Page 144 of Beautifully Scarred Omega

“They tried to rape me. Every day. I fought them. Every single time, I fought them.” I can see it in her face—a flash of the rage that lives underneath everything she is. “I bit, I scratched, I broke Rourke’s nose twice. They couldn’t get what they wanted. Not at first.”

She pauses and takes a deep breath.

“And they couldn’t figure out why my heat wouldn’t come.” The ghost of a smile crosses her face. “I’d taken heat-blockers. Before they bought me—I’d done three years of nursing school before Henri pulled me out, and I stole a supply from the dispensary. I hid them in my clothes when they took me. Swallowed them every chance I got.” She exhales. “So the heat never broke. And it drove them insane.”

She swallows.

“So they decided to punish me for it.” Her voice drops. “Rourke would hold me down. And Marek—Marek had a knife.”

Beside me, Ethan has gone completely rigid. He’s breathing so carefully I can barely hear him.

“He was the worst,” Sophie says. “Not because he was the most violent—Rourke was worse physically. But Marek was patient. Calculated. He liked to talk while he—” She stops, fighting for the next words. “He liked to tell me what I was. Damaged goods. Worthless. He said no alpha would ever want to bond with me. That I was made for this and nothing else.”

My arms tighten around her before I can stop them. I want to pull her closer, like holding her now could somehow reach back and protect the girl she was then. She doesn’t pull away. She leans into it.

“They raped me anyway,” she says. “The heat never came, and they raped me anyway.”

“I was down there for two months.” She pulls the sweater tighter around herself. “I stopped eating. Stopped fighting. I remember lying on the floor and thinking—this is it. This is where I die. And I was okay with it. I was ready. I just wanted it to end already.”

Her voice is so quiet now. Almost peaceful, in a terrible way, as if she’s describing something that happened to someone else.

“And then, one day, the door opened. And it wasn’t them.” A smile flashes, brief and distant. “It was Declan. This huge alpha standing in the doorway in tactical gear. He crouched down and he cut the ties off my wrists and he said it’s over.” Her throat works. “I didn’t believe him. I thought it was a trick. It took me a while to believe him. I’d still wake up for weeks after expecting to be in that dark, damp basement.”

She wipes her cheek with the back of her hand.

“I begged them to let me work for Sentinel. It took a while, but eventually they said yes.” She pauses. “I’ve been with them for ten years. Ten years of doing the same thing they did for me. Finding omegas that are being abused and going after the alphas who⁠—”

So that’s what Sentinel does. I’d suspected—I remember her words, I have taken down more alphas than you can imagine—but hearing her say it out loud is like watching the last piece of a puzzle fall into place and hating the picture it makes.

Then Sophie turns her head and looks at Finn, his hand still in hers, his blue eyes red-rimmed and glassy. Then at Ethan. Her chin is trembling.

“The flashbacks,” she says. “In the kitchen, and in the archive room. When I panicked, when I hurt you—it was never about you. It was never because of anything you did.” Her voice cracks. “My body couldn’t tell the difference between your hands and theirs. And I’m so sorry.”

A tear tracks down Finn’s cheek. “Don’t,” he manages, his voice wrecked. “Don’t apologize to us. Not for that.”

“We know, Sophie,” Ethan says quietly. “We know.”

And then she reaches for Ethan’s hand.

She finds his fingers and pulls his hand toward her. Her eyes stay on his face the whole time.

She moves the sweater so we can see her scar and places his hand on her shoulder.

On her scar.

Ethan goes rigid.

She holds his hand there, her hand on top of his.

“I don’t want to be afraid anymore,” she whispers.

Ethan doesn’t move his hand. He just holds it exactly where she placed it, and the tears he’s been holding back all evening spill over, tracking silently down his cheeks.

“You don’t have to be,” he says. His voice barely a sound. “You’re safe with us, Sophie.”

As his hand stays on her scar, she doesn’t flinch or freeze or disappear into whatever dark place lives behind her eyes when someone touches her there.

She just... stays. As if she’s allowing her body to feel safe with our touch.