Chapter 23
ADELAIDE
Clio’s sedan smells of strawberries and vanilla, and I roll the window down the second we pull out of the rear lot because the air in the car is too hot, too much, and my skin feels stretched over my body.
“You’re okay there?” she asks, eyes on the road. “Yep, you’re okay. Of course you are.”
“Are you saying that to me or to yourself?”
“Both.” She cuts me a quick look, wearing a nervous grin.
The streetlights sweep across her face in slow stripes.
The city is bright around us, people and cars everywhere, someone nearby playing music too loud, the bass seeming to thrum through my skull.
It should feel alive, but instead it feels like a movie I’m watching through glass.
“Crazy traffic,” Clio is saying fast, her hands gripping the steering wheel. “But once we’re home, we order pizza, then put on a movie we’ve both seen fifty times. No decisions tonight, just survive the next twelve hours. In the morning, when your head is clearer, we figure out what to do. Yeah?”
“Do you think the Alphas did it?”
“Babe.”
“I’m not asking you to be sure. I’m asking what your gut says.”
She takes a breath. Holds it, then releases it slowly.
“My gut isn’t trustworthy right now because I’ve been your best friend forever and I’ve watched you get treated badly back at school.
I know you’re still not fully over it, and I promised myself that I would do anything to keep you safe from now on.
So I’m not a reliable narrator on this topic.
Plus, we only have an old photograph of three men in masks walking beside a woman who disappeared.
Then there’s the three masks that looked similar, and a hidden basement.
But these Alphas you said have treated you very gently and even helped you with those men following you.
So I don’t know. I don’t have proof, and it could mean one thing or a dozen other things, and we’re not going to know which until you can ask them.
Phew, I said a lot for someone who doesn’t know. ” She laughs softly.
“Right now, I’m so torn. I want to talk to them, but I also don’t.” I sigh and sink into my seat on the passenger side.
“That’s fine. You’re not obligated to confront anyone until you’re ready. And don’t you think Malia was a bit out of line tonight, pushing you like that? I need to talk to her.”
“She wasn’t wrong to push, probably thought she cracked the case with the photo she found.”
“Yeah, but she was wrong to do it like that.” She glances at me. “You’re very red. Are you too hot?”
“Burning up.” Despite the night air blowing through my open window, it does almost nothing to cool me down.
She reaches over and turns up the air-conditioning. “Stick your face out the window like a dog.”
“Right!”
“I’m serious. We’re going forty miles an hour. The wind is free.”
I almost laugh at her craziness. Except the ache that’s been sitting low in my spine all day chooses this moment to deepen.
Not a twinge but a full, slow pressure spreading outward from the base of my spine, down the insides of my thighs.
I fold forward in the seat and press both palms against my lower abdomen.
“Are you going to be sick again? Tell me and I’ll pull over.”
“I-I’m fine.”
“It doesn’t look that way.”
“I just need…”
Another pulse, and this one takes the breath straight out of me. A small gasp escapes before I even feel it arrive. Not now, universe. Please, I’m asking politely. Not tonight.
I dig my phone out of my bag with trembling fingers.
“I’m gonna text Ace,” I say.
“Keep it casual.”
My thumbs are shaking so hard I have to start twice.
Hey. Change of plans. Clio’s had a rough night and needs me. Gonna crash at hers. Sorry for making you wait out there. I’ll call you in the morning. Night xx.
I stare at the message. The xx feels like lying. Leaving them off feels like a flag, but I hit Send before I can rewrite it for the third time.
Three dots appear instantly. Then: You sure? I can wait it out if you change your mind.
My throat tightens. I’m sure. Thanks, though.
What’s her address? Just in case.
I pause, knowing he’ll be there all night, waiting outside, and then I’ll go and talk to him, and cry and get angry, and I’m already feeling like I’m losing control.
No need, I type. Get some sleep.
The phone rings in my hand, and his name fills the screen along with a photo of him I took the other morning, grinning at something across the kitchen, green-gold eyes crinkled and so handsome it hurts.
“I can’t answer it,” I whisper. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t—”
“Send it to voicemail.”
I decline the call with a shaking thumb. Start typing. Sorry, we’re in the middle of something. Talk tomorrow.
He replies in under a second. Your heat’s close. I could feel it on you this afternoon. Are you sure you should be away from us tonight?
Tears are burning in my eyes.
I’ll be okay, I type. Night.
Miss you, he replies instantly, and my heart actually breaks.
There’s no other word for it. Something in my chest cracks straight down the middle, and I press my free hand over my mouth because the sound that’s about to come out of me is a loud, sorrowful moan.
The scent-match part of me that’s been falling for the pack is demanding that we return with the force of the world’s biggest magnet.
Every cell in my skin is buzzing, craving his hands on me.
My lungs scream for his scent, and my mouth quivers for his.
Yet another part of me is saying, What if? What if? What if?
I turn the phone off and drop it into my bag as though it’s burning me.
“Hey. Hey. You’re breathing too fast. It’s going to be okay,” Clio says.
“It would be so much easier if I didn’t feel anything for them.” That’s when a stab goes through me so deep that it folds me in half over my knees again. A warm gush between my thighs suddenly soaks the fabric of my pants immediately, and I shift onto my hip to save the seat.
“Oh God.”
“What? What’s wrong?”
“No, no, no, no, no. It’s starting, Clio. My heat’s here.”
Clio stops the car at the light and turns to stare at me.
“Right now?” Her nostrils flare as she clearly must scent the calling card Omegas put out for Alphas. “Oh, shit.” She grips the wheel with both hands. “Okay, okay, okay. I thought your scent was really strong in the store. I thought I was being weird about it, and I didn’t want to say—”
A fresh pulse rolls through me, lower and deeper, and I cry out, pressing one hand to my stomach and the other flat against the dashboard.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck. Should I take you to them?” Clio asks.
“No.” The word rips out of me sharply. “I can’t, Clio. I can’t walk in there right now. I can’t, not tonight, please. God, I want them so badly, though, to stop the pain.”
“Okay, then I’m taking you to my local heat clinic?”
“Please. Now!”
“All right, it’s fifteen minutes away. Hold on. Seat belt. Breathe.”
Another wave crashes through me, and I moan into the door, fingers digging into the armrest, and my whole body is on fire and hollow at the same time, a doubled sick sensation I’ve never experienced before.
But I’ve heard others speak of pain shot through with need.
My body is screaming for contact, for a scent, for Alpha cocks.
“I’m gonna die,” I declare.
“No, you’re not.”
“It feels like dying.”
“Omegas don’t die from heats. They feel like dying. That’s different.”
“Thanks, that’s really comforting.”
“I’m doing my best.”
She takes a corner too fast, the car leans hard, and a driver in the next lane blares his horn. Clio leans across me and shouts out the passenger window, “OMEGA IN HEAT, BUDDY! MOVE!”
A laugh rushes out of me through my tears. “Oh my God. I’m never riding with you again.”
“You say that every time.”
“Remind me never to call you when I’m pregnant,” I say, actually smiling for a change.
Another wave slams through me, and the laughter dies in my throat.
My hands find my belly and press. The contractions are coming closer together, tighter, each one ripping deeper into the base of my spine than the last. The slick between my thighs is still coming, and my pants are a disaster, but I don’t care anymore.
“Two blocks,” Clio’s saying, eyes on the road. “You’re doing so well, so brave. You’re handling this like an actual champion. I’m going to write you a commendation—”
“Stop talking.”
She takes the turn too hard, and my shoulder slams into the door as she swears and straightens up. The car bumps over the edge of a side lot between a bookshop and a florist. She throws the car into park at an angle, leaves her door open, and sprints for the glass front door.
The front of the building is painted the softest possible shade of blush pink, with gold cursive lettering across a glowing sign: ’Olu’Olu Wellness House. Omega Care. Underneath, in smaller letters: A sanctuary since 1994.
I sit in the passenger seat, bent forward over my own lap, panting through another contraction, and for a second, I cannot remember how to move my body at all. Then I try to push open my door.
Clio comes running back out thirty seconds later. “Oh my God. I forgot you. I’m such an idiot.”
I try to laugh but instead groan from the agony.
She yanks my door open and gets one of my arms around her shoulders and hauls me upright. I bite down on a cry because standing has made everything worse. I keep my steps small, hyperaware of the state of my pants, my face burning with fresh humiliation on top of everything else. “I’m a mess.”
“Nobody cares,” Clio murmurs. “Every single person in that building has seen worse. I promise.” She pushes the glass door open with her hip and walks me through.
The reception lobby is the softest room I’ve ever been inside in my life.