Page 97 of Petals and Strings
“I’m dead serious. Speaknothingof this, or you’ll ruin this entire operation,” he warned. “It could put us back years and potentially cost innocent lives.”
“Holy fuck, Director Cross, too?” Caspian breathed out. The fact everyone believed him had me worried. Could this be a ploy?
Ares chuckled. “I see the skepticism on most of your faces. Let me ease those fears.”
He pulled out his laptop from a bag resting by his chair and opened it, pulling up the website and scrolling through to the restricted sections. His employee badge popped up, showing his real name, and a list of accolades.
The things this man must have seen.
“So, Cross knows all this and still lets all this shit slide?” I ground out. Any lingering respect for Cross fizzled away completely.
“Yes,” he admitted, running a hand through his trimmed beard. He looked tired now, a bit defeated. How long had they been trying to shut down ARC? “I am also having a hard time coming to terms with that. But if he was anything less, do you think he’d be able to gather as much intel? He’s been here for years and is the only reason I’m able to be here. We’re so fucking close. We need one slip-up, anything to show what’s really going on. Then I can shut this shit down.”
“Why risk all this to tell us?”
He looked right at me, eyes burning with the truth. “Because she’s my mate and you’re my pack. I’m not starting that dynamic with a bunch of fucking lies. I can’t stand them and I refuse to spend a single minute outside of these walls having to grovel. Iwould much rather start a solid life with a foundation we already started building here and now.”
“Admirable,” Ledger hummed. “But that doesn’t get us out of here.”
“Between my connections, your cooperation, and you working through everything you can, I have full confidence we’ll leave here as a pack, Ledger.”
“Are you even qualified to be our therapist?”
He nodded, leveling us all with a serious look. “I am both a trained federal agent and a psychologist. If you’re at all comfortable with it, despite the various moral boundaries we’re crossing, I can be professional for you. At least until we leave here. But only if you trust me and put your full effort into your sessions.”
“We already talked about that,” I admitted. “We want out of here as soon as we can. There’s something off and it’s so well hidden we aren’t sure who to trust.”
“I can say you can trust me until I’m blue in the face, but you’ll have to see it for yourself. Outside this wing, I’ll be Ares. They’ll get the version of myself I’ve concocted for this role. You will get more of me, just make sure to play your part as well. The moment they suspect, is the moment complications set in.”
“Which will only make it harder to get out of here,” Ansel said in a whisper.
“Exactly,” Ares agreed with a sigh. “I’m going to give you my all because you guys deserve it. As for everyone else here, they’ll get help when we have our villains in custody.”
“I’ll go all-in. Do what I need to, to get past these blocks,” Kane said. “Theo never helped me dig deeper and I have to know what happened before I can trust myself with this pack.”
“Tonight is your individual therapy, correct?” Ares asked him.
“It is,” Kane said. “I don’t expect to remember overnight, but I need to know what happened. I know we should wait and not dive right in headfirst, but for me… it’s been forever. I’m ready and I don’t want time to talk myself out of it.”
“Do you want someone there?” he asked gently. The way he looked so intimidating, yet was so soft when talking to us, was hard to wrap my mind around. He was right, trust would come with time, for now, we had to put our hope in his hands.
It seemed he was doing the same with us.
Kane looked around at us. We all met that gaze with ones of confidence and support. We were pack. No matter who he chose, we’d be ready.
“Can we stay right here? All of us…? Unless someone is afraid it might trigger something?” he asked more to us than Ares.
“I’ll be fine,” Ansel said. He was trying to be stronger, to not let things send him spiraling. I gave his hand a squeeze, proud of the omega for being so damn strong already. He definitely didn’t realize it yet, but he would see it soon enough.
“Alright,” Ares said, pulling out a notebook and resting it on his lap. “Do you have any memories of your past? We need a baseline.”
“Fragments. Faces, sometimes. Feelings.”
“Let’s explore those feelings, Kane. Can you elaborate?” His voice was a soothing rumble. Between that and the warm lights of our wing, it was an almost cozy moment, coaxing Kane into his past.
“They’ve never made sense. I feel happiness, but it’s fleeting. Most of the time they’re painful. A sense of not belonging, of being hurt emotionally. There was obviously a bond, my broken mind and scar are proof of it, but I worry it’s not what I thought it was. That I was too blind to truly see what was going on. A big hint of dread settling in.”
Kane let out a breath, sinking further into his seat. The words had clearly been a burden he’d just released. The weights were lifting off.
