Chapter 1 #2
I can’t. My eyes burn. Goddammit, shock is preferable to this humiliation.
I wish he’d leave. I wish he’d never come here.
I wish I’d seen him again somewhere else—literally anywhere else.
Tristan and I go to the ice rink in downtown Celo on our nights off in winter with an alpha guard—why couldn’t I have seen him there?
I think of him every day, fantasise about seeing him again. Why did it have to be here?
His forefinger presses under my chin, and the contact zips through me. He tips my face up. He’s so close, if either of us step forward, we’ll be chest to chest. His is heaving. His eyes, boring into mine, are a horrible mix of confusion and anger, of hurt.
“I looked for you,” he says, eyes flicking back and forth on mine.
“My father said your uncle took you out of state. I called. I texted you every day and you … you never replied. I looked for you every time I was on leave. And when I got back this time, my dad said—” His eyes flash with fury and his voice falters. “He said you’d bonded.”
And what a fucking stupid thing to believe.
“What uncle? What fucking bond?” I reply.
I can’t hide the bitterness, the incredulity in my tone.
Leo knew—if anyone fucking knew, Leo knew—it was only me and my alpha father.
That if anything happened to my alpha, I was fucked.
Not that anyone expected him to drop dead from a heart attack at the kitchen table, but what we should have expected was for the old drunk to not have made a single provision for me in his will. He didn’t even have a will!
I was an omega without an alpha, which made me a state problem. And we all knew where those omegas ended up. If I couldn’t find a bondmate in time—and because of the alpha in front of me, I never even tried—I was always going to end up here.
I wrote and erased so many texts to Leo before the alphas from the Department of Dynamics arrived at my house.
I told him what happened. Asked him to come home.
Begged him to come and claim me. But I couldn’t get the way he’d looked at me when I’d invited him to court me out of my head.
I never hit send. And then they took my phone.
Still, if Leo really had been looking, he didn’t need to look far.
He’s frowning now, the gears turning, his finger still holding my face up to his. “There was no uncle,” he says more to himself than to me. Anger flashes in his eyes.
He drops his hand and I feel cold all over. He’s disgusted, of course he is.
“Pack your things,” he orders.
“What?” I ask stupidly. I only just stop myself from swaying forward for his touch.
“Pack your shit, we’re leaving.” He looks around, eyes landing on the bedside table.
Fury explodes in his scent as he scowls at my tools of the trade.
I’m drenched in more shame, but a part of me, a very small part, is getting angry too.
He doesn’t get to judge me. I had to survive. I’ve had to make the best of it.
Also, he’s forgetting a very important point.
“I can’t just leave,” I begin, finally regaining my composure. “I’m Benji’s omega.”
And now Leo turns that vicious glare on me. “Who the fuck is Benji?”
I shrink back. I’ve never been scared of Leo. Mortified, yes—like when I tried to show him I wanted him to court me and he looked at me like a leper—but never scared. He’s never looked at me like this, though.
“He’s one of the alphas here,” I mumble. “We’re not all contracted to the owner. I got assigned to Benji.”
Leo grips my shoulders, slides his right hand up my throat, skirting over my mating gland. I can’t help gasping as he tilts my head to the side.
“You’re not mated,” he says on a rough exhale.
I glance up at him. He meets my eyes and tightens his hand on my neck. All I can do is try to breathe. His hands are so warm, so sure. He’s surrounding me, enveloping me in his scent of relief, trapping me in his haunted gaze.
He’s my best friend, of course he wants to get me out of here.
But he doesn’t want me like that, and he’s going to get us both arrested if I leave with him.
And he’s not my best friend anymore—he was, but now I’m here, I’m this.
He’s looking at me like I’m that guy who lived to surf, shaped by open water and open skies and a gaze that traced the horizon from sunrise to sunset, tracking the swell.
I’m not that guy anymore. I’m trapped within the confines of these walls.
I’m someone who keeps their back to the sea.
“You have to go,” I say, my voice a husk.
His hands tighten to the point of pain.
“I’m not leaving here without you.”
He might be twenty-one now, has done almost four years in the military, but there’s a juvenile quality to the way he says it—it’s the demand of a boy who hasn’t yet realised the implications of going up against men.
He’s a young alpha, potent and terrifyingly strong, but not in control of himself yet.
That won’t come for a few years. Benji will crush him.
His blunt nails dig into my skin.
“You’re hurting me,” I whisper.
“Sorry,” he says hastily and loosens his hands, but he doesn’t let go. His forefinger runs over my mating gland. I shiver.
“If you’re not going to … use me, you have to go,” I say quietly, my heart hammering.
“Use you?” he says with disgust. “Use you!?”
“I have to pay a share for the room, from each client,” I explain. I try to drop my head, but he holds me in place. I look at his shoulder instead. His shirt has been ironed. His omega mother, Kate, would’ve done it. I wonder how long he’s been home.
“Client …” His voice seems to fail him as his gaze flicks back to the bedside table. His Adam’s apple bobs in my periphery as he swallows.
“I’ll pay for the night. For, for …”
I look up at him.
He meets my eyes and finishes. “For however long I’m allowed to pay for.”
“Most people just pay for an hour.” I can’t process him paying for me, if this means he’s going to fuck me. He’s the only person I’ve ever wanted to fuck me. Excitement leaps briefly and he scowls at me. Right, he can scent that, and he’s probably not paying to fuck me, but to stay and talk.
I don’t think I can handle talking. What is there to say?
“So, what have you been up to?”
“Oh, you know, getting fucked by alphas, hundreds of them by now. Good times.”
Yeah, no. He needs to leave.
That hand slips up into my hair, and he pulls gently until my head is forced back.
“I’m not most people,” he rumbles at me. And forget him being a boy, right now he’s the intimidating and self-possessed alpha I always knew he’d grow into.
But I can’t discern desire in his scent, it’s fond, warm, the swelling of the ocean that’s distinctly him. He smelled like that a lot when he looked at me in the years after we both presented, and it’s a scent I associate with how much we loved each other once. As friends.
“People don’t pay just to talk to me,” I manage.
He scowls down at me. “Everyone should pay just to talk to you. They should pay just to be around you. To breathe the same fucking air as you.”
I can’t help the laugh that escapes. He’s not laughing, though.
“I’ll pay for however long it takes until I can get you out of here. No one’s paying you for, for …” He clamps his mouth shut and his jaw works.
“Sex?” I supply.
His hand moves down, clasping me by the nape. His warm fingers wrap around my throat so my mating gland is covered. My whole body shudders as he shakes me. It’s not rough, it’s possessive.
It’s bloody confusing is what it is. I can accept he doesn’t want me to be here, to be doing this, but he shot me down. He could’ve been my alpha, but he didn’t want that. It’s a sobering thought.
And if he keeps manhandling me like he is my alpha, I might have a breakthrough heat.
I’m on suppressants, but breakthrough heats aren’t unheard of if an alpha pulls shit like this.
Especially an alpha my omega recognises—has always recognised—as mine.
And fucked if I’m getting auctioned off to be used in heat again before I’m due.
“I think you better go,” I say to his pectoral muscle.
“I’m not going fucking anywhere,” he retorts, and his grip tightens.
I take a deep breath. “Leo,” I say, forcing my voice to the steady don’t fuck with me register I’ve learned to use on alphas who go too far. “Let me go.”
Leo drops his hands immediately, but stays close.
“Was I hurting you?” He sounds devastated.
“Or course not,” I reassure him, but I keep my voice even and my gaze on his chest. “You have to go.”
“There’s no fucking way I’m walking out this door without you, so stop saying that. Why are you even saying that? I’ve been looking for you for years, and now I find you, what? You think I’m just going to walk away?”
“Yo, flyboy!” someone yells from just outside the door. “Don’t try and pretend your virgin ass is more than a one-pump chump. Get your ass out here, we’re leavin’.”
I step away from him. I don’t want anyone to know he knows me—I don’t want to embarrass him.
He blushes but appears to be an immovable object.
“I’ll see you guys later,” he calls out. His eyes never leave mine.
“You should go with them,” I say, wincing at the taunts and catcalls coming from his friends as they move towards the stairs.
“What the fuck did I just say?” He’s angry again, but that blush stains his skin in the most enticing way, making him look younger. Is he embarrassed? He smells it. It’s me. They almost saw him with me.
“Go, Leo,” I say and meet his eyes.
“No, damn you, Addie. No. I’m not leaving you—”