Episode 24 Wish Upon a Star
I probably shouldn’t be here.
No. I know I shouldn’t be here.
But I don’t want to leave things as they are.
I don’t want Florence, my determined little killer, to spend one more moment thinking we don’t care about her. That couldn’t be further from the truth, and it feels inherently wrong to my alpha—to me—for her to walk around thinking that is the case.
My alpha will not allow me to leave it how we did this afternoon. With her tolerating us.
I need her forgiveness. I need her understanding. And I need… her.
So casting a look around and spotting no one, I lift a hand and knock on the door. Her door.
I know Court has already been here. I’m pretty sure after the capture the flag challenge he spent the night with her. He wandered in early the next morning smelling off. Not bad off, just not like himself.
I can’t blame him for that. I’d wanted to do the same, crawl into bed with her and hold her close, verify with the steady rise and fall of her chest that she was okay.
Though by the smug swagger he’d had all morning, I suspect he did more than just hold her all night. No, they definitely got physical. And then he turned around this morning and called her kiss midrange.
No wonder Ren was hurt and pissed off.
I would be too if our situations were reversed.
That was his mistake. Forsythe has made it clear that all of this is for show. We’ve known Isadora was going to be our omega for years. For so long that she tried to convince us to bite her when she was seventeen. But we weren’t ready then. We aren’t ready now.
Not for Isadora. Probably not for anyone but my little killer.
Ren was right that we panicked after she kissed each of us. So much so that Sythe had all but commanded us to create distance between us and her.
But seeing the hurt on her face that she tried so hard to hide from us once the blindfolds were off? That was enough to have all of us scrambling to fix it, in whatever way we could, while also trying to remember that we can’t have her.
This is something else he’s made clear.
We can’t get attached to Florence.
For her sake and ours.
Coming into the filming of this show, I hadn’t thought it would be a problem.
I assumed, rightly, that the omegas they brought in would be the normal contenders.
Females and males with inclinations of being a princess or prince, of being the Royal pack omega.
The same types of omegas we’ve been dodging for years.
I felt certain we’d easily keep our distance from all of these as well, that not one of them would be sweet enough or down to earth enough to actually be a threat to our pack piece of mind.
But we hadn’t counted on Florence Karlin, with her kaleidoscope eyes and wariness of alphas. Her competitive spirit and her sweet nature. We weren’t counting on an omega who stands up to us and doesn’t take any of our bullshit.
We need someone like her. We need her.
But we won’t have her. We can’t.
My heart thunders in my chest drowning out the sounds of the resort around me, the crash of the ocean waves, the buzz of insects. Until all I can hear is this, the soft tread of my omega moving toward the door. Toward me.
Her brows jump when she sees it’s me. She’d likely thought it was production coming to take her to another challenge, if the scowl on her face when she’d first swung open the door is anything to go by.
“Thayer.” Why does it sound so good having her say my name in any tone? Surprised. Determined. Pissed off. All soft and sweet? Yeah, it's all good.
I could spend hours researching this phenomenon. Days. Weeks. Months. And I would still be no closer to an answer than this: she is my omega. Mine.
“What are you doing here?”
I glance over my shoulder furtively. “Can I come in?”
She mimics me, scanning over her little cabana like she’s checking to make sure there’s nothing out she doesn’t want me to see. And then she steps back with a sigh. “Yeah, sure. Come in.”
I almost chuckle at how reluctant she sounds. Any other omega would jump at the chance to have me alone in their room. But not Florence.
I follow her into the space and shut the door behind me. On instinct my nostrils flare, trying to get a whiff of her scent. But all that greets me is the slightly chemical tang of the descenter they’ve been pumping through the HVAC system.
She pauses in the middle of the room, turning to face me, and it's at this point that I realize Florence is wearing shorts.
The shortest shorts. Tiny little things that barely cover the bottom curve of her ass.
Her shirt is oversized, but cropped, hanging off one shoulder.
So much of her golden skin is on display.
My brain short circuits and I realize, this omega never wears shorts or dresses with short skirts.
No, she always keeps her legs covered and that's why this feels like a punch to my guts.
Well, that and the mess of scars on her left knee.
The sight of all that puckered and raised flesh makes my alpha roar.
Something hurt our omega and it's up to us to fix it.
“What the fuck happened to you?” the question slips out before I can think better of it. But I don’t regret asking. I need to know. My alpha nature needs to know so I can find whatever hurt her and rip it apart.
Whoa. Easy there, Thayer.
Ren shifts, putting all of her weight on one foot and uses the other to rub at her ankle uncomfortably. She hesitates to answer me and I hate that. I want her to feel comfortable to tell me anything. To tell my whole pack anything.
A wrinkle forms between her brows and she finally sighs. “I had an accident about two years ago. Shattered my knee and my hopes of being a professional dancer. They operated on it, hence the scarring, but it wasn’t enough.”
“You wanted to be a dancer?” my voice comes out hoarse, even though I already knew this. It’s in her dossier. The one I’ve looked over more times than I care to admit, like there will suddenly be new information that will make what’s going on between us make sense.
Half her mouth quirks into a smile as she nods. “On track to be a principal. Yeah. But it wasn’t to be. I can’t dance for hours on end anymore, not without it hurting. So I dance for myself here and there and teach yoga to omegas to try to help with some of the pain.”
“Is that why you never picked a pack? Because you wanted a career instead?”
Her nose wrinkles and she shakes her head, moving to sit on the sofa, picking up an ice pack and resting it over the ruined skin.
“All the packs they brought in… they wanted a stay at home omega. As soon as I mentioned I wanted to be a dancer, to have a career, they lost all interest. Or if they didn’t they tried to convince me that I was wrong for wanting that, that I should just let my alphas take care of me.
I wanted both a career and a pack. If even one of them had been supportive of my dreams…
” She trails off, but I understand what she means.
If they had been supportive of her dreams, she probably would have matched with them, and then she wouldn’t be here.
“That’s why your knee gave out. During the first mini game while I was holding you in the air.”
She shrugs. “Yeah, I miscalculated how much it could take after running on sand.”
A hot spike swells in my chest. Anger, I realize. At her. “That was a really fucking stupid thing to do, killer.”
She jerks back at the sudden vitriol in my voice, eyes wide with a flash of… fear? God, no. I don’t want her to fear me. I work to make myself calmer, take a deep breath and let it out and not for the first time, I wish like hell I could smell her.
By the time I’m not feeling so volatile, Florence is no longer afraid. In fact she’s glaring at me like I just kicked a kitten, her little chin lifted in defiance that I want to spank out of her. Goddamn it.
“I’m sorry,” I say, keeping my voice level. “That was uncalled for.”
She folds her arms over her chest. “It was.” There’s no talk of her forgiveness, no easy acceptance of my apology. Florence Karlin is going to make me work for it.
I fucking love it.
“It’s not an excuse for snapping, but my alpha hates the thought of you being injured for any reason, but especially for something as stupid as this television show.
Especially when that’s already happened.
” I reach for her folded arms, blowing out a breath when she lets me untangle them, stroking my thumb over the still healing skin on her wrist where the ropes bit into her flesh.
She shifts and sighs. “It would be my own fault. I’m too competitive for my own good. It's such a huge part of being a ballerina. Always in competition with the other dancers, always fighting for the best parts.”
I nod my understanding, my thumb still rubbing circles into her pulse point. On top of that I’ve read about how hard being a ballerina can be on the body, the way the dancers push through pain and injury to hold their spot. It seems Ren still does that years later. Something to watch out for.
“Are you injured now?” I ask, pointing at the ice pack in her hand. Hating the idea, but still needing to know.
She shakes her head. “No. I tweaked it in the blindfold obstacle course challenge, and then again during capture the flag. But it's been fine since then. This is more… preventative.”
It only takes me a moment to realize what she means. “You’re going to dance in the talent show.”
Her mouth quirks up into a smile. “It won’t be as good as when I was at my best, but I’ve been working at it, you know? Trying to get back to dancing for me because it's something I love. Even if I can’t do it professionally anymore.”