Page 63 of Pack Frenzy
I shift slightly, letting my ankle brush against his under the table. His eyes widen just a fraction, and then that bright grin is back, real this time, not performative.
Halfway through the meal, Rowan sets his spoon down with deliberate care. “You mentioned friends…from Nexus?”
Eli’s chewing slows, and Cassian goes still in that particular way he has, like a predator deciding whether to pounce or wait.
My throat tightens, and for a second I can’t breathe around the sudden pressure in my lungs. Lots of Alphas want their Omega to cut ties with their old friends and life. I could never do that. And even these few days without knowing about my friends is hard, I can’t imagine never seeing or talking with them again.
“I’m not sure if they’re evenatNexus,” I manage, and my voice sounds thin even to my own ears. “Casey, Danica, and Kayla. Last time I saw them, we were in transit. Before?—”
The wordwrecksticks in my throat. I can’t say it. Can’t give voice to the moment everything shattered…the screech of metal, everything tilted and rolled, screams cutting through the dark.
“I don’t know where they are,” I finish quietly, and the admission is like losing them all over again. “Or if they’re okay.”
The café noise blurs, and Cassian’s intense stare pins me in place, jaw tight like he’s biting back words. Eli looks like he’s calculating something he wishes he didn’t know, running through scenarios I can’t begin to guess at.
Outside, a gull screams, and the sound drags me back to the bus—the moment before impact when I knew, just knew, that everything was about to go to shit.
I press my palms flat against the table, trying to anchor myself in the present. In this moment, where I’m safe and fed and no one’s hurt. But my hands are shaking, and I can’t make them stop.
Rowan reaches into his jacket—the movement slow, deliberate, giving me time to pull back if I want to—and slides his phone to me.
“Type in their names.”
I blink at him, not understanding. “What?”
“If they were on any record—arrival logs, medical reports, reassignments—I’ll see what I can find.”
The metal’s warm from his pocket when I pick it up, and the heat of it against my palm is like an anchor. My hands won’t stop shaking. I type their names one by one, backspacing twice because my vision’s gone watery and I can’t see the keys clearly.
Casey. Danica. Kayla.I add their last names and ages, hoping it will help.
My best friends. Gone since the bus. Gone since before I knew what Nexus really was or what it would mean to be sent there.
When I hand the phone back, Rowan meets my eyes, and there’s something in his expression I don’t have words for. Something that looks almost like a promise.
“Can’t guarantee anything,” he says, and I appreciate the honesty of it, the refusal to offer empty comfort. “But I’ll do my best to find out what happened to them.”
The words shouldn’t mean as much as they do. He’s not promising miracles. But my ribs tighten around my lungs anyway. The first person who’s acted like my friends matter because it matters to me, like their absence is a wound worth acknowledging.
“Thank you. Th-They were on the bus to Nexus with me. Before it wrecked.”
“What wreck?” Eli asks, confusion knitting his brows.
The sound of the room fades with the rush of blood in my ears. “You didn’t know that?”
“That wasn’t in your file.” He frowns.
The words take a second to process. “You read my file?”
My neck goes hot. The idea of him—of any of them—reading about me like I’m a specimen to be studied makes my skin crawl. All my worst moments cataloged and quantified, reduced to data points and checkboxes. Every loss, every failure, every reason I ended up how I am laid bare for strangers to judge.
“Seriously?” I add, and I can hear the hurt bleeding through the anger.
Eli flushes, color rising in his cheeks. “Protocol,” he blurts, then winces like he knows how weak it sounds. “Not curiosity.”
I arch a brow, clearly not buying it, and Eli sighs.
“I have to help match Omegas with Alphas,” he says, meeting my eyes with something like an apology. “That can’t happen if I don’t know anything about either. But I swear, I only read what I had to. And I didn’t—I haven’t told Cassian or Rowan anything.”
