Page 194 of Beautifully Scarred Omega

“That’s Equinox,” she whispers.

“Yes.” His voice is steady, even now—even with the rut pressing at the edges of his control, even with sweat on his brow and his jaw tight, he is steady. “If you take it now, the heat stops. Your omega designation is erased. You won’t bond with us. We won’t mark you.” He holds her gaze. “You’ll be free, Sophie. Completely free. No heats. No biology controlling you. Ever again.”

Max moves to her other side. He takes her hand in both of his. “Bond with us,” he says quietly. “Be with us. Let us love you. Let us spend the rest of our lives making sure you never have to be afraid again.” His green eyes are wet, and I realize in that moment that so are mine. “Stay.”

“Or take the pill,” Ethan says. “And be free. We won’t love you less for it. We won’t leave. We will spend the rest of our lives being whatever you need us to be—just without the bond.” His voice doesn’t waver. “This is your body, Sophie. It has always been your body. This choice belongs to you.”

“We mean it,” I say. I’m still holding her face; her skin is burning under my hands. “Whatever you choose. We’re not going anywhere.”

Max tightens his hold on her hand. “And we’ll still love you,” he says. “If you take the pill, if you never carry our marks or bond with us. None of that changes how we feel about you.” His eyes stay on hers. “We want you to choose us. God, Sophie, we want it more than I can fucking say. But we want you more.”

She looks at the pill in Ethan’s palm.

She looks at Max’s hands around hers.

She looks at me.

Whatever she decides in the next ten seconds will define the rest of our lives.

She takes a breath.

CHAPTER 48

Sophie

The heat is extraordinary.

It’s vast and overwhelming, rising through me in waves that make rational thought feel like trying to hold water in cupped hands. Every part of me feels like it’s on fire. My skin feels too sensitive for the air in the room. My pulse is loud in my ears and everywhere at once.

I look at them.

Max, crouched in front of me, his green eyes dark, sweat tracking down his jaw, the tendons in his neck standing out with the effort of staying still. Ethan beside me, his breathing slow and controlled, his hand steady where it holds the pill, his forearm rigid with the effort. Finn, whose blue eyes are almost black, whose jaw is set so hard it looks painful.

They’re barely holding on.

If they feel even a fraction of what I feel right now—this overwhelming pull, every instinct dragging me toward them—then what they’re doing in this moment is almost impossible. They’re giving me a choice when every instinct in them is telling them to claim me. They’re kneeling on the floor of a warming storage room, sweating through their shirts, and waiting for me to decide.

For me.

They’ve always been waiting for me.

I look at the pill in Ethan’s palm. This is what they’ve spent over a decade building, something meant to free omegas from exactly this moment—from biology making decisions that belong to people. It would work. I know it would work. The heat would ebb. My omega designation would be erased. I would walk out of this room as free as I’ve ever been, and they would still be here, and they would still love me, because that’s who they are.

I think about everything that brought us here. About getting to know them and all the quiet, impossible things that made me fall in love with them.

The shelters. Equinox. The dream of giving omegas like me a choice. Three men who keep doing good quietly, for people who will never know it was them.

I think about the way they listened when I gave them the ugliest parts of my life. How they never looked away. Never tried to make me smaller or easier to hold. They just held me. Loved me.

Stayed.

And somehow, with them, I learned what it felt like to be safe.

I’ve never wanted to belong to anyone.

My entire life has been built around the deliberate avoidance of belonging. Because belonging to someone meant depending on them, and depending on people only ever gave them something to take from me. I learned very early what it felt like to lose.

So I made myself into something that couldn’t be taken from me.