Knot Happening

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Tatum

Rotting lilies.

The scent fills the air with a heavy, painful reminder. She’s not okay… I can’t help her. I’m not enough. Not enough… I’m not enough.

I swallow thickly, the ache in my throat from holding my tears back is uncomfortable, making me antsy.

The stacks of bills seem to get taller the longer I stare at them. Red and orange final notices collect between the credit card offers and magazines.

The pile tilts precariously to the side. It’s only a matter of time before the stack slips off the edge of the peeling blue laminate of our counter and falls to the floor. Funny how that feels a lot like my life. One summer's breeze away from falling off of a cliff into darkness I’ll never recover from.

Desperate doesn’t sound like a strong enough word to describe how I’ve been feeling. I’m overwhelmed, exhausted, and running out of fucking options. Running out of time. Running out of sanity. Of money. Of everything.

I swallow thickly, clutching the flyer tightly in my fist. Do I want to do this? Not really… Fuck, if I could, I’d spend my life right here in this fucking apartment, hiding away with my mother. But that's not true either… I wanted more from life at one point.

But now I’m scared of everything. Fucking everything. Alphas and their ability to break hearts without a second thought. Falling in love with someone who adores me, only for them to die suddenly, leaving me alone with a child I can’t care for without my Alpha.

The dark. Crickets . Heights. You know, the regular stuff.

Fear also keeps me going, even when I want to give up. Fear for my mother. Fear that I’ll turn out just like her. Broken by bonds that each Omega craves. The whine gets lodged in my throat as I hold it back. I might be an Omega, but I’m not weak. I’ll make this better. I have to.

At this point, the only thing I know for sure is that I’m out of time. I’ve got twenty fucking dollars in my pocket, and it won’t last us the week.

Last night, I spent eighty dollars on two weeks worth of suppressants. I need to find a new supplier. Marco knows I’m desperate and willing to pay anything to keep the meds in my system.

I refuse to go into heat. Not ever again, if I can help it. The problem is, that long term use means you lose touch with your instincts. And if you run out of that poison? I shiver, imagining the pain, and the need for an Alpha to help me through it. That sounds like a terrible plan.

Which means I have no other choice because one thing I know for sure is I’m not going into heat. Not alone, and not with an Alpha. Never again.

Not happening.

Dangerous a little voice whispers in the back of my head, but I shove it away. Going into heat alone is far worse.

There’s a pulsing panic rushing through my veins as I glance from the bills to the flyer. The crumpled twenty dollars I made in tips feel like an anchor in my pocket, dragging me to the bottom of the ocean where I’ll drown, right along with Mom.

A manic giggle slips from between my lips, and I shake my head. “Fuck my life.”

The deafening silence in this lonely apartment makes my ears ache at the sound of my own voice. I snatch up the remote and turn the TV on, raising the volume until the ringing in my ears doesn’t feel like an unbearable pressure that I can’t ever escape.

Mom lies catatonic on the couch. Not even opening her eyes when the TV blares at us.

I hold in my panic the best I can until I’m in the kitchen. Leaning back against the sink, my mind races. I NEED to do something. To act. I hate this feeling because most of the time when I get like this, there’s nothing I can really do, so I end up manically cleaning the apartment until three in the morning.

But there’s something I can do this time and it makes that aching tingle at the base of my skull race down my spine, urging me to act. To move. To go, and do now.

Act, act, ACT ! It screams, over and over.

“Gah!” I snap, rushing into my bedroom to change out of my shirt from my shift last night and grab my house key. Don’t need a wallet, not for my measly twenty.

Somehow, this feels like marching to my death. Well, the death of the person I am today. And I think that's a good thing.

I’ve been working for the same diner for the last five years. I was lucky to be hired by Bernie, a Beta, at just sixteen and in my junior year of high school. I’ve always taken every shift I can to make ends meet.

The only thing that kept a roof over our heads for thirteen years was the death benefits that were provided after my father died when I was eight. When those stopped on my twenty-first birthday, around nine months ago, so did the medical assistance Mom received.

It was already mediocre at best. OmegaCare isn’t as fucking helpful as the insurance company likes to advertise. And depending on what region you live in, you might not qualify for care as a single, widowed Omega, at all.

Mom learned that the hard way. I hadn’t realized she’d spent all those years on massive amounts of antidepressants until I turned eighteen, and she started slowly giving up. That’s when I took over caring for her.

I picked all her meds up for her and made sure they were sorted monthly. Then, a few days before I turned twenty-one, we got the letter in the mail, letting us know she was losing coverage.

Bernie’s angel of a daughter, Megan, who is also a Beta, had just returned to town from college for her clinicals and heard me crying in the break room. She’s the one who walked me through how to make Mom’s three month supply of meds last six. How to slowly wean her, rather than cutting her off cold turkey. Unfortunately, those ran out three months ago.

For me to buy those meds, I’d have to make so much money that it’s honestly better to put her in an ABO Care facility.

The guilt that slithers down my throat and constricts my chest at the thought of failing to help Mom keep the medications she needs to function makes me nauseous.

We need more money. More help. More. Which brings me back to the flyer.

One hand on the door to the apartment and the other clutching the flyer once more, I close my eyes and take a deep breath, unable to calm myself.

It’s like I was drifting along in a bubble for years, blind to how bad things were getting until the bubble popped. More like exploded in my face. What's that saying about the frog in a slow boiling pot of water?

I don’t know what the catalyst was. Maybe it was several things all coming together in a fucked up twist of time. One day, I was in survival mode. Next, I was in panic mode.

This last year has been such a fucking nightmare.

Megan is the only reason I can even leave this house to work. She gets paid through the Omega Nursing Program to be my mother’s part-time caregiver. I have to provide them with a monthly pay stub, so they see the hours Meg is needed.

The hours also count toward her clinical hours. She wants to work in the kind of facility that helps people like my mom.

The ones who suffer the worst possible fate. Losing their mate.

Her system shut down as a defense mechanism to her extreme distress once off her meds. Like being in a form of a coma. Where she’s able to walk and eat and drink. She can hear me, but her ability to focus on the words is minimal.

I was in a fog of heartbreak from eighteen to nearly twenty-one. I wasn’t blind to my mother’s pain, I had thought she was taking better care of herself than she was.

Now, she’s practically catatonic. But there’s nothing more I can do for her here. She needs more help than Meg and I can provide on our own. She needs a second chance, and I can’t give that to her.

So many days have passed over the last several months, when I wished I could save her somehow. Fix her and make her better. Reverse time and bring my dad back… We’re here now, though, and can’t go back.

I glance at the flyer, again, and for the first time in years, there’s a flicker of hope threatening to sneak in and corrupt my pessimistic thoughts. I consider myself a realist who leans into caution. But the truth is I’m probably just so fucking hardened by life at this point that I never see the good in anyone or anything anymore.

I hate hope. Hope is partly why I spent so many years making excuse after excuse for our shitty circumstances.

She’ll get better. She’ll come back to me. She’ll wake up and be the mom I once knew. She’ll love me.

It doesn’t matter if she loves me. Or if she’s the mom I once knew. My dad would want me to take care of her now that she can’t care for herself.

“Isn’t she beautiful? Your mama? Just look at that smile.”

I wince at the memory of my father’s words. I can’t even remember the sound of his voice anymore. He loved her with all he was. And she loved him just as much. I wonder if she remembers his voice?

I have to do this. I have to do whatever it takes to help her. For her and for Dad. For the memory of him and the love he held for us both.

I’ll be fine. Breaking out of my comfort zone won’t be the worst thing for me. Maybe I’ll even find a way to live my life rather than barely surviving it.

I hold the flyer up, reading the bold letters.

Now Hiring! Haze Instincts: Where your instincts come alive in the haze of the night.