Page 132 of Chain Me Knot

Not acceptable.

No part of those alphas deserve a place in this nest.

Not in this space.

I wet a cloth with warm water, wringing it carefully before kneeling beside her. Soren lifts her just enough for me to slide the damp fabric over her skin, wiping away the remnants of battle and pleasure. She murmurs in her sleep, her nose scrunching slightly at the sensation, but she doesn’t wake.

She’s the most breathtaking thing I’ve ever seen, wreckedlike this.

Soren showers in record time and returns with fresh blankets. Phoenix follows him to scrub the scent of violence off his skin, after handing off a sleeping Emma. We clear away the worst of the mess that doesn’t belong in here, taking care not to disturb the heart of the nest.

I crouch beside her again, my fingers brushing a stray curl from her forehead. She sighs, nuzzling unconsciously into my touch, and something in my chest splinters.

I am lost to her.

We all are.

But the most astonishing thing?

She loves us back.

Not because she has to. Not because of bonds or biology.

But because she chooses to.

Her love isn’t just a feeling. It’s aresonance.

It hums through the bond as golden light, threading between our ribs, sinking into our marrow. It’s warmth after too long in the cold. Strength when the weight of every lost omega threatens to crack my spine.

With her, we aren’t just alphas.

She makes us so much more.

This is the true power of omegas. Not submission, not weakness, but the quiet, cataclysmic force that remakes alphas into mates. Into men.

And the ones who take by force?

They’ll never know this.

They’ll never feel a bond sink into their soul like sunlight, never know the euphoria of an omega’s choice. Their lives are smaller, colder, less. Locked in the petty tyranny of stolen power.

“I hope Pack Hawthorne finds Leah.” The words taste like ash in my mouth.

We lost her.

The memory is a fresh wound. Leah’s battered body crumpled in Hardwick’s unforgiving grip, the senator’s snarling face as she used our omega’s chosen sisteras a human shield while we were engaged fighting her pack. The pack she lost because she left them behind.

Phoenix’s jaw tightens, his eyes reflecting the same gnawing self-loathing I feel. “Before or after they rip out Hardwick’s throat, I wonder?”

The unspoken truth coils thick between us. Pack Hawthorne is scent-matched to Leah, bonded not just by law, but by something primal, something even Hardwick’s corruption can’t sever.

Now they have the scent of their omega’s blood ingrained in their psyche, they won’t stop.

They can’t.

Justice or vengeance—it doesn’t matter. Pack Hawthorne will bring Leah home or die trying and the senator’s days are numbered. We have irrefutable evidence of both her and the commissioner’s guilt, and back-up thanks to Kevin Dawson’s faith that he knew something didn’t add up when I contacted him for his help. The only way out for Hardwick will be to be imprisoned for life or die.

I lie in our omega’s nest, content to rest and watch the way the soft light catches on her lashes, casting delicate shadows across her flushed cheeks. Her eyes flutter open and focus slowly, the dilated pupils still dark with lingering heat as they find mine. There's a moment of quiet stillness between us as consciousness returns to her.

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