All Chapters of Rise Of The Betrayed Omega : Chapter 301 - Chapter 307

**Stella's POV** The elevator doors open to my apartment and I stand in them for a moment longer than necessary. I can't believe today's events that I take a long breath in and hold when suddenly the elevator starts to beep at me for holding the doors. I exhale softly, step out and smell her before I see her. What is Rose doing here? I swiftly walk straight to the living room. It arranges itself in front of me and I take it in the way you take in a scene that is wrong before you have identified specifically what is wrong about it — the lamp on, the television off, the cushions disturbed — and then I find it. Composed. Crossed ankles. A small smile that she has been wearing since before I walked in. And on the floor in front of her, sitting with his building blocks arranged in the particular serious configuration of a one year old who has decided architecture is important— "Noah." I say his name and he looks up with a smile. "There she is." Rose's voice fills the room

**Stella's POV**"Hi, Mommy." Maya's voice is smaller than I remember. Or maybe I've just been missing it long enough that hearing it again makes everything else go quiet.I cup her face in both hands. Turn it gently left, then right. The mark on her chin is a bruise, fading but there. There's also a small scrape along her jaw I didn't see from a distance.My heart constricts with rage I don't show on my face."Are you okay?" I ask. "Does anything hurt?"She shakes her head."Your chin.""It doesn't hurt anymore."I look at her for a long moment. She holds my gaze the way she always has — straight on, even when she's nervous. That part hasn't changed."Are you hungry?""Yes.""Cold?""No."I smooth her hair back from her face. She leans into my hand the way she used to when she was small enough to carry, and something in my chest folds quietly in on itself."Okay," I say. "Okay."I continue doing inventory on her body to check for any more bruises, then — something that isn't tirednes

**Stella's POV** The doctor leads me through a set of double doors and down a corridor and stops outside a room. "He's in here," he says. I walk in and then I stop. Shawn is lying in the bed with tubes running from his arm and a monitor beside him and his eyes are closed and his face is slack in the particular way of someone who is not simply sleeping. I gasp, lifting both of my hands to my mouth because I was not prepared for this. He was standing two hours ago. He was talking to me. He stepped off my elevator with my daughter behind him and his eyes found mine and he was present and upright and entirely himself and now he is lying in a hospital bed looking like something that has been taken apart quietly from the inside. "Why is he unconscious?" I ask. "I thought—" I stop. Start again. "He was awake. He was talking to me less than two hours ago. Why is he still unconscious?" The doctor clasps his hands in front of him. "We induced the coma." "Why?" I look at him wi

**Stella's POV** Auntie Lisa turns to me immediately. "No." Her voice is firm. "No, I'll go. You don't need to do that. Tell me where she is and I'll drive up there myself." She is already looking at the doctor. "The Shanori hills — how far?" "Auntie Lisa—" "You've already done enough as his boss." She says it without hostility but she says it plainly, the way women of a certain age say things they mean completely. "You brought me here. You're paying for—" she gestures around at the room. "You don't need to go chasing healers up a hillside in the middle of the night. That is not your job." "It's not about the job," I say. "Then what is it about?" I look at her. I look at Shawn. And then I say the thing that is simply true. "He has been the best employee I have ever known. He has shown up every single time I needed him to. Without complaint. Without explanation. He has just — shown up." I pause. "I have never once said thank you for that. Not the way it deserved to be said." I