Trudy.
The name surfaces from the sealed vault in my skull and drags every memory with it. Her arrival in Austin, carrying a suitcase and a hope that made us gentle with her. The early months when it felt real, when she laughed in our kitchen and Damien slept on her chest and I thought we’d finally found our Omega. Then Jakob noticing the flinching, her muffled crying at night, and the slow, patient weeks of coaxing the truth from her until it came… She was already bonded to an Alpha named Kristian who’d claimed her when young and discarded her. The asshole had marked her, and like a leash, the bond pulled her back to him no matter how hard we loved her.
A year. We kept her for nearly a year, knowing she wasn’t fully ours. I cooked her favorite meals every night. Banana bread on Sundays because the smell made her smile. Corey held her through bond-sickness episodes that left her shaking and empty. Jakob handled everything else because that’s what he does.
Then the note. Six words on the kitchen counter next to a cold coffee.
I’m sorry. I have to try.
She went back to Kristian, the Alpha who’d already proved he didn’t want her, and we never heard from her again.
Until now, as she stands on our porch in the rain, three years later.
“Who’s that?” Claire asks, sitting up, peering through the rain-spotted windshield.
I don’t answer immediately. My knuckles turn white on the steering wheel.
“Brody?”
“Her name’s Trudy.” The words taste stale. “She’s… she was our Omega. Before. The one we told you about, who left us.”
I feel Claire’s hand lift from my thigh.
“Hey.” I reach for her hand. “That was years ago. She’s nothing to us.”
“You don’t need to explain anything to me.” Her voice has shifted, darker. It’s the performance tone I recognize from the morning of her interview, the one she uses when she’s putting on armor so fast you can hear the buckles clicking. “You should go see what she wants.”
“You’re coming with me. You’re our pack now.”
She stares through the windshield at Trudy’s small, shaking form. I watch the conflict cross her face, her jaw tightening and her chin quivering.
“It was just my heat, Brody.” Her voice falls. “It meant the world to me, but now, the heat’s over and that’s your reality standing on your porch. You need to deal with it.”
Yet her words jab me in the ribs, and she’s already climbing out of the truck. “Claire, that’s not true.” The rain hits her and she’s moving, head down, crossing toward her front door.
I rush out of the truck, turning to go for her.
“Claire!” Jakob calls from the porch, stepping forward.
“I’m exhausted. Need a shower. Catch me up later.” She gives us a weak smile, but I’m not stopping. I’m at her door before she gets the key in the lock.
“Claire, please. Come inside with us. She needs to meet you.”
She glances past me toward our porch, where Trudy’s watching us. “She’s here for you three,” Claire says. “Things you need to sort out. Let me know how it goes.”
“Claire—”
“Thanks for everything.” Her voice splinters on the last syllable. She covers it with a smile that cracks open my chest. “The mountain was amazing. All of it. I just need some space now.”
She hurries inside, shuts the door, and the lock clicks.
I stand in the rain with my fists at my sides and the fury building behind my sternum because the perfect, devastating, life-altering weeks we’ve spent getting to know her are crumbling on a doorstep because a ghost chose today to turn up.
I cross the yards and up the porch steps. Trudy’s between Corey and Jakob, trembling, and up close, the damage is worse than I expected. She’s skeletal, her collarbones sharp, wrists fragile, her dark hair dull and tangled. Her scent is wrong, almost soured. The bitter undertone of bond sickness so advanced it’s curdled, and beneath it the faded ghost of Kristian’s mark on her neck, proof he didn’t just reject her again—he hollowed her out.
She’s wearing a thin jacket over a shirt, jeans hanging off her hips, a wet backpack at her feet. She’s been sleeping rough, the exhaustion in her eyes confirming it.
“Trudy.” I stop in front of her. “What happened?”