Knot Without You: An Omegaverse Romance

Chapter 8

Chapter

Eight

Something interrupts my sleep. But once I lift my head out from under the pillow, there’s nothing but silence, so I flop back down on my pillow, figuring it must have been my dream that woke me up.

I nearly drift back off except right at the last second there’s the noise again, and this time my body is flooded by a rush of adrenaline as I go from dreamy to awake. I hate the jittery feeling when you wake up suddenly.

The longer I wait for the sound again, the faster my heart pounds but at the same time I have to fight to keep my eyes from closing. I’m so goddamn tired. What feels like hours later, the same noise happens again. Now it’s easy to figure out the sound is coming from the door.

“Hold up,” I slur out, rolling to my feet. My eyes move from barely open past slits as I bundle my hair up and start down towards the front door. But because the suite is unfamiliar, and my eyes are pretty much closed again, I bounce off the walls and furniture as I make my way to the door.

Whoever is at the door is impatient because they also start hitting the door chime, while continuing to knock.

I don’t use the peep hole or open my mouth to tell King to shut up, instead I pull the door open dramatically while shushing him up.

I remember opening the door.

I remember someone laughing and saying something like, ‘you were told’.

After that all I feel is pain.

It’s over before it starts.

Clarity trickles back in slowly. I don’t have to figure hard to know how fucking scared I am but at the same time I don’t have the strength to work out what happened. Nothing is making sense except someone just attacked me. Why they did, I can’t even start to think about because it makes the fear explode. I want to say they didn’t touch me sexually, but I just don’t fucking know. Everything makes me numb. Everything.

All the noise goes from my head, all the pain disappears, and I lie there, staring and not moving, wondering if I imagined everything. Not feeling anything is a switch and my subconscious starts searching for things to anchor me. Without trying, because I’ve done this so many goddamn times, I search. I see the ceiling, the coffered cornicing, and I stare at it until sounds start to return. I scratch the wall with my nails until my brain can pick up on the sound. With noise returning, so does the pain, and I lose track of my focussing exercises.

It takes a while to wrangle control of my anxiety, and once I do, my thoughts hit hyper-speed and I’m swamped by a million things I suddenly want to do; lie down, sleep, chase those bastards down to kick their faces, but there’s a stronger more desperate need first, I have to find a place to hide.

I crawl through the suite, searching for a dark corner. And I find it back in the bedroom suite, the place that is saturated with his and my scent. Curling into a ball too small for my long arms and legs, I wrap my hands around my face, desperate to not make a sound in case they return but powerless to stop the noises from escaping. I indulge in a silent sob for God knows how long. Eventually the tears dry up and I’m left once again staring at nothing in complete shock.

I hear knocking at my door. And this time I know it is King. Which pisses me off and sends me spiralling because how could I have thought it was him before? How could I misinterpret the way I can physically feel him? His presence is so fucking huge and invasive it strangles me in his desperation.

“Tristan!” His booming voice ricochets through the suite and I lock on to it like a lifeline. “Tris!” he yells out again. His voice is so loud, it’s like thunder in a stormy sky, but it’s not scary, it’s cathartic—reminding me I’m alive.

I feel every step he makes as he searches the suite. I hear his breathing like his mouth is next to my ear and then he’s filling the doorway. The light behind him makes him seem bigger, but it also gives me the chance to see him. His eyes are full of retribution but it’s his stoic scent that batters right through me, and I dissolve into noisy hysterics.

King drops to his knees. His face changes, becoming a mask of indifference. It freaks me out, but I get it too. I can scent how close he is to losing it.

“I’m sorry,” I shout. And I know I don’t need to apologise but that doesn’t stop my mouth from opening.

“Don’t you dare, killer,” he growls back just as loudly, even though there is no space that separates us.

King’s careful not to look at me, and I get it’s an Alpha thing, because from the glance before I know his eyes are not full of nice things right now. Without waiting for him to calm down, I crawl to him. He makes room for me, and even before I have my head on his chest, a deep melodic noise rumbles out of him. Neither of us put up a fight when he holds me close, my ear to his chest as he purrs.

His torso is the only thing I can see, his bourbon scent the only thing I can smell, his anger the only thing I can feel.

We sit there for ages, both of us lost until we find our way back to each other.

“I have to have a look,” King says softly. And hearing King be soft nearly sets me off again but it’s also a good reminder of how I’m not soft. “You forget to tell me someone threatened you, killer?”

“It was so quick; I couldn’t do anything. And the door was locked, I just thought it was you because no one else knew I was using this suite,” I say, purposely looking into his eyes, I’m not going to hide from King how I fucked up.

“That’s what worries me, Tristan. You get that?” He stares back in challenge, and instead of getting my back up at the look in his eye, it sinks in differently, like it’s okay for us to be like this with each other; dropping the niceties and simply being ourselves.

I don’t bother answering his question because it is futile. Instead, I shuffle off his lap and together we peel off what I was sleeping in. And then he helps me up to standing, keeping his huge hands on my hips like supporting beams, ensuring my legs don’t buckle.

“What’s wrong?” he asks suddenly, interrupting me mid-turn.

“I don’t know if they…” I reluctantly admit when he turns me around.

“They beat you, but they didn’t touch you like that. You get me?” His words are clipped, and it’s not hard to figure out why.

“I get you,” I snap back while also letting him turn me around.

It’s almost excruciating how long it takes him to check out every inch of my body. The only comfort I get is from the violence I see in his eyes when he finally finishes. He stands up without saying a word and uses his hands on my hips to walk me into the bathroom. The dark matches the sombreness and when two loud and larger than life people are quiet and bleak you know something shitty has happened.

King uses the night lights, the warm glow coming from them isn’t enough to improve the mood, but it does give us light to see the blossoming bruises on my mid-section. It’s reassuring when he doesn’t bother to hide the steady increase of his growls as he touches each mark on my body again, and while there are a few, it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. He inspects each one a third time without taking off the hand he has glued on my hip. Only once he is done and has catalogued them all does King look me in the eyes.

He’s showing me he’s still not right but he’s also showing me how he will be dealing with what has been done. Not one part of me feels regret or sadness because that look of vengeance in his eyes would echo mine if anyone hurt him or one of my Scorned Girls.

“How are you feeling?” he says eventually, reaching to turn the faucet on before tugging my panties to my feet. I climb out of them and straight back onto his lap. He locks his arms around me almost like he is ivy, wrapping me in his touch and scent. Within moments I am covered in King and the world feels okay again.

“Like an idiot but at the same time I’m pissed off,” I tell him, nuzzling up under his chin, dropping my nose to his sweet scent spot on his neck. But I need his bourbon scent now more than ever. I have no issue with taking everything he is throwing my way—I’m a strong, confident Omega who needs a stronger Alpha to catch me when I fall. Or get pushed.

Some Alphas try to temper their designation or hide away the parts of them that are ugly: possessiveness, an insatiable need to care, retribution, but I like the way he is unapologetically Alpha. I know there’s a huge ‘but’ hanging over us, but I’ve never said I am altruistic—my parents raised me to be the opposite really. From the first scent, I knew King was mine and I’d have him no matter the cost. We just need to figure out how ‘we’ happen, especially now it looks like there’s someone lurking around making threats one day and backing their texts up with a physical reminder the next.

Without question, I idolise Raney. I know she’d probably abhor what’s going on between me and King. She’d be hurt about me not saying anything too but now that the person who threatened me has crossed the line, what if by telling Raney I’m putting her in danger.

I sink into his hold as he scents up a storm. His bourbon scent is still sharp enough to cut but the deeper, smokier undertones of his scent reinforce how right we are for each other.

His phone rings, and he answers it before pushing it into the crook of his neck, and I get a sense he’s not ready to cut our physical connection. His eyes don’t leave me, even as he grunts and snarls to the person on the other end about organising more sweeps and looking again. His barks echo around the small bathroom when someone challenges him, I put my hand on his shoulder for no other reason but to steady him, and his biting responses change almost immediately although he’s still pissed off.

Shuffling the phone between his shoulder, he speaks in a slightly better tone as he demands answers, but he also lifts me into his arms and cradles me into the bath. The warm water feels cold compared to how warm I was in his arms, but I sink into it.

I can feel King’s gaze on my face as I close my eyes. Someone says something and he storms away with the heavy clump of his boot, a dull thud to my ears underwater. Holding my breath, I hear him stomp through the suite and I use his steps to slow my heart while I try to drown out the reality of what happened.

Floating up to the top of the water and taking a breather of air, it’s King’s mood and slow steps in the other room that keep me in a weird lull, and for some reason other ugly memories surface.

I shouldn’t pay memories of growing up any credence and I usually have my memories locked up tight, except it seems my vulnerability is getting further tested tonight. Usually, I can wrestle anything associated with Troy back to the furthest part of my mind, but apparently not tonight because what if I was reading this whole thing wrong? What if the voices in my head were right, just like Troy said, and I was blowing this out of proportion.

“Killer,” King barks, his voice somehow fills my ears as loud and strong as if his lips were against the shell of them. I sit up in a wave of panic completely horrified by how dark and wrong my thoughts are. King’s bark was like a bucket of cold water.

Without waiting for an explanation as to why I’m floundering, King scoops me out of the bath and into his arms, somehow wrapping a warm towel around me. He smashes through the ghosts from yesterday.

“What the fuck were you thinking about?” He growls, careful not to look at me in an Alpha inspired glare as he takes me further away from my latest meltdown. I didn’t think I was that far gone in memories but clearly, I was. I hold on to him for dear life.

I focus on King’s arms around me, warm and secure. I inhale his scent until it is all I can taste and then I let his question chase the last memories away. He sounds angry, but I know it’s a him issue not a me issue. King is responding on an Alpha level again, rallying to an unseen threat, reacting to my emotions that have been stirred to light by memories that should never see the light of day.

“Killer, I need to know what you were thinking about. Your emotions pulled me away from what I was doing.” His jaw grits together, and this strong man is struggling through the weight of our insta-connection. That’s plain to see. He’s not fighting it, that too is obvious, but for us, it’s not as simple as chasing down the passionate and obvious connection we have to each other.

I cup the side of his face, pulling his attention down to me. “I was thinking of things that I don’t need to.”

“I want more of an explanation than that.” King huffs, the muscles in his back tightening before they start to loosen, perhaps knowing I will share the truth with him. This link between us is already full of an insight suggesting we’ve got no issue sharing ugly pasts with each other.

“It’s a problem for another day,” I insist, my hand squeezing over the back of his neck to pull myself up higher into his arms. “Are you going to leave?”

“After we’ve talked.”

I huff a laugh. “That’s a yes then.”

His eyes narrow. “I’m going to find the cunt who hurt you, not because I want to leave. Don’t twist this around.”

“But are you going to tell me we can’t be together?”

His eyes dart away for a split second. A split second that feels like forever, but I get my answer.