Forty-Three
FORTY-THREE
Luca
“BYRON,” ZALEN SAID, very purposely not using his own alpha bark. “Stow it.”
Peripherally, I recognized that Byron looked faintly sheepish, but it was difficult to focus on that past the red haze of fury clouding my vision.
“Fuck you,” I choked, aware on some level that I was having a full-blown meltdown in the middle of the damned kitchen, at six-thirty a.m. on a Wednesday. “ Go to hell , Byron! You do not get to bark at me like I’m your pet fuck toy!”
The others were looking at me like I was a dangerous wild animal. The helpless feeling crawled higher up my throat, lodging there like a lump of lead.
“You are not going back to the gangs for this,” Byron said, stowing the bark as Zalen had commanded, but not the sentiment behind it. “You’re not stupid , Luca! Use your brain for just a damned minute—”
Zalen closed a hand around Byron’s bicep. It wasn’t a gentle gesture—I could see his fingers digging in. I hated the way my breathing was giving me away... frantic, shallow panting that made me feel dizzy and lightheaded. My hands started to shake.
“Luca,” Zalen said. “There’s absolutely no way to guarantee that anything you get from a gang source is going to be legit—or that it’s been stored properly, even if it’s the right hormones. I don’t claim to understand what you go through when it comes to your heat cycles—”
“That’s right! You don’t!” I snapped, hating myself more with every second that ticked by.
“—but you were probably going to have the next one naturally, right?” Zalen continued, as though I hadn’t spoken. “It’s been almost a year.”
“That’s not the point!” I said. “I wasn’t going to have this one!”
Byron jerked his arm free of Zalen’s restraining grip. Zalen let him go.
“Yeah... I think you’ll find that in the absence of heat blockers, you are going to have this one,” Byron said.
If there’d been even the faintest trace of smugness in his tone, I might have taken a swing at him. Appalled by the impulse, I backed up until my hip knocked into the edge of the breakfast bar.
Through all of this, Mia had stood hunched in the corner of the kitchen like she was afraid if she drew attention to herself, she might come under verbal attack. My fault, of course. I pressed the heels of my hands into my eye sockets, trying to stuff the emerging headache back inside my throbbing skull.
God. Why hadn’t she just had the damned blockers sent here ?
“I’ll check with my contacts again,” Zalen was saying. “But, Luca, from what I was able to find out the first time, there simply aren’t any blockers available in the area. If I can’t source any in time, it’s completely your choice whether you want to use us or lock yourself in your room and tough it out. Or hire a rent-a-pack, for that matter.”
A hint of strain entered his voice on the last few words. Next to him, Byron gave a low, warning growl.
“I can’t have this conversation right now,” I managed, shoving away from the marble countertop—intent on escape.
“If you need to take a wellness day from work today—” Zalen began.
I cut him off. “No, I don’t need a fucking wellness day, Zalen!”
I needed a damned blocker pill.
Trying not to look at Mia’s pale, unhappy face as I passed her, I fled the kitchen, my juice and bagel forgotten. It wasn’t like I’d be able to keep down food right now, anyway.
Sheer stubbornness propelled me through a morning of grant work—even though my head was pounding, and my eyeballs felt like someone was trying to inflate them with an air compressor.
That same stubbornness was at play when it came to ignoring Mia’s tentative texts. I knew, on some level, that none of this was her fault. I hadn’t even given her a chance to explain the details of what had happened to the package. It was moot, wasn’t it? The pills were gone. Learning the reason why wouldn’t magically bring them back.
Besides, she was in roughly the same boat as me now. Granted, she had a bit more time to try and find another source, but if Zalen was right, there might not be another source.
Would she go back to her asshole of a husband for her unexpected heat? Would they have to close the restaurant while the two of them were locked in their bedroom, banging nonstop?
Or would she ask Byron or Zalen to help her instead , whispered a niggling little voice in my head. I prodded at the thought like a broken tooth, trying to figure out what kind of feelings I had about it.
With a frustrated grunt, I pushed away from the desk and stood up to pace. My stomach was cramping and rumbling after skipping breakfast. It was past eleven, so I put my laptop to sleep and reluctantly ventured out of the safety of my office.
The kids didn’t usually come up here, thank goodness. A couple of the older teens had already started throwing me speculative glances. My deepening scent might as well have been a flashing neon sign where alphas were concerned—even clueless alpha pups who had no idea what to do with their own knots yet.
Maybe Emiel was onto something with his pheromone suppressors.
For about the ten thousandth time in my life, I wished that I’d been born a beta so I wouldn’t have to deal with any of this shit. How different would my life have been without all of the omega crap?
Shaking my head at myself, I braved the upstairs break room and randomly chose something from the vending machine. There was probably some irony around the concept of living with a Michelin-star chef and eating Funyuns as my first meal of the day. I grabbed a red Gatorade and headed toward the back stairs, needing to get out of the building for a bit.
The alley behind the Hope Project was the opposite of fresh air , but it wasn’t like I was going to go hang out by the basketball hoops with the kids, or pop down to the cafeteria room. I opened the door and was immediately assaulted by the familiar stench of piss and garbage.
The olfactory landscape of my early life. Just like old times.
Emiel looked up sharply from his seat on a cleanish section of the concrete steps. I hesitated, fighting the scared-rabbit part of me that urged me to turn right back around and go inside.
Jesus, I hated that part of me.
Instead, I stepped fully outside and let the door close behind me. Glancing around, I took in the untouched bowl of cat food and the bowl of clean water sitting at the base of the stairs.
Pulling my head far enough out of my ass to focus on someone else’s problems was harder than I liked to admit... but I’d been excited about Princess coming to live with us. Not as excited as Emiel had been, maybe. Even so, her continued absence from her usual haunting grounds was enough to pull my attention away from my own issues.
“Hi,” I said. “Still no sign of her? Has she ever missed two days of feeding in a row before?”
“Couple of times,” Emiel muttered. “Not for a while, though.”
My brain whispered, she’s gone forever , but I at least had the presence of mind not to say it aloud. “Maybe tomorrow, then.” I frowned at the untouched cat food... the silence of the alley. “Surprised you don’t have any other takers, though.”
“There’s been fewer cats around here lately,” Emiel said. “Should’ve taken her home sooner.”
The last part sounded like it was directed at himself, not me. It would have been hard to argue against the sentiment convincingly—I’d been one of the people arguing for him to do exactly that. So, I kept my mouth shut.
After a few moments, he angled a glance in my direction. “Heard you and the others barkin’ at each other in the kitchen this morning.”
I looked away, unable to meet his gaze.
“You’re having a heat next week, I guess?” he asked.
I shrugged a shoulder, still not looking at him. “Not by choice.” There was no mistaking the bitterness in my tone.
“You were gonna have to do the next one anyway,” he said, a bit stiffly. “Does it matter so much if it’s this one instead?”
“It matters to me .” I fought to keep the words unemotional—hard enough at the best of times, when discussing this subject. Even harder now. “I should get to choose.”
“Don’t always have a choice about that kind of shit, do we?” Emiel asked, his voice tight. “At least you’ve got alphas who’ll treat you right. Could be worse.”
I was aware that he was trying to help, in his own slightly fucked-up way. I was also aware that Emiel would much rather get repeatedly kicked in the face inside a chain-link fighting cage than deal with anything related to omega heats.
Sometimes—like now, for instance—I wondered what had happened to put him off the subject so thoroughly. He was an alpha. What the hell did he have to be upset about when it came to estrous cycles?
I licked my lips, braving a sidelong glance at him. His shoulders were a tense line; his attention focused firmly on the cat food bowl. As we watched, a rat peeked out from behind the nearby trash cans, clearly assessing its chances of getting to the kibbles without getting caught.
“I know it could be worse,” I said carefully, forcing myself to rise above my own trauma response for a moment. Moving to the far end of the steps from him, I sat down on a reasonably clean looking spot and tore open my plastic bag of Funyuns. “I just get so... angry about all of it sometimes.”
“Yeah. I know,” Emiel agreed, and I was pretty sure we weren’t talking about me anymore.