Page 75 of Knot Unwanted: Part One

“If you’re going up there, fucking go,” Ren growls from his position by the front window. He hasn’t stopped moving since we came inside—pacing, checking locks, radiating tension like a live wire about to snap. “Otherwise, sit the fuck down. Your hovering is driving me insane.”

“Because your pacing is so much better?” I shoot back. Fuck, we’re all on edge, dealing with it in our own ways. Jax hasn’t left his post at the bottom of the stairs, like he’s physically placing himself as some kind of support that will prevent this entire thing from crashing down on us. And me…

I’m caught in the middle. As always.

The guilt sits heavy in my gut. I should have told them about Hailey sooner. Should have brought her straight to the pack instead of trying to handle it alone. But after seeing the terror in her eyes, the way she flinched from every shadow…

“You’re thinking too loud,” Jax says quietly. His eyes haven’t left the floor, but I can feel his attention on me. “What happened wasn’t your fault.”

“Wasn’t it?” The words taste bitter. “I kept her hidden. If I’d just?—”

“You did what you thought was right,” Jax cuts me off. “She trusted you. You honored that trust.”

A harsh laugh from Ren makes us both turn. “Trust,” he spits the word like poison. “Yeah, that worked out great, didn’t it? Now we’ve got two traumatized omegas locked in that room together, and we can’t even check on them without risking?—”

He cuts himself off, jaw clenched so tight I can hear his teeth grinding. There’s something savage in his scent, something that makes my hackles rise even as concern floods through me. I’ve never seen him like this—wound so tight he’s practically vibrating with it.

“Ren,” I start, but he whirls on me with a snarl.

His eyes are wild, pupils blown wide with some emotion I can’t name. “Don’t fucking start with me right now, Stone.”

“Then stop acting like?—”

“Like what?” He gets in my face, challenge radiating from every line of his body. It’s almost as if hewantsme to punch himhard. “Like I give a shit about what happens to them? Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I care that there’s a strange omega in our house who could trigger Finn into another fucking episode. Maybe?—”

“Enough.” Jax’s voice sucks the air from the room. “Both of you.”

I back off immediately, but Ren holds his ground for a moment longer, teeth bared in defiance. Just when I think he might actually challenge one of us, he spins away with a muttered curse.

Silence descends again, broken only by Ren’s agitated pacing and the soft creak of floorboards under my feet as I drift up the stairs.

Four more steps up. Another creak. My heart pounds against my ribs as I strain to hear anything from behind Finn’s door. The silence feels wrong on a visceral level—Finn is never quiet. Even in sleep, he mumbles, shifts, makes those soft sounds that tell us he’s okay.

This silence…it reminds me too much of those first weeks after the accident. When he’d go so still we had to check he was breathing.

“Stone.” Jax’s voice drifts up from below. A warning. Or maybe concern.

“I know,” I murmur back. “Just need to…”

To what? To hover outside the door like some creeper? Totorture myself with possibilities? To imagine what might be happening in that room while we stand here uselessly?

The memory of Hailey’s terror when I first found her flashes through my mind. The way she’d curled into herself, trying to make herself smaller. The marks on her buttocks and thighs—old and new, telling a story I didn’t want to read but couldn’t ignore.

“Fuck.” The word escapes on a breath as I reach the landing.

Ten steps to Finn’s door. Nine. Eight. Each one feels like walking through quicksand, my instincts warring between the need to check on them and the fear of making things worse.

Seven. Six. Five.

“If you’re going in there, I’m coming too.” Ren’s voice is right behind me. When did he follow me up?

“No.” The word comes out in a harsh whisper. “You’re too…unstable right now.”

“I’m fucking fine.”

“You put your fist through a car door.”

“Better the car than—” He cuts himself off, but I catch the flinch, the way his hands clench and unclench at his sides.

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