Chapter Nine – Kayla
Hours pass, and I still don’t know what got into me.
I can’t get what I saw out of my mind. Those scars…
there were way too many on his back to have been some freak accident.
No, they must have happened over a long period of time, on separate occasions.
And given the fact that they were on his back in the first place, that means someone else gave them to him.
Someone did that to him.
It doesn’t compute, regardless of how much I think about it. He’s an alpha. An über alpha. über alphas are the top dogs of society. Nobody tells them what to do or hurts them like that.
Unless… well, unless he was a child when it happened, in which case I hate to think of it. No child deserves treatment like that. Even if they act up, there’s no excuse for doing something like that to a kid.
It shouldn’t bother me. Whatever it was was in the past and should be of no importance to me. I definitely should not have fumbled so much when I was in his office, either—way to make it completely obvious that something was on my mind.
I skip lunch, hoping the deprivation of what little food I typically eat in the middle of the day would be enough to stop me from acting all weird. To stop myself from smelling Bradford’s scent anytime I was near him.
When I’m starving? Let’s just say my nose doesn’t work half as well as it should. No part of me does, but that’s a price I’m more than willing to pay. Heck, it’s a price I’m used to paying by now.
It’s harder today, though, for whatever reason. Maybe because I got more sleep than I’m used to last night. Maybe because, even though the starvation dulls my senses, I still know Bradford’s scent, and even when I’m not near him I can close my eyes and remember that clove scent.
I currently sit at my desk in my separate office.
I’m halfway through typing up the notes Bradford had given me earlier, but my eyes are having a rough time focusing on the laptop screen.
If I wasn’t so damn slow at typing, I’d be finished by now, but alas, I am not used to being on a computer in general. These things are foreign to me.
Even now I can’t stop thinking about the quiet surprise on Bradford’s face when he realized I’d surprised him with breakfast. Was that too much? I should’ve just let it be. I shouldn’t have overstepped.
Ugh, I might be half-starved, but somehow that doesn’t stop my mind from overthinking about everything. Go figure. I’d have to be passed out for my mind to stop working so damn hard.
My stomach rumbles, as it’s done for hours now.
I thought my body was used to the way I ate—and sometimes skipped meals—but today feels tougher than usual.
It’s almost like my inner omega is using up whatever energy she has to try to claw her way out of me, force me to eat and unleash her for the first time, ever.
It would be a bad idea. I can’t imagine it would be pretty. My omega instincts have spent so long being locked away, maybe I wouldn’t even know what to do if said instincts were unleashed. Maybe I broke myself throughout all these years of starvation.
I try to get back to work, but it’s impossible. My vision is blurred, and no matter how many times I squeeze my eyes shut, they don’t magically refocus when I open them. And that darn stomach of mine keeps rumbling and begging for food.
Hmm. Maybe I need something to drink. That’s always a go-to when I’m feeling those first pangs of hunger. A good way to stave that need off, at least for a little while.
I get up and slip out of the office that Bradford gave me.
I walk down the hall, past his closed door, and even though my destination is the kitchen, I still find myself stopping just outside that door.
For some stupid reason, the urge to knock and ask if he wants anything rises inside, and it’s beyond difficult to push it away.
It’s like I want to make that guy happy, for whatever reason. I don’t get it. It doesn’t make sense. Nothing today makes sense.
Walking away from that closed door is like pulling teeth.
It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, to ignore my instinct and keep walking.
Taking care of other people isn’t something I’m used to, not something I’ve ever done.
It’s been just me and Jeremy for so long, and even though I haven’t been on my own in a technical sense, it’s been years since I realized I can truly only rely on myself.
Jeremy? He’s… well, he might not leave scars like the ones on Bradford’s back, but he’s not what I would call a good person. He’s not a good alpha. It’s probably a good thing he never found himself a mate. I hate to think of the way he’d treat her.
No, it’s better for everyone involved if things keep going the way they have.
It’s not like I have a bright future ahead of me.
Even if I didn’t starve my inner omega to sleep, it isn’t like I’d find myself a nice, loving pack.
Omegas on the streets very rarely do. Only the ones from rich families, or the ones from middle-class families, have any hope of finding happiness with packs.
People like me? We don’t get happy endings. We get used, discarded, forgotten about. We’re pawns in someone else’s game, and we’re never privy to the rules, so winning is out of the question. Wishing things were different would only be a waste of time.
I make it to the kitchen, and I just grabbed myself a glass out of an upper cabinet when a pang of pain stabs me in the gut and forces me to keel over.
I bring my free hand to my stomach as the pain worsens, cramping my lower back and making me hunch over.
My head spins, the room around me turning blurry as hell, and no matter what I do, I can’t make it right.
Slow breathing doesn’t help. Nothing helps. The seconds that pass by feel like hours, and with each passing one, I grow weaker and weaker. For some stupid reason, it’s impossible to ignore. It’s like my inner self is screaming at me, wailing against her chains, trying desperately to be set free.
Don’t know why she’d want to be set free. This world isn’t kind to omegas like us. We’re both better off pretending she doesn’t exist. If I was born a beta, things would honestly be so much better, so much simpler.
My knees grow too weak to keep me upright, and I fall to the floor. At the same time, my grip on the glass loosens just enough that it slips from my hands and shatters. Glass goes flying everywhere on the floor. Some of it remains beneath me, and my legs land on a few shards as I go down.
I feel the sting of the glass breaking through the thin skin on my legs, but it doesn’t really register. It’s like everything in me is crying out all at once, to the point where I can’t even think straight. Everything is hard. Everything is impossible. I… I feel like I want to die.
Am I already dead? It kind of feels like it. If this is what life is going to be for the next fifty years, is it even worth it? It’s so much work. Too much. It can’t be like this for everyone, because otherwise what would be the point in anything?
I’m tired. I’m so damn tired of it all. Usually that exhaustion is easy to ignore, but today it’s impossible. Today it’s impossibly heavy on my shoulders, on my heart, on every part of me.
If this is life, how do people ever have hope? How do they have a will to live? How can they have packs, families, and children, knowing they’re going to subject them to this cruel thing called life?
It takes everything in me to move off my legs and sit on my ass, leaning against a lower cabinet of the island. Small shards of the glass protrude from my legs, sticking out of the thin fabric of my pants.
Shit. I need these pants. Maybe Bradford has a needle and thread somewhere in the house. I’m not a master at threading, but I’ve sewn up enough tears in old clothes to know the basics.
Though my arms don’t really want to work right now, I reach around to my legs and feel for one of the glass shards. It’s not easy to grip something small like that when moving any muscle in my body feels like going against the strongest current in the world, but I do my best.
Besides, I need to get this cleaned up. The last thing I need is for Bradford to find me like this: on the floor, with glass in my legs and the remainder of his crystal glass scattered around me like a broken mosaic.
I can only mess up so many times before I get fired, even if Bradford’s not the one who hired me in the first place. Surely, if he complains enough about me to his father, his father will listen.
Maybe. That man… he never sat right with me, and after seeing those scars on Bradford, I do wonder if Bentley Sr. is the one who gave them to him in the first place. So, no, maybe I wouldn’t get fired, but it’s not a risk I can take right now.
My brother would lose his shit if I lost this job, and that’s something I want to avoid at all costs. I’ll do whatever I have to in order to keep this job, including scrub my own blood off the floor.
My fingers clumsily find the first shard in my leg. This one is pretty close to my knee. My nails dig into the glass as much as they can, and then I pull. I give it all I got. The shard comes out of me bit by bit, and with it comes a shooting pain up my leg, reminding me I’m not dead yet.
Yeah, yeah. I’m still here, somehow. Still alive and kicking, though I wouldn’t have the energy required to actually kick anything. I feel labored enough pulling the glass out of me and breathing.
I finish yanking the glass shard out, and when I do, I find the damn thing is bigger than I thought it was. An inch and a half, and by the look of the red on the shard, it was at least three-quarters of an inch deep in my leg.
Ow.