Page 87 of Run Wild Omega

The word lands in the room like a stone dropped into still water.

“His name was Marcus Alden. It started in my second year—he was mentoring me on an independent study, and it turned into something else. I thought it was… I thought it was love.” She says the word with a faint curl of her lip, like it tastes bitter. “It wasn’t. He was married—or at least, he was engaged to someone else. I didn’t know until Daniel found out. But by then, things between me and Marcus had already ended.”

She pauses. Her jaw tightens.

“I believed him. For two years, I believed him. I hid in closets and supply rooms and his office after hours. I let him convince me that I was the one who was wrong for wanting more—for wanting to be seen in public, for wanting a mark, for wanting to be acknowledged as his. He made me feel like my needs were a burden. Like my desire for a real relationship was needy and desperate and shameful.”

My hands are clenched in my lap. Across the room, Miles has gone very still, coiled like a spring being wound tighter and tighter.

“It ended badly,” Tess continues, her voice flattening. “I found out he’d been telling his colleagues that I was a troubled student who’d developed an inappropriate attachment. That he’d been trying to ‘manage’ the situation with professional boundaries. He turned it around on me completely. I was the problem. I was the unstable one. I was the Omega who couldn’t separate her feelings from her professional life.”

She looks up at us. “He’s still teaching. He still has his career, his reputation, his fiancée. And if the media keeps digging, if they find any trace of that relationship, they’ll frame it as more evidence. More proof that I’m exactly what they say I am. An Omega who can’t make good decisions. An Omega who needs to be managed.”

The silence that follows is so thick I can barely breathe through it.

“That’s why you agreed to the bond,” Miles says. Not a question.

“It’s one of the reasons. The other reason is the packs, the lawsuit, all of it. But yes—if this goes public, Marcus Alden becomes part of the story, and I don’t survive that. Not professionally. Not personally.”

I’m so angry I can barely see straight. Not at her—at him. At a man I’ve never met who took a bright, wild, extraordinary woman and made her feel small. Who weaponized her designation against her. Who is still out there, living his polished life, while she’s sitting in a childhood bed with a rod in her leg, terrified that his sins will be laid at her feet.

Wyatt’s hands are gripping the arms of the chair so hard the wood creaks. His face is unreadable, but I know him well enough to see the storm behind the stillness.

“What he did to you,” Wyatt says, his voice barely above a whisper, “is not your fault.”

“I know that. Logically, I know that. But logic doesn’t undo two years of being told you’re too much, too needy, too—” She stops. Swallows. “The point is, now you know. If you want to walk away from this, from the claim, from all of it, I’ll understand. You signed up to help a woman who got caught in an avalanche, not one who’s got a trail of bad decisions behind her.”

“Tess,” I say, and my voice comes out rougher than I intend. “That’s not what this is.”

“Then what is it?” She looks at me, desperation in her eyes. “Because I’ve been trying to figure out what you three get out of this. The lie at the hospital, the statement, the claim—why? You’re putting your reputations on the line. You’re risking your jobs, your standing in this town. And for what? Guilt? Obligation? Pity?”

“No,” all three of us say at the same time.

She waits.

Wyatt speaks first. He leans forward, his elbows on his knees, his eyes locked on hers. “I pushed you away when we were seventeen because I thought I wasn’t good enough for you. I told myself I was protecting you, but I was really protecting myself—from the fear of failing you, from the weight of wanting you that much. It was the worst decision I ever made, and I’ve been living in the wreckage of it for ten years.”

He takes a breath.

“When Miles said ‘pack’ in that hospital room, it didn’t feel like a lie. It felt like the truest thing I’ve ever said. And I know that sounds insane. I know we haven’t been together in a decade. I know you have every reason not to trust me. But I’m not doing this out of guilt, Tess. I’m doing it because the thought of you belonging to anyone else makes it hard to breathe.”

He looks at me, and I take over without hesitation.

“I’ve worked alongside a lot of people, Tess. Hotshots, smokejumpers, military medics. You know what separates the good ones from the great ones? It’s not skill. It’s what they’re made of on the inside. You’ve got something in you—a fire, a stubbornness, a refusal to quit—that I’ve never seen in anyone else. When I carried you down that mountain, I wasn’t carrying a victim. I was carrying the most important person I’ve ever met. And I’m not letting anyone else claim you. Not the Ashfords, not the Voss Collective, not anyone.”

Miles is last. He adjusts his glasses, a tell I’ve learned to read as him gathering his thoughts into precise language.

“I’m not good at emotion,” he says simply. “You know that. I process things in data, in probabilities, in strategic frameworks. And when I model this—when I run the scenarios—the one where you’re claimed by us is the only one where you’re safe. Where Leo’s company survives. Where the media moves on. Where Marcus Alden becomes irrelevant. I’m doing this because the math works. But also—” He pauses, and something shifts in his expression, a crack in the analytical surface. “Also because the night we waited for your compartment pressure to drop, I realized that if it hadn’t dropped—if we’d lost that leg, or if we’d lost you—I would have regretted every moment I spent at a safe emotional distance from you. I don’t want to be at a distance anymore.”

Tess stares at him. For a long moment, she doesn’t speak.

Then she nods slowly, once.

“Okay,” she says. “Then we do this right.” She looks at Wyatt. “If we’re performing a bond before it’s legally filed, we need to be precise about the markers. The scenting is the first public signal, but it’s not enough on its own. We need to register the bond with the National Registry as soon as the statement has had time to circulate. How long is that?”

“Ten to fourteen days,” Miles says.

“Then we register at fourteen days. Not a day later. And when we do, it needs to be airtight. Notarized claim forms, proper witness signatures, the full legal package. If anyone challenges it, I don’t want there to be a single procedural error they can exploit.”