Chapter sixteen
Lily
It hits at noon. The headache is a sledgehammer out of nowhere, slamming me right behind the eyes. I clutch the kitchen counter because it’s that or end up on the floor. For a second my vision goes white, then everything comes back too bright. Too blurry. Like a cheap camera filter.
All I was doing was getting water. Just a glass of water, but my hands are shaking so bad I nearly shatter the glass setting it down. The sound echoes.
The mood comes next, right on schedule. Black and heavy, rolling up from my chest into my throat.
Everything I’ve been holding back for weeks, all at once.
The rejection. The loneliness. The ache for a touch I can’t have.
The bond gnawing at me. The packs I don’t want, the one I can’t keep. It all comes up and out, nowhere to go.
I brace myself on the counter and breathe. In. Out. Don’t cry. Don’t lose it. Not here, not in the kitchen, not where Miles could—
“You look like shit.”
Perfect timing.
He’s already there, leaning in the doorway, mug in hand. Waiting for the show to start.
“Thanks,” I mutter.
“Another headache?”
“Go away, Miles.”
He grins, knowing. “Or what? You’ll cry on the floor again? Should I get a mop ready?”
The black wave inside me swells. I grip the counter even harder.
“I love this part,” he says, like it’s the best entertainment he’s had all week.
He strolls into the kitchen, mug thunking down on the island, his burnt sugar and iron trailing after him.
“The part where you stand there looking pathetic and everyone trips over themselves to help. Garrett would be sprinting in if he saw you. Gabriel would already have a specialist on the phone. Even Cyrus would grunt at you.”
“Shut up.”
“But they’re not here, are they? Only me. And I don’t trip over myself for anyone.” He tilts his head, considering me. “Especially not strays.”
Now my whole body is trembling. The headache pounds so loud I can feel it in my teeth. The blackness in my head grows. The grief hardens into rage. Pure, clean anger. I haven’t let myself be angry since I got here. Since I decided grateful was safer.
“Cat got your tongue, Lily? No ‘I understand,’ no ‘it’s fine,’ none of those little lines you use to make everyone think you’re handling it?”
I close my eyes. If I look at him, I’ll break.
“You know what I think? I think you like being sick. I think you like the attention. Every headache is a performance, every breakdown is a show, and every time one of my alphas touches you, you milk it for all it’s worth.”
The mug is in my hand before I know it. The white one—the guest mug from the bottom shelf, the one that’s a daily reminder I don’t belong here. I throw it at him with everything I’ve got.
It misses his head by maybe an inch. It hits the wall behind him and explodes, ceramic and cold coffee everywhere. A shard catches his cheek. A thin cut. He flinches.
The sound of it shattering is huge. Bigger than the kitchen. Bigger than the house.
Silence. Coffee drips down the wall. Miles is staring, mouth open, eyes wide, a pink line blooming on his cheek where the mug got him.
I should say sorry. I should drop my gaze and make myself small. Every year of registry training screams at me to submit.
“FUCK YOU.”
It comes out raw and loud, echoing off every hard surface in the kitchen. I mean it. Every syllable.
“Fuck you, Miles. Fuck your cruelty and your mind games and the way you’ve been torturing me since I moved in. I didn’t ask to be their scent match. I didn’t ask to be sick. I didn’t ask for any of this. And I am so tired of being your punching bag just because you can’t deal with your own shit!”
It hangs there. I’m breathing hard, hands still shaking, but it’s different now. What I’m feeling isn’t weakness or fear.
Miles looks at me.
One second. Two. Two and a half.
Then he’s moving.
He’s fast. One blink and he’s got both hands on my shoulders. He spins me around, bends me over the counter, rough. A hand clamps on the back of my neck and pushes until my chest is flat against the stone, my face turned to the side. I can’t move.
A classic submission hold. The hold an alpha uses when an omega needs to be controlled. Except he’s not an alpha, and my body shouldn’t care, and—
He snarls. Right against the back of my neck, so low and deep it buzzes through my bones. That omega growl, nothing like an alpha’s. Yet somehow his is threatening. Possessive. My omega should be panicking, trying to get away, looking for escape. This is not our alpha.
But she doesn’t. She goes quiet. Frozen in surrender. Every muscle lets go, like someone cut the strings. My omega offers up the submission the way she would to an alpha: complete, absolute, no questions asked.
I could fight him.
I don’t.
His teeth press into my neck. Right where an alpha would bite, Right above the spot where his own first-day bite has faded into something barely there.
His mouth is open, hot breath on my skin, and I’m bracing for the pain, the skin breaking, that ache that isn’t really pain at all when your body has decided to trust.
But he doesn’t bite down. He only holds. Teeth pressed hard enough to leave indents, jaw locked, pressure steady and sure. An alpha-style bite hold. The kind that says, I have you. Be still. Submit.
So I do. My whole body just… lets go. I’m not collapsing. I’m surrendering. The world narrows to the feeling of teeth on my neck. Nothing else matters.
The headache disappears. Not even a trace. The rage, the black wave, the nausea—all of it, gone. What’s left is his warm, heavy body, pressing me into the counter like a weight. Easing everything. Calming even when it’s anything but calm.
He keeps his teeth on my neck, his hand on my spine, his breathing ragged. He didn’t expect this. Didn’t expect me to give in, didn’t expect it to work. He’s not stopping.
I smell the shift in his scent. The burnt sugar deepens, goes molasses-thick and warm, the iron fading out.
Something darker, richer. Arousal seeps in, mixing with a sweetness I’ve never caught from him before.
His body is reacting to my submission the way it did on the hallway floor. Power and want tangled together.
My scent answers. It blooms in the air, ozone thickening, peach turning syrupy, slick pooling between my thighs.
My body doesn’t care that he’s an omega.
Only that he’s above me, holding me down, teeth on my neck.
The dynamic is what matters. And right now, with his mouth at my throat, he’s everything my omega wants.
His hand moves, sliding from my spine to my hip, then between my legs. He cups me through my leggings, and I know he feels it—the heat, the wetness, my body’s answer to his touch. His fingers press in, firm and certain, mapping me through fabric.
A sound escapes me. Quiet, needy, from somewhere deeper than thought.
His cock is solid against my back, thick and hot through his sweats. He’s hard because I’m bent over the counter, wet for him, and his body wants what’s in front of it, whether he’s supposed to or not.
He pulls his teeth away. The loss is a shock, cold air touching where his mouth was, my skin tingling from the pressure. His hand stays on me as I straighten and turn to face him.
We’re inches apart. His pupils are blown wide, swallowing the brown, lips parted, breathing fast and shallow. The cut on his cheek has a thin line of blood drying. He looks wrecked. Like someone took him apart and he’s not sure how to put himself back together.
He kisses me.
It’s not gentle. No hesitation. His mouth crashes into mine, tongue pushing deep, hands tangling in my hair, yanking my head back so he can get more.
I taste copper, a smear of blood from the cut on his cheek, and my body should reject it but my body is past rejecting anything.
His teeth catch my lower lip and bite, almost enough to draw blood.
I make a sound I didn’t know I could make for anyone but an alpha. A pathetic, needy omega whine.
I kiss him back. My hands on his waist, under his shirt, palms hot against his skin. He’s all lean muscle and tension, his scent a cloud around us. Burnt sugar, iron, arousal—all of it mixing with mine until it’s impossible to tell where his ends and mine begins.
I want him. The thought is terrifyingly clear.
I want this omega. I want his hands on me, his teeth at my neck, his body pressed against mine.
There are alphas in this house who are supposed to be mine, but I want him, too.
Not instead. Alongside. A different kind of wanting. Fierce. Wild. All its own.
This isn’t supposed to fit.
But it does.
God it does.
He breaks the kiss, pulling back to catch his breath, staring at me like he’s looking for something true. For a second I think he might say something real. But all he says is—
“Clean it up.”
He steps back, putting distance between us. His face is already rebuilding the mask, hard edges reassembling. But his scent still gives him away. His hands are shaking. He won’t look at my neck.
I survey the damage. Shattered mug, coffee splattered on the wall and floor, pieces of ceramic everywhere. My mess. My anger made visible.
I get the dustpan. Sweep up shards. Wipe coffee off the wall. Mop the floor. Miles watches from the island, arms crossed, breathing evening out.
When it’s spotless, he speaks again.
“The bathroom needs scrubbing. The sink has water spots.”
I go. I scrub the sink, clean the mirror, wipe down the counter, straighten the towels.
“The living room bookshelves are dusty.”
I dust. I straighten. I align the spines.
“The hallway runner is crooked.”
I fix it. Vacuum the edges, wipe the baseboards.
He gives orders from wherever he is—the kitchen, the doorway, the couch. His voice is flat, controlled, but there’s still a low hum of heat under it. He tells me what to do, and I do it. I don’t argue. I don’t hesitate.
I should be angry. Should tell him to go to hell like I did before. The rage is still somewhere in me, isn’t it? The girl who threw the mug and screamed “fuck you”—she’s still here, right?
But I don’t want to fight him. That’s the truth. I’m not doing this because I’m scared, or because he’s threatened to tell Gabriel. He hasn’t threatened anything. Hasn’t even mentioned what happened between us. He gives the orders, I do them, and the reason is so simple it scares me.
I want to please him.
That thought stops me cold, rag in hand, kneeling in front of the bookshelf.
I want to please this omega who’s been nothing but cruel since I got here.
I want to do what he says correctly and have him see the effort.
Not out of fear or conditioning, but because a part of me likes making him happy.
Likes the steadiness of his authority. The feeling is confusing, but good enough that I stop trying to fight it for a minute.
That should scare me.
It doesn’t.
My omega hums every time he gives a new order. Every time I finish a task and he doesn’t criticize. Every time his scent still carries that warmth.
“The kitchen table has crumbs under the centerpiece.”
I clean it.
“Cyrus left his jacket on the chair. Hang it in the closet.”
I hang it.
“Garrett’s shoes are in the hallway. Put them by the door.”
I move them.
The chores get smaller. Less about cleaning, more about arranging. He’s not giving orders for the sake of giving them. He’s testing me. Watching to see if I’ll keep going. Watching for the line I won’t cross.
But I don’t draw any line. Every order, I follow. My body moves. My mind floats in the same peaceful, hazy state I get when Garrett touches me. The same relief. The same release. From somewhere completely different. No alpha bond. Just Miles. And me. And this new current between us.
We can’t be scent matched. But whatever he did helped me anyway. If my own alphas won’t help me, I’ll take it from wherever I can.
When there’s nothing left to do, he goes quiet.
I’m in the hallway, waiting. For the next order… or the next touch. Rag still in hand. Knees aching from kneeling, body tired, mind clear for the first time in weeks. The headache is still at bay. The tears too. Everything is still. Blessedly easy.
Miles stands at the end of the hall, arms crossed, studying me. There’s nothing cruel in it now. It’s more like he’s trying to figure something out.
“Go to your room,” he says. “Lie on the bed.”
I go. Lie on my back, staring at the ceiling. I don’t turn on the light, don’t touch the tablet. I lie there, humming with something that doesn’t have a name.
“Think of me,” he says, somewhere outside my door.
I think of him. Like I wouldn’t anyway.
His teeth on my neck. Pressure that wasn’t pain. My body gave up fighting and let him have it, the submission I didn’t know I wanted to give. His hand between my thighs. The sound I made. He kissed me like it cost him to stop.
His scent changed when I answered him. Burnt sugar melted into something sweeter. For a few minutes, we made sense together in a way nothing else in this house ever has.
I picture his face when he pulled away. The mask coming back. How he said “clean it up” as if none of it had happened. As if his tongue hadn’t been in my mouth and his hand hadn’t been between my legs.
I lie there in it. Outside, his shadow stays. A thin line of dark under the door, blocking the hallway light. He’s standing there. He doesn’t come in. He doesn’t leave. He’s just on the other side of the door, while I lie on the bed he told me to, thinking the thoughts he told me to think.
Minutes pass. Five? Ten? The shadow doesn’t move.
Then it does. Slow, deliberate steps. As if he’s walking away from something but not sure if he should.
Silence.
I stare up. The ceiling is blank and white. My lips tingle from his kiss. My neck is still marked by his teeth. My leggings are damp. I should change. I don’t.
I have no idea what this means. I don’t know what we are now. I don’t know if he’ll pretend it didn’t happen, if he’ll go back to cruelty, if he’ll ever be the person he was for those raw minutes in the kitchen.
I don’t know if he regrets it.
I know I don’t.
I lie on my bed, wearing his teeth marks and my own slick, and I wait for the alphas to come home and pretend everything is the same.
It’s not. Something cracked open today. The ground shifted, and neither of us knows how to close it.
I’m not sure either of us wants to.