Page 201 of Captive Omega

Connect names to faces and faces to places, and slipping and sliding your way out of a crime becomes very difficult. Especially when the city is turning against you.

Cops arrested Nathaniel Lang while I was speaking in court. If anyone truly deserves to spend the rest of their life rotting in a cell, it’s him.

And the social media post that went viral? I stopped checking it when it hit over ten million views.

On every channel, reporters won’t stop talking about investigations into heat clinics. Better than that, people are furious at the alphas who did it, furious at the Omega Institute for pandering to them, and at Dexter Pieter for not doing enough to stop it.

As cops search the city and re-open missing person cases, I can’t stop smiling because things are changing.

Things are actually changing.

I leave Mom in the kitchen while I head out to the garage and help sort through the boxes they filled with stuff from my old apartment.

We’ve been slowly moving it into the house, though I’m not sure what I want to do with it all. There’s too much stuff to fit into my room, and my parents' house isn’t big. Just your standard three-bedroom home in the suburbs.

Years ago, we moved into the house a short walk to a small park with a pond so Mom would have somewhere green and peaceful to take me. Dad made the smallest bedroom into his study, and he’s suggested turning it into a nursery for my baby. I can’t seem to make up my mind about anything I want.

I’m unpacking a box of kitchen stuff when a car pulls up outside. Cops are watching the house, so I’m not worried trouble has found me.

I peer over my shoulder at the crunch of footsteps and forget about figuring out what to do with my cooking utensils.

Henry is at the garage entrance, hands stuffed in the front of his blue jeans, short dark blond hair brushed back, as handsome as always. “Hi, Resa.”

My first reaction at coming face to face with my ex-fiancé isn’t to punch him or even cry. It’s disappointment that it’s him standing there and not a member of Pack Lucas.

“Hi, Henry.”

He looks a little surprised at my calm response.

“You thought I would kick you like the photocopier, didn’t you?” I put the tongs back in the box and turn fully to face him as Dad hovers.

A smile briefly flickers across his dark brown gaze. “I guess I kind of did.”

Dad clears his throat. “Well, I’ll leave you kids to talk. I’ll be in the house if you need me, Theresa.”

I might not want to kick Henry, but from the growl in Dad’s voice, it sounds like he wants to kick Henry for the both of us. Mom told me that Henry had moved on. I told her I knew, that it was okay, but I’d rather not talk about how much it had hurt when I found out.

I wait until Dad disappears through the back door into the house before I join Henry at the open garage front entrance.

“Is this all your stuff from your apartment?” He nods at the boxes lined up in one half of the garage. The other side is all of Dad’s tools and his workbench.

“Yeah. My landlord still wanted rent, and I wasn’t around to pay it, so my parents packed everything up and brought it here.” Never knowing if I would come home.

He’s still looking at my boxes when he says, “It was you, wasn’t it?”

I blink at him, confused. “What was me?”

In the distance, a lawn mower or leaf blower starts up.

He turns to stare across the road at the house opposite. “Someone called my phone. I answered, but they never said a word. After that stuff blew up on the news, I wondered if it was you.”

I’m tempted to lie. “It was.”

He stuffs his hands even deeper into his pockets. “You know about Emily. Don’t you?”

“I do.”

“And you don’t want to kick me?”

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