thorn and Walden paced. Crossing paths like predators sizing up a foe.

I could taste Chase in the back of my throat and it made me shudder.

Pan slipped his arm around Lloyd’s shoulders. His gaze darted from side to side, taking in my apartment. I was lucky to have space above ground, but I hadn’t done much with it.

I was glad there was a screen blocking off my bed. I twisted the lumpy covers into an uncomfortable, messy nest. Knowing the one they had in their house, there was a lick of shame.

“I guess I should explain.” I took a sip of the coffee.

Up close, I could see how they’d changed. They looked wrung out, especially Walden, who actually had stubble on his jaw. And he wasn’t wearing a suit. The rumpled gray tracksuit set probably still cost more money than everything in the apartment. But it was so unlike him that my gaze drifted back.

“Tully, you don’t have to—” Ajax started before the comment petered out.

A flush crawled up my throat. Chase didn’t know it, but he’d lit a fire in me. I was shaking, but it wasn’t terror. It was anger. How dare he put his hands on me and try to take from my insides.

He’d succeeded once.

I’d been half-living, half-dead when I fled him the first time. This small man, this parasite. I’d let him grow plump off my blood, my body. He’d repaid me with the echo of his voice in my head. Telling me all the ways I wasn’t enough for him.

“I’ve been carrying him around up here.” I tapped my forehead. “For way too long. I didn’t even realize how much of my voice was him, but he won’t frighten me into compliance again.”

Clay slid in next to me and his hand tunneled under the blanket and wrapped around mine.

“Tell us what this has to do with it? His scent wipes company is valued at millions.” Walden tapped the papers on the bench.

Chase had given me all the proof I needed to destroy him. I bet he never even considered that I would argue with him. There was no world in which Tully would put up a fight. I’d been foolish to let him into my apartment and I would learn from my lacking sense of safety, but he wouldn’t change his behavior at all. Unearned arrogance.

“When my parents died, I put off dealing with their things. Eventually, I had to. The storage unit was too expensive for meto maintain. Chase found a journal that belonged to Birdie, Esta Hartlock’s sister. It had a recipe for scent masking tea. He used the formula as the basis of his new all-natural wipes.”

“He stole it from you?” Ajax said through gritted teeth.

“Chase always framed it as a joint venture we would share. Until he realized I had no fortune. He needed money to invest in the business. He mustn’t have covered his tracks well enough because now he wants me to sign the intellectual property over to him.”

Walden shifted uncomfortably. “That might be my fault. I have our team gathering dirt on him and putting the screw in where we can.”

I raised my eyebrows.