Chapter 2
The bus doors hiss open, releasing me into the cold night air of Brickwell. Streetlights cast yellow pools on the cracked sidewalks, and fallen leaves skitter across my path as I adjust my backpack and check my watch.
Eleven forty. Later than I wanted to be out, but my shift ran long when Manny cut his hand and couldn’t finish closing. I pull my jacket tighter around me, scanning the empty street before I start walking. Four blocks to the apartment.
The wind picks up, sending a plastic bag tumbling down the gutter.
My fingers curl around the knife in my pocket, thumb resting on the fold where I can flick it open in under a second.
I started carrying it years ago when I first began walking these streets alone, and I’ve had to use it more than once.
Two steps from the bus stop, a familiar prickle starts at the base of my neck. Someone is watching me.
I keep walking at the same pace, but check the reflective windows of the closed pawn shop on my right. The glass throws back a distorted image of the empty street behind me. No shadows moving against building walls, no figures ducking into doorways.
But the prickle between my shoulders persists.
I turn the corner, boots crunching on broken glass from a shattered beer bottle. The sound echoes between brick buildings, bouncing back at me like a second set of footsteps.
I freeze, listening.
Nothing but the distant wail of a siren and the hum of traffic from the main road two blocks over.
“You need sleep,” I mutter to myself, resuming my pace, but faster now.
This has been happening for days. Ever since I saw that Alpha at the diner earlier in the week, I’ve had the feeling that I’m being watched.
The prickle of an unseen stare on my back while I wait for the bus after work.
The sensation of being followed as I walk Lena to school.
The constant need to check over my shoulder, only to find no one there.
My therapist would call it hypervigilance, if I could afford a therapist.
The streetlight ahead flickers, threatening to plunge this stretch of sidewalk into darkness. I pick up my pace, passing beneath as it stabilizes again. The temporary shadows play tricks on my vision, conjuring movements in my peripheral view that vanish when I turn to check over my shoulder.
A cat yowls from an alley, sending my heart rate spiking. The knife handle grows slick with sweat in my palm.
“Get it together,” I whisper, forcing my breathing to slow.
In through the nose, out through the mouth. The same rhythm I use when working a difficult lock.
The red neon sign of a liquor store casts its glow across the street, illuminating a figure walking toward me. Male, tall, hands in pockets. My entire body tenses, calculating distance and speed, threat and escape routes.
Without breaking stride, I cross the street on a diagonal, putting maximum distance between us. The figure continues past without looking up, shoulders hunched against the cold.
Just another person trying to get home, like I am.
Why can’t I shake this feeling?
My suppressants have never caused paranoia before. The dosage hasn’t changed since I outgrew puberty. But Omegas in the city have been disappearing in the last few years. The news tries to downplay it, but there’s a forum called Vanishing Voices that paints a grim picture for Omegas in Brickwell.
Two blocks to go.
I check behind me again. Still empty.
I inhale through my nose, testing the night air, and catch nothing beyond the usual city blend of exhaust, rotting garbage, and greasy food from the twenty-four-hour chicken place on the corner.
Nothing but Brickwell’s usual funk.
Even so, I pick up my pace. The sidewalk narrows as I pass a construction zone, the chain-link fence funneling pedestrians into a tight corridor only wide enough for two people to pass.
It’s a perfect ambush point, and I grip my knife tighter, prepared to run rather than fight in such a confined space.
The hairs on my arms stand up beneath my jacket.
Someone’s there.
I spin around, knife out of my pocket and heart hammering.
Nothing but darkness and the distant glow of streetlights.
“Fuck,” I hiss, folding the knife back into my pocket before I can be spotted by passing cars with a weapon drawn.
All I need is police attention when I’m already late getting home to Lena.
One block left.
A group of drunk college kids spills out of a bar ahead, laughing too loudly, taking up the entire sidewalk. Under normal circumstances, I’d cross the street to avoid them, but my paranoia has me seeking the safety of numbers tonight.
I hug the building side of the path as I pass them, letting their boisterous energy mask my presence.
One of them bumps into me, beer breath washing over me.
“Sorry, man,” he slurs, steadying himself on my shoulder.
I shrug away from his touch. “No problem.”
But there is a problem. The contact leaves my skin crawling, awareness radiating outward from where his fingers pressed.
I hate being touched by strangers. Hate the vulnerability of it, the potential for escalation, and the way my Omega receptors light up with warning signals, whether the touch is threatening or not.
The group moves on, their voices fading as they round the corner, but my nerves remain on high alert.
Fifty yards to my building.
The streetlights on this block work, illuminating the cracked concrete steps leading up to the security door with its broken intercom. The familiar sight should bring relief, but tonight it only intensifies my awareness of the shadows between here and safety.
Twenty yards.
My keys are already in hand, the building key positioned between my fingers.
Ten yards.
A flicker of movement reflects in a parked car window, and I spin, keys raised, ready to strike.
The street behind me stretches empty in both directions.
What the fuck is wrong with me? I’m losing it, with stress and sleep deprivation creating phantoms where none exist. Or maybe this is what happens after spending my entire adult life in fight-or-flight mode. My brain has started manufacturing threats to justify the constant cortisol flood.
Five steps to the door.
The security light above the entrance kicks on, triggered by my movement. The sudden brightness blinds me for a second, and I blink the spots from my vision.
In the split second of blindness, a shadow detaches itself from the alley beside my building, sliding back into darkness.
I freeze, one foot on the bottom step.
“Who’s there?” I demand.
No response comes but for the distant rumble of a garbage truck and the whisper of wind through dead leaves.
I race up the steps, fumbling with my key in the lock.
The door swings open, and I slip inside, letting it close with a heavy thud behind me. The lobby air is thick with cigarettes, poorly masked by a cheap pine air freshener. The elevator is out of service again, so I take the stairs two at a time, every instinct urging me to put walls at my back.
Three flights up, I pause on the landing to catch my breath. From this vantage point, I can see down through the stairwell to the ground floor. No one follows. No footsteps echo on the concrete steps.
Just me and my imagination running wild again.
By the time I reach my floor, my heart rate has settled somewhat, though sweat sticks my shirt to my back despite the chill in the air.
The key slides into my lock with familiar resistance, requiring the slight upward pressure I’ve memorized over months of late-night returns.
I turn the door lock, two deadbolts, and slide the chain across before adding a doorstop under the handle for good measure. It would take me three minutes to break into my own apartment, but the doorstop would slow even firefighters.
Relieved to be home safe, I allow myself a moment to gather myself at the door before I lurch back into motion.
In the entryway, I step out of my shoes so I don’t wake up Lena. My jacket hangs on the hook farthest from the door, never the first, which belongs to Lena.
Keys land in the ceramic dish on the narrow entryway table, a cheap piece I reinforced with metal brackets after the leg cracked six months ago. The repair job isn’t pretty, but it works, which is the only metric that matters in our household.
The tidy living room sits in quiet, illuminated by the dull glow of streetlights filtering through blinds I keep tilted far enough to allow light in, but not enough for anyone to see inside.
Two mismatched chairs face a small TV we rarely turn on.
Between them sits a coffee table I found on the curb.
The walls remain bare except for a calendar tracking Lena’s school events and a single framed photo of her from last year’s academic awards ceremony.
This apartment cost me four months of double shifts, skipped lunches, and a security deposit that emptied my emergency fund. The landlord almost didn’t rent to us. A single Omega guardian with a teenage sister raised too many questions.
I had to bring pay stubs from all my different part-time jobs and references from two previous landlords before he relented.
Every sacrifice was worth it for a sturdy door, reliable heat, and the fact that nobody has tried to break in since we moved here eighteen months ago.
Sunday night settles into my bones, with Monday right around the corner. My mind calculates the hours until the first alarm to wake Lena, the second to get her on the bus, and the third to mark the start of my day.
Fatigue sinks deeper with each passing minute, but I force myself to complete my routine before sleep can claim me.
On silent feet, I cross to the kitchen, the sound absorbed by thin carpet worn in pathways mapping our daily movements. The linoleum floor of the kitchen sticks slightly to my socks, clean but discolored from years of use before we moved in.