Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
THISTLE
Sleep was restless in my makeshift nest that wasn’t a nest, but Bunny was here, and I would be okay.
I squeezed my eyes shut, shoving away the thought of nightmares that had woken me. I had a memory, one that I always recycled whenever I woke up with bad dreams.
It always worked to keep them away.
I’d never been worth much but once someone had protected me from nightmares, and it had been the best gift in the world, because now it served as a little flame in the dark that I could return to every time things were hard.
I poked around in the pouch at Bunny’s back, finding the hole that led to his stuffing.
A little digging, and I felt it, a tiny metal case that I’d stolen from abandoned rooms a long time ago, and tucked in here to keep forever.
I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath, imagining the soft aroma of dark cream cardamom to light that little flame and keep me safe.
4 Years before—We’ve got a sister, Bunny!
I woke paralysed from a night terror to the faintest whisper of fabric across my bed sheets.
The scent of dark cream cardamom was out of place and agonisingly familiar.
I froze, keeping my eyes shut, shifting my hand, which was beneath my pillow, carefully searching for my knife.
She was here.
Ace’s other Omega.
Glade had come into my room while I slept.
I knew she rejected him during heats and hated it here, but Ace liked her more than me. Her claim to him rivalled mine because Glade was a mafia princess: regal and beautiful, from a family so much more worthy of Ace.
I dreaded every time her heat arrived, terrified that it would be the moment she finally took him from me. The time she finally said yes to his touch, knowing that after, he might not want me to even live here anymore.
Did she want me gone before that happened?
She wasn’t allowed in my room. It was a huge risk for her. Ace had forbidden her from seeing me without his say so, and the punishments he exacted on her for displeasing him were horrible.
In this place, we suffered so differently.
My mind.
Her body.
My hand hurt with how hard I clutched the knife.
It was a switchblade, and I’d have to be quick to get it out in time.
But then her low whisper swept me up like a soft blanket, stopping me in my tracks. “Happy birthday, Thistle.”
I tensed, shock clouding every spiralling thought.
My… birthday?
How did she know?
Her fingers tangled in mine, and she squeezed my hand tight as my mind scrambled to understand.
Had I mentioned it?
Maybe… maybe once. I didn’t say much when I was allowed to stand at Ace’s side, but there had been something. It was a while ago—I’d not known how to fill an awkward silence between us, so I’d mumbled something about it being my birthday.
But… she’d remembered?
And she’d risked Ace’s fury to come to me?
“Twins caught in a nightmare together.” She drew me closer until I was completely enveloped in her arms.
Twins?
We shared a birthday?
I mean… we couldn’t be twins, me and her, we were so different…
I swallowed, suddenly unable to focus on anything but her touch. She was wrong, too. This wasn’t a nightmare. I mean… for her it was, but I loved Ace.
He’d saved me, and this life, this was a dream. A paradise compared to where I’d come from.
Yet hot tears burned my eyes in an embrace that felt like nothing I’d ever known, painting a thousand miles of unknown, leaving aches of could-haves, or should-haves that scared me to the bone. No mother or sister to help me figure out what to do with these destructive instincts—just a father and brothers who hated me.
Never warm arms and a whispered happy birthday before the sun had even risen.
Like I mattered to someone…
I realised I trembled as she held me, and I was clutching her before I could stop myself, as if that might stop the shaking.
It was okay.
She still thought I was asleep.
She was so soft and warm, and her arms were wrapping me up, quieting things in my mind I hadn’t even known could be quiet.
I… liked this.
Being held in someone’s arms for no reason at all.
Just because.
Her touch brushed my cheek, gentle… caring…
I swallowed a painful lump in my throat, holding her tighter. Her breasts were like pillows, and it was hard not to snuggle into them.
Maybe… Was that why I was one of those bad types of Omegas that would never be enough for Ace? I dared blink my eyes open through hot blurry tears, close enough that she wouldn’t see. She was so curvy with hips like… wow, and I had this boyish, bony frame.
I wasn’t soft anywhere.
I didn’t know if that was fixable…
Maybe it was good. Because if she wasn’t all an Omega should be, Ace might need a third, and that would break me, even if it wasn’t my place to be broken over it.
Because even when he gave her everything I wanted—and everything she was trying so desperately to escape—at least she was here… as if I mattered to someone properly for the first time I could remember.