Twelve
TWELVE
Luca
THE TASTE OF BILE IN my throat didn’t subside when I was back in my nest with the lights off and the door closed. The urge to run, run, run thrummed in time with my pounding pulse.
Why had I stayed in St. Louis after escaping Blaze and his goons, instead of going someplace far away? I’d put a single, stinking river between us, when it should have been an ocean. Now my old gang was going after Mia. Was that my fault? Or would it have happened even if I was sipping sangria in Spain, or eating fish and chips in Soho?
If you hadn’t met her, you wouldn’t care if it was happening or not , whispered a snide voice in my head. Mia’s right—you don’t give a shit about the people SSG hurts, as long as it doesn’t affect you directly .
A knock sounded against the hollow wood of the bedroom door. I frowned, willing whoever it was to go away, but a second later the knob turned and the door swung open. Light from the hallway streamed in, silhouetting a tall, broad figure that took up most of the available space. Old instinct sent a jolt of adrenaline through me, and I froze.
With a plaintive meow, a small shape detached itself from the alpha in my doorway. Princess hit the ground with a light thump and trotted across the room to me, weaving through the piles of pillows on the floor. The soft press of her head against my shin dragged me free of the past.
I glared up at Emiel, not uncurling from my miserable hunch. “It’s incredibly rude to enter an omega’s nest without an invitation. Get out.”
Emiel ignored me, coming far enough inside to find a bare patch of wall across from me and slide down it until he, too, was sitting on the floor.
“Shut the basement door when I wanted to be on my own, didn’t I?” he muttered. “You picked the lock.”
I felt heat rise to my cheeks, glad that the shadows in the room would hide the scarlet flush of humiliation.
“That’s different,” I said.
He shrugged. “If you say so.”
Princess trilled her displeasure at not being the center of my attention, and I stretched out a listless hand to tickle behind her ears. She immediately pushed into the contact, a purr all out of proportion with her tiny frame rumbling outward from her chest.
Fine .
Just because Emiel had barged in here and bulldozed my moral high ground, it didn’t mean I had to talk to him. I petted the cat with absent movements and pointedly refused to look at my unwanted guest.
The silence stretched... and stretched some more. It occurred to me that maybe trying to out-silence Emiel wasn’t quite the no-brainer I’d thought it might be. I pressed my lips together, attempting to ignore the growing pressure of words building up behind my teeth.
Minutes passed.
“She can’t fight the gangs alone,” I blurted. “They’ll roll right over her.”
The silence returned as soon as it was out of my mouth, folding over the small disturbance like the tide slipping over a rock pool.
“Dunno,” Emiel said at last. “Maybe.”
I stared at him. “You can’t possibly be in favor of this.”
He pondered that for a time. “Not really my call, is it? An’ she’s got that husband with her, too.”
I continued to stare at him with blank incomprehension. “Her husband ? That waste of space?”
Another shrug. “I kinda like him.”
“ Why ?” The word was dragged straight from the depths of my soul, because... seriously, what ?
Emiel’s posture loosened a bit, his forearms coming to rest on his raised knees. “He came to check on her. When she was in heat.”
That didn’t really answer the question, did it?
“And he’s lucky he didn’t get his head knocked off in the process,” I shot back, hearing the contempt coming through in my tone.
“That’s what I mean, though,” Emiel said. “He was worried that maybe we were taking advantage of her. And he came to make sure she was okay, even though he might’ve got punched in the face.” He paused, before admitting, “Thought about doin’ it myself.”
Slow-rolling realization washed through me, the bile rising a bit higher in my throat.
“Because no one ever did that for us,” I whispered hoarsely. “No one ever checked on us.”
“Yeah,” he agreed.
I swallowed and licked my lips, reaching for deflection. “I think he’s probably bisexual. He was checking out Byron pretty blatantly, anyway. So, who knows? You might be in with a chance there, big man.”
“Fuck off,” Emiel said.
I couldn’t help the choked snort of laughter that shook free of my lungs as I scrubbed my hands down my face and let them fall.
“You gonna run away or something?” Emiel asked, dragging me right back to Earth. “From SSG?”
“If I was smart, I would’ve run years ago,” I muttered.
“But you didn’t,” Emiel said.
“I said ‘if’ I was smart.”
“But you didn’t,” he repeated, a bit firmer this time. “If you didn’t run, why should she? The police actually give a shit about her. She’s famous.”
I had the impression that being a celebrated chef was a very specific flavor of fame, but his point was valid. Mia mattered to society in a way that Emiel and I—and Byron, for that matter—didn’t.
But still...
“I just want her to be safe. You know how the gangs are.” I picked at the seam of my sleeve, not looking at him.
“Yeah,” he said after a long pause.
Princess stretch-walked her front paws up the length of my right leg, her tiny claws digging into the denim of my jeans. I rubbed a thumb against her cheek, feeling her press into the contact.
“You gonna do it?” Emiel asked, somewhat cryptically.
I glanced up at him, a dark shape against my wall. The wedge of light from the hall illuminated one side of his face and body with a thin halo of bright yellow-orange.
“Do what? Run?” I asked, knowing that the answer was no , and that I was still an idiot after all these years.
“Not that,” Emiel said. “You planning on seeing someone about... you know.”
Oh .
“I think so, yeah.” I cleared my throat. “What about you?”
“I don’t wanna talk about that stuff to a stranger.” The words were gruff.
“Emiel,” I said, “ literally no one is excited about spilling their guts to a therapist. But is it seriously any worse than getting the shit beat out of you by a stranger in a cage fight?”
“Course it is.” He sounded almost offended by the question.
“Speak for yourself. Just so you know that you’re not some kind of special snowflake because the idea of talking about it in counseling makes you want to puke. That’s actually all of us.”
The ensuing silence might’ve been because I’d offended him, or it might’ve been because he was thinking about what I’d said.
“Guess so,” he said, when it threatened to grow too heavy.
“Damn right,” I told him.
Conversation with Emiel held a different rhythm than conversation with most other people. Maybe I was starting to get used to it, because the lull this time didn’t make me itch with the need to fill it.
“You gonna be okay?” Emiel asked. “That’s why I’m up here... not the other stuff. Mia asked me to come check on you.”
On the floor below, I could hear footsteps moving; the front door opening and closing. Apparently, the strategy meeting had broken up. I wondered, with a hint of trepidation, what conclusions they’d come to—if any.
“I’d be a lot more okay if Blaze and his cronies died in a fire,” I said, unable to completely hide my bitterness.
Emiel grunted. “There’d just be more assholes lining up to take their place.”
But those other hypothetical assholes didn’t rape me and keep me prisoner , I thought, being careful not to say it aloud.
“I’m fine,” I said instead.
“No, you’re not,” Emiel replied.
“Neither are you,” I told him.
“Never said I was,” he said.
We sat on opposite sides of the room, peering at each other like two people looking at their reflections in a funhouse mirror—the big, hulking alpha and the scrawny, pathetic omega... too alike for our own good.
“I’ll be okay,” I said at last. “But tell Mia I need a bit more time on my own tonight, please.”
I wasn’t sure if Emiel would take the hint or not—but he nodded and shoved to his feet, knees creaking.
“I’ll tell her,” he said.
For some reason, I couldn’t leave it alone quite yet. “You could keep her company tonight if she’s upset.” The words were pulled from me. “I think she’d like that.”
Princess bopped my chin with the top of her head, marking me as hers.
Emiel paused in the open doorway. “Dunno if I trust myself that much.”
I ached for him despite myself, suddenly glad beyond measure that I’d still been able to take pleasure from other people, despite the tangled knots tied up inside my soul—outside of my heats, at least.
“ She trusts you that much,” I said. “Isn’t that good enough?”
He stayed unmoving in the doorway for another long moment, not looking back at me over his shoulder. Princess made a little chirping noise and trotted away, crossing to twine between his legs. Then he left the room without answering, his cat in tow—closing the door softly behind him.