Page 196 of Roulette Rodeo
"Where's Red?" My voice cracks, desperation bleeding through. "Malrik, where the fuck is Red?"
He still won't answer, and that silence is louder than the roaring flames, louder than the sirens, louder than my own heartbeat hammering in my ears.
"WHERE IS SHE?" I'm shouting now, fighting against his grip with strength I'm pulling from pure panic. "She was at the gym. She was teaching. She was safe!"
"She came back," Poppy says quietly from where she's kneeling beside Shiloh. "Duke—the owner—said she took Luna when you didn't come back for her. Said she was worried."
She came back. She came looking for us.
The implications hit me like a physical blow. Red came back. Found us—how else would we be out here instead of in that inferno?—and then...
"No." The word tears from my throat. "No, no, no. Where is she? WHERE THE FUCK IS RED?"
I'm on my feet now, adrenaline overriding whatever drugs are still in my system. Malrik tries to hold me back, but I shake him off with violence I didn't know I still had in me.
"Where's my omega?" I'm screaming now, the words ripping from my chest. "Let me go! LET ME GO!"
But Malrik is stronger than he looks—that gym-built muscle isn't just for show. He wraps his arms around me from behind, holding me back as I fight to get to the burning farmhouse. To what's left of it. To where she might be.
"You can't," he says in my ear, voice strained from the effort of holding me. "It's too late. The structure's completely collapsed. The firefighters?—"
"I don't give a fuck about the structure!" I'm sobbing now, tears streaming down my face, mixing with soot and sweat. "She's in there! Red's in there!"
"We don't know that," Poppy says, but her voice wavers, and I can hear the lie in it.
Because we do know. The evidence is right here—four alphas pulled from a burning building, arranged safely on the grass. She saved us. Dragged us out somehow, all four of us, despite the size difference, despite the smoke and flames.
And then she went back.
Why did she go back?
"The shrine," I whisper, the realization hitting like another blow. "She went back for the shrine."
For Sophia's things. For the memories I'd been holding onto. For artifacts of a ghost that should have been let go years ago.
"HELP HER!" I scream at the firefighters, who don't even look our way, too focused on containment. "SOMEONE FUCKING HELP HER!"
My voice breaks completely, raw and destroyed. I'm fighting Malrik with everything I have, but the drugs make me clumsy, weak. My omega is in that inferno—burning, dying, already dead maybe—because she went back for things that don't matter, never mattered, not compared to her.
"Please," I sob, legs giving out, only Malrik's grip keeping me upright. "Please, someone help her. That's my omega in there. That's my—she's everything. She's?—"
Shiloh's voice, rough and barely conscious, cuts through my breakdown. "Red?"
He's trying to sit up, Poppy supporting him, and his eyes are wild as he takes in the scene. The burning building. Our positions. Red's absence.
"Where is she?" His voice carries the kind of command that comes from years of military leadership, even drugged and barely conscious. "Where's Red?"
"She saved you," Malrik says quietly. "All of you. Pulled you out somehow. But then..."
"She went back," I finish, my voice hollow. "She went back, and she didn't come out."
Talon is conscious now too, cursing steadily as he processes what's happening. Corwin is on his feet, medical training overriding everything else as he stumbles toward the firefighters, probably demanding information, status reports, something.
But I just stare at the flames, Malrik still holding me back, and scream into the night.
"WHERE'S MY OMEGA?"
The words echo across the ranch, raw and broken and desperate. Somewhere in that inferno is the woman who saved us, who chose us, who made us whole again after Sophia broke us apart. The woman who called me 'Daddy Rafe' in front of the entire town just to see me blush. Who won a renovation for a barn that held nothing but ghosts because she knew it mattered to me. Who found me at three in the morning in that same barn and didn't judge, didn't push, just sat with me in my grief and offered comfort.
