Page 15 of Knot Unwanted: Part Two

The cold certainty in his voice stops me short. “What did you do?”

Something shifts in Ren’s expression—something dark and satisfied and broken all at once.

“Three years ago, I found their operation.” His fingers dig into his knees. “Burned their client lists. Sabotaged their supply routes. Got nineteen omegas to safe houses before they noticed.”

Stone’s gaze flicks to Ren in the rearview. “Fuck.”

“But the network was bigger than just them,” Ren continues. “After…After the accident, I went back. Finished it. Every backup record. Every blackmail file. Made sure they couldn’t keep doing it anymore.”

The silence hangs thick until Stone grits out, “So you knew. You knew where Hailey came from, and you said nothing.”

“I didn’t know where Hailey came from.” Ren looks up, his shame raw. “Not exactly where. But I knew she was one of them. The signs were there. The way she flinched from alphas. The subservience. The training. I just...never told you how deep those scars ran.”

“But you knew these places existed,” I press, anger rising, sour in my throat. “You knew what they did to omegas, and you kept it to yourself.”

His throat moves. He doesn’t meet my gaze. Then the real confession comes, barely audible:

“I kept them from taking Finn, too.”

The words land like a gut punch. Stone slams the brakes at a red light, the tires screeching.

The air in the SUV goes cold, so cold I can almost see my breath. The light goes green, some POS honks, but Stone’s hands freeze on the wheel, and I feel like someone just walked over my grave.

“What the hell does that mean?” I don’t even fucking care about holding back my alpha command. “Kept them from taking Finn?”

Ren doesn’t answer immediately. He looks down at his hands—hands that I’ve seen gentle with Finn, steady with a paintbrush, and strong when we need them. They’re trembling now.

“The gala where I met Finn,” he finally says, each word dragged out as if it physically pains him. “It wasn’t…it wasn’t a coincidence. None of it was.”

“Explain.” Stone’s voice is ice and shadows.

“That charity event,” Ren says, “it was a farce. There were alphas there, high-profile people, snakes pretending to be there for the charity. They were only there to scout omegas like Finn, who didn’t have money or connections.”

My stomach twists as I begin to understand what he’s saying.OurFinn. I almost choke on my tongue. “They were hunting.”

Ren nods once, sharply. “My parents had been scouting Finn. They’d set their sights on him.” His voice breaks slightly. “But I had too. The moment I saw him, I knew—knew he was mine.Ours. And I couldn’t let them take him.” He releases a shuddering breath. “The accident that killed Amaya…it wasn’t…” He swallows hard and turns to look out the window. Traffic moves around us, cars honking, a few brave betas glaring. None of us move in our seats.

From where I sit, I see the tears. Unshed tears brimming in Ren’s eyes as he stares out that window, telling us all this. Telling us that everything we knew about him and his family was…a lie.

“That night when I killed our omega.” He swallows again. “I was trying to get away from them.”

The implications of what Ren is saying wash over me in waves of horror. The accident. Ren’s protectiveness. His secretiveness. The way he sometimes looks over his shoulder even in our own home.

None of us speak for long minutes. The only sound is the hum of the engine and the distant wail of a siren somewhere in the city. I’m reeling, trying to reconcile the Ren I thought I knew with this man who’s been carrying such terrible secrets.

“All this time,” Stone finally says, his voice unnaturally calm, “you’ve been protecting us from your own family?”

Ren doesn’t answer. Doesn’t need to. The truth is written in the haunted look in his eyes, in the way his shoulders bend beneath an invisible weight.

Fuck.

Fuck!

The rage under my skin struggles with my logical mind. I want to tear into something. Rip it apart. What kind of fucking pack lead am I when my third has had to carry this weight onhis shoulders all alone? What kind of fucking leader am I to have thought that fixing the bond with our omega was the single thing we needed to fix us all?

I stare at Ren, horror at what he’s just admitted, disgust at the facts, and pain for the fact he’s been hurting all this time all swirling in my gut. I want to punch something, but maybe punching something isn’t what is needed right now.

“You could have told us.”

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