11. Shay
Shay
Mom.
The name glows on the nightstand, and just like that, the warmth is gone. Thirty seconds ago I was boneless under Declan’s arm, wrecked and stupid with it, his breath slow against my shoulder. Now every muscle I own is pulled tight.
“Shay?” His voice is a low rumble behind me, thick with sleep. “You want me to get that?”
“No.” The word is out of my mouth before I’ve even thought it, sharp and final.
Behind me, he goes still. His arm, which was heavy and solid against my ribs, tenses up. That’s all. But it’s enough.
The phone buzzes again, insistent.
I snatch it off the table. “I have to take this,” I manage, my throat tight.
He doesn’t say anything, just slides his arm away.
The loss of his body heat is immediate. I untangle myself from the sheets, swinging my legs over the side of the bed and grabbing for the blanket to wrap around my waist. My legs feel unsteady.
My whole body is still humming, sore and thoroughly wrecked in a way that felt incredible an hour ago and feels humiliating now.
For a second, I have to put a hand against the wall to keep from swaying.
The mattress shifts as Declan starts to sit up.
“I’m fine,” I bite out, not looking at him.
He stops moving. The silence that follows is worse than if he’d argued. His scent sharpens—just a little. A bitter note under the whiskey and woodsmoke that says I’ve hurt him.
Of course. He just sits there in the mess of blankets and his own shirts that I twisted into a nest and watches me. My phone feels like a bomb in my hand.
I escape to the kitchen, leaning against the counter.
The cool laminate is a shock against my bare back.
He left the light on over the stove, and it casts a soft yellow glow on a neat stack of vinyl records, on the small ceramic bowl by the door where he drops his keys, on the coffee maker that’s already set for the morning.
It’s not a home. It’s a closing argument.
Proof of a life that works. A business downstairs, a routine, a pantry that probably has things other than instant ramen in it.
An alpha who can pin you to the mattress, tell you he loves you while he’s knotted inside you, and make your stupid omega body believe every word.
The phone vibrates in my fist again. I stab the screen to answer.
“Mom.”
“Oh, thank God.” Her breath comes out in a wet, hiccuping rush. “Baby, I’m so sorry, I know it’s late, but I didn’t know who else to call.”
My eyes slide shut. Of course she didn’t.
“Are you okay?”
“I don’t know,” she says, her voice wet. “I mean, I’m okay. I’m just—he’s being weird.”
I pull the blanket tighter around my shoulders. It smells like Declan. Cedar and clean cotton, a deep note of whiskey underneath. The scent fills my head, and my whole body goes stupidly soft, reaching for it.
I hate that it feels like safety.
“Weird how?” I ask, even though I already know the answer. It’s always the same answer.
“Darren,” she whispers, like saying his name is a prayer.
Of course. Darren, the alpha with the nice watch and the condo. The one who brought her flowers, who bought her that expensive face cream, who was different.
They’re always different.
“He canceled dinner yesterday, and he hasn’t called all day,” she says, the words starting to tumble over each other. “I know he works a lot, I do, but he was online. I saw the little green dot, Shay, he was right there and he didn’t open my message.”
“Mom.”
“I’m not being crazy.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“But you’re thinking it. I can hear it in your voice.”
I stare at my reflection in the dark kitchen window. A blurry shape of a man with bare shoulders and a dark mark blooming on his neck. Declan’s claim. A brand.
“Did you ask him if something’s wrong?” I say, my voice flat.
“I don’t want to seem needy.”
“Then what do you want from me?”
The silence on the other end of the line is a familiar weight. It’s the quiet that comes after the tears, the one where she’s waiting for me to tell her a different story than the one she’s in. The one where the guy comes back.
“I just thought… you’d understand,” she says, her voice going soft.
“Understand what?”
“He was so good to me at first.”
And just like that, the kitchen is gone. I’m a kid again, staring at some alpha’s boots by the front door while Mom’s bedroom door stays shut. Waiting for a movie we’re not going to. Waiting for a fight to be over. Waiting for the quiet that means he’s gone for good this time.
She says it every single time. A different name, but always the same line. Like being good at the beginning is a down payment on being a bastard later. Like a few nice dinners are enough to erase the part where they always, always leave.
“Mom,” I say, and my own voice sounds distant, trapped. “You can’t keep doing this.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t. You say that, and then some guy buys you a drink and tells you you’re beautiful and suddenly this is the one who’s going to fix everything.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Shay.” Her voice goes thin, all the tears drying up at once. “I didn’t call for a lecture.”
“No. You called so I’d tell you he’s not leaving.”
She says nothing. Which means I’m right.
I press the heel of my hand into my eye socket, trying to shove back the pressure building there. A floorboard creaks in the living room.
Declan. Moving around, quiet as a ghost. Not coming in here.
He’s giving me space. The kind, decent thing that would have felt like a miracle an hour ago. Now it just feels like he’s holding a door open, patiently waiting for me to walk through it on my own so he can shut it behind me.
“I don’t need saving, you know,” Mom says, her voice shaky.
A laugh almost gets out. It’s an ugly one. “Then stop calling me like you’re drowning.”
“That’s a cruel thing to say.”
“I’m tired.”
“So am I,” she whispers, and a familiar, sour guilt churns in my stomach. She’s my mom. She did her best. And her best still meant I grew up learning how to make a life that had no room for anyone else to screw up.
“Do you have money for rent?” I ask, my voice flat.
The silence is all I need.
“Mom.”
“I’m working on it.”
“Are you?”
“Darren said he’d help. He just… he just needs a little time.”
I grip the edge of the counter, my knuckles white. There it is. The real reason for the call, hiding under all the drama about a green dot on a screen.
Darren’s money. Darren’s promises. The way he probably told her not to worry about a thing, he had her.
I can hear it so clearly, it’s like he’s in the room. The same deep, sure tone Declan used when he told me to stay. When he pinned my hips to the mattress and growled, I have you.
My skin feels tight.
“I’ll send you something,” I say. The words taste like metal.
“Shay, no. You’re in school.”
“I have savings.”
“You need that for yourself.”
“I said I’ll send it.”
She starts crying again, soft, relieved sobs that are somehow worse than if she’d just said thank you.
“You’re such a good boy,” she whispers.
No, I’m not. Good sons don’t feel a flash of relief when their mother hangs up. Good sons don’t spend years of their childhood wishing the latest alpha would just disappear so the house would feel like theirs again.
“I have to go.”
“Wait. Shay, are you—”
“I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Baby, please—”
“I love you.” It comes out like a reflex, a way to end the conversation. A key to get out of the room.
“I love you too,” she says, the words tripping over themselves. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I bothered you.”
“Yeah.”
I end the call.
The screen goes dark. I stand there, my heart still hammering, listening to the apartment hum around me. The fridge, the old pipes, the faint thumps from the bar downstairs. I can smell Declan everywhere. It’s in my hair, under my nails, baked into the blanket I was just wrapped in.
It’s on my neck.
The claiming mark throbs with a low, steady heat. My fingers find it without me telling them to.
Permanent.
So this is how it happens. All my life, I’ve watched my mother fall for the same man in a different body, the one who promises forever and leaves before rent is due. And here I am, with an alpha’s mark on my neck, in his apartment, wrapped in his blanket.
An amazing strategy.
“Shay.”
Declan’s voice comes from the doorway to the living room. I don’t turn around, just stare at my own faint reflection in the dark window over the sink.
He doesn’t say anything else. He just stands there, his presence filling the space behind me. The silence is worse than a question. It’s patient.
“What happened?” he finally asks, and the quiet concern in his voice is like sandpaper on my nerves.
I turn, because staying silent feels like a different kind of surrender.
He’s pulled on a pair of grey sweatpants, his chest bare and his hair a wreck from my hands and his own. The bite I gave him that first night is a dark mark on his forearm. He looks rumpled and solid and like he belongs here, leaning against the doorframe of his own home.
He looks exactly like the kind of alpha who could convince you he’s different, and a cold dread coils in my gut.
He swallows, and the simple movement of his throat is suddenly the only thing in the room. I’m hyper-aware of the three feet of linoleum between us, of how easy it would be for him to cross it. How much some stupid, broken part of me wants him to. How much I can’t let him.
“It was my mom,” I say. My voice is flat.
“Is she okay?”
“She needs money.” I say it like a challenge.
His expression doesn’t change. It’s not pity. It’s something calmer, steadier. “Okay. Does she need help?”
The question hits me so hard I physically recoil, taking a step back.
His face tightens. “Shay, I just meant—”
“I know what you meant.”
A bitter laugh tears out of my throat. “No, you don’t. You have no fucking idea.”
“I know she upset you.”
“You know she upset me because you can smell it,” I snap. “My scent is probably souring the whole apartment.”
His jaw works for a second. He takes one slow step into the kitchen.
I take one back.