The Fighting Omega

Emery's POV

A quiet corner of the cemetery.

It was the third year of our marriage when I finally said it out loud.

"I want a divorce."

Keaton looked up from his phone --- which was already more attention than I usually got. "Because of what happened at the funeral?"

I almost laughed.

The funeral. His gamma Orion's funeral. In front of the entire pack, he had stood beside Alora the whole reception. Guided her away from conversations that were getting too heavy, one hand on the small of her back. Tucked a strand of hair behind her ear when the wind caught it. When Alora had cried, she had turned into his chest without hesitation.

"Sure," I said. "Because of the funeral."

Because that's the simplest answer.

Eight days ago. Our anniversary.

I'd bought a plane ticket. Wrapped a gift. Rehearsed what I would say when he opened the door — surprise, I know you hate sentimental gestures, but I thought maybe this year could be different.

I almost made it inside.

The private room at the back of the restaurant. His voice drifting through the gap in the door before I could knock.

"—Every year. You disappear on your own anniversary, Keaton. She's your wife."

"It's proof," he said. "If Alora asks — if she ever asks — I need her to know nothing happened. That I kept my distance. Three years of nothing. That means something."

A pause.

"She has a kid, man. She's moved on."

"I know."

I turned around.

I don't remember walking back through the lobby.

There's just — a gap. And then cold rain on my face, and my back against the exterior wall of the restaurant, and the sound coming out of me that I didn't recognize at first.

A sob. Ugly and loud, the kind I hadn't let myself make in three years because there was always a reason not to — pack events, appearances, the careful performance of a woman who was fine, who had learned to cry quietly in shower steam where no one could hear.

I wasn't quiet now.

I was standing on a busy sidewalk in the pouring rain, one hand pressed flat against the brick wall because my knees weren't sure about me anymore, and I was falling apart in front of strangers who had nowhere else to walk.

Proof. He had needed proof he'd never touched me. Three years — one thousand days of me waking up in that house, making it a home for a man who was quietly, methodically using my existence as a receipt.

The sob tore out of me again and I let it.

He hadn't hated me. Hadn't resented me. Hadn't felt anything sharp enough to cut.

I had just been nothing. Furniture that ironed his handkerchiefs. A body that filled a seat at pack dinners.

I slid down the wall until I was half-crouching on wet pavement, rain soaking through my coat, my hair plastered flat against my face, crying so hard I couldn't breathe between one sob and the next.

People stepped around me. Some stared. A woman asked something — are you alright, honey — and I couldn't answer, couldn't do anything except press my fist against my mouth and try to survive the next ten seconds, and then the ten after that.

The red-eye home was four hours of turbulence and no sleep.

The fever hit by morning.

By the second day I'd sweated through the sheets twice. I checked the medicine cabinet out of some stupid reflex — empty, because I was the one who restocked it, and I hadn't thought to.

I drove myself to the pharmacy at midnight in the rain, still running a temperature, gripping the steering wheel with both hands just to keep them from shaking.

I found what I needed and brought it to the counter and stared very deliberately at the little card reader while the pharmacist rang me up, because I already knew that if anyone looked at me with any kind of softness right now, I would fall apart completely.

"I don't understand," Keaton said, frowning, genuinely confused in the way that only made it worse. "Things have been fine."

Fine.

"You're right," I said, picking up my keys. "They have been."

The cemetery was still half-full of people when I finally made it to the car.

The driver's door had barely closed behind me when the passenger side opened.

Keaton slid in without asking. He smelled faintly of her perfume.

I set my hands on the wheel and said nothing.

Then the back door opened. Then the other one.

Roman climbed in first in his wool suit, clutching a toy car against his chest. Behind him, Alora folded herself into the seat with the careful grace of a woman who had learned to make grief photogenic. Her eyes were still red.

Nobody asked.

I looked at Keaton.

He looked back at me with that expression — the one that lived in the narrow band between apologetic and dismissive, where he could still feel like a reasonable man.

"She can't go back to that house tonight," he said. "She shouldn't be alone with Roman right now."

From the backseat, Alora's voice came soft and fraying at the edges. "Keaton, really, I don't want to impose—"

"You're not imposing." His voice shifted. "Emery won't mind."

I almost laughed. Not at the audacity of it — I was past that — but at how little I felt. Three years ago that move would have stung. Now it just sat there like a trick I'd seen too many times to bother reacting to.

They were well-matched, the two of them. They really were. And whatever it was they had going — whatever careful, elaborate thing they'd been tending between them all this time — it had nothing to do with me anymore.

I was done being a prop in it.

I turned back to face the windshield and put the car in drive.

"Roman, baby, say thank you to Aunt Emery."

A beat of silence from the backseat.

"Don't want to," Roman said.

"Roman—"

"She's not my aunt." His voice was assured. "Daddy said she was just someone Uncle Keaton had to marry."

The inside of the car went very still.

"Roman." Alora's tone sharpened, just for a moment, glimpsed and then sheathed. "That's not a kind thing to say."

Keaton cleared his throat. I watched his hand flex once against his knee. Then he found his angle. "You've always said you wanted kids," he said, low and practical. "Roman's a good kid. Think of it as practice."

Good kid. God, Keaton. You absolute idiot.

I pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth and drove.

By the time we reached the house, Maria had already received her instructions. The east guest suite was prepared.

I entered my room and locked the door. I picked up my phone.

It rang twice.

"Tell me you're home," Winona said.

"I'm home."

"Alone?"

"East guest suite says otherwise."

A silence that had weight in it.

"Emery."

"The papers," I said. "Are they ready?"

"Done this morning." Her voice shifted. "I was going to courier them over to—" A long pause. "Are you sure?"

My grip tightened on the phone. "Yeah," I said. "I caught him staring at Alora's photo, hand down his pants, whimpering her name like a goddamn animal. It was filth."