Chapter 15
Adrian
Thirty-eight hours since I saw Leo, and before the doors have officially opened, the first client to walk through my door makes my jaw drop.
He looks like Leo. The same outline—tall, built, hazel eyes, well-proportioned face—but he’s etched with decades of bitterness, and it makes him, for lack of a better word, ugly.
“I’m not here for that,” he says gruffly. “So you can close your mouth.”
I snap my lips shut. Leo’s dad has never been subtle with his dislike for me, and his presence here cannot mean anything good.
Benji had pronounced that I’d be getting back to work tonight. I’d been seized with terror before quickly shoving it down—Leo could feel that.
Tristan and Cammie argued with Benji about my bond sickness. They’d waved at the sweaty, shaking mess huddled on the couch, as if to say, “You can’t be fucking serious!”
Benji was serious. Said he’d secured my first client. And here he is.
“So …” Leo’s dad—Carl, his name is Carl, though I’ve always addressed him as Alpha Hale—begins. “He bonded you.”
I jerk my chin up proudly, because regardless of anything else, Leo did and I’m not ashamed of that. I can feel him down the bond—he’s angry, exhausted, anxious. I send a weak pulse of love and hope it covers up what’s going on here.
“It’s no secret Leonard could do better,” Carl says and looks around the mostly bare walls of my room.
His gaze lands on the sole painting of the ocean.
I’d picked it when I first arrived, when the other omegas helped me decorate from the stash in the basement.
I’ve never quite had the heart to take it down.
“And I’m not giving up on that dream for my son.”
He meets my eyes and I force myself not to shrink back under his disgusted look.
“You’re the son of a drunk and a whore,” he says plainly.
My lips part. Yes, my alpha was an alcoholic, but he wasn’t a bad man, nor was he a bad alpha.
He was more the negligent variety of alcoholic, docile and absent, not violent, never cruel.
A fisherman by trade, he, like the other alphas and betas who lived on our side of Hollow Point, bore the results of overfishing by trawlers owned by the corporations in Celo City.
And when the government tried to organise them into a cooperative, it was a bust—rife with corruption, high taxes, and paying the fishermen the smallest cut.
This reached its height before I can remember and my alpha hit the bottle.
And my omega was not, by any version I’m aware of, a sex worker. Granted, he left when I was five, so my memories are hazy, but the photos of him all over the house, the way my father laughed sometimes, listening to him down the bond—he seemed like he was nice.
“No one kinder,” my father used to slur. “And quick! That wit …” He’d trail off, smiling.
He left because he couldn’t watch my father drink himself to death. I’ve always thought he sounded quite noble. Romantic, in a tragic way.
“With no prospects beyond surfing, right?” Carl continues as I just stare at him. “And you’re fucking tiny. Male omegas are already a high risk for pregnancies, how are you gonna guarantee Leo kids? Huh? Did you think about how selfish you’ve been?”
I drop my gaze because he’s hit my Achilles’ heel.
I’ve always been selfish for Leo’s attention, his affection.
Being the centre of his universe is the greatest feeling in the world.
But Alpha Hale is wrong when it comes to male omegas and pregnancy.
Sure, we need to have caesareans, but with modern medicine most of us survive, as do our children.
“I can have kids, if Leo wants them,” I murmur.
He scoffs. “It’s not going to get to that.”
I look up. He’s moving for my vanity, pulling something out of his pocket. He drops two white pills onto the dresser.
“In World War Two, spies carried these when they went behind enemy lines. Just bite down on the capsule and this will all be over.”
He looks over his shoulder at me. “If you love Leo, you’ll let him go. Free him of a bond with a whore.”
I flinch.
When he turns back fully, his expression is kind. It multiplies my unease. It’s the strangest expression I’ve ever seen on his face, probably because I’ve never seen it.
“Do the right thing, Adrian. End this. For Leo,” he says, his voice heavy with alpha command. It hurts my head, like a pressure coming from the outside, but he can’t actually command me. I’m Leo’s. And now that I’m bonded to another alpha, no other alpha can ever command me again.
He walks out. My eyes are drawn to the little white capsules. Did he just tell me to kill myself? I suck in a sharp breath. I’m not actually going to consider this, am I?
Would it be better for Leo, though? Will it keep him safe?
I drift over to the dresser and stare down at the pills.
Two white capsules. They’ll be potassium cyanide.
I know what he was referring to—we learned about it in history at school.
Some soldiers still do it, especially in countries where omegas are allowed to fight.
We’re not allowed to here because, as Cammie puts it, our country is a backward hellhole run by small dick alphas.
But omegas can join the military in a lot of other places.
They carry the pills, in case they get captured.
I touch one with my index finger and roll it over. Why did he leave me two? To make sure the job got done? I pick one up and look at it. A calm comes over me. This might free Leo.
Tales of destiny and fated mates say we can’t live without each other, that the other one will die shortly after their mate dies.
But look at my parents—my alpha and omega lived on.
Sure, my omega didn’t die, and my alpha hardly had a good life, but they survived apart.
And as far as I know, my omega father is still alive.
“France,” my alpha told me when I asked where he was when I was a kid.
“Back to his people. It’s better there.” His eyes shone, his lips quivered, and I never asked again.
Could I really set Leo free?
Leo thrums down the bond at me—the same anger, fear and exhaustion, but it’s threaded with a question. It feels kind of like curiosity.
I can do this for you, I think at him. Make it all go away.
I know he can’t hear my direct thoughts yet, but he’ll feel the peace that’s welling in me.
The pain too. The ache of never seeing my Leo again. It’s unbearable. But if I die for him? That’s better. Alpha Hale is right. I can set him free.
I bring the pill up higher and study it. I need to crack it open with my teeth and let the powder spread. I’ll be dead in minutes.
The curtain flutters and an alpha with a mobile phone pressed to his ear steps into the room. I startle. He looks over at me, eyes widening.
I bring the pill to my lips. This is better. I can’t let another alpha fuck me. Leo will feel it. And I can’t fucking bear it.
“I’ll call you back,” he barks into the phone.
He crosses the room in three quick strides, slaps the pill out of my hand.
“What?” I ask.
“That better not be what I fucking think it is,” he growls.
I’m too stunned to speak. He’s glaring at me. I don’t think it’s any of his business. And this seems like a lot of anger for a random alpha who’d get a refund if I’m dead.
I stare up at him, impotent rage surging through me.
“It’s not your concern.” I rarely push back on alphas, but fuck this guy. How dare he tell me what to do.
“What do you think will happen to Leo if you kill yourself?” he says, voice sharp.
My mouth drops open for the second time.
“That’s right, Leo sent me.” He extends a hand. “Sergeant Terry Brighton, at your service.”
I blink up at him. Leo sent someone for me? This alpha’s not here to fuck me? Relief and shame bombard me. I’d almost … Oh God. Leo would’ve felt it. What was I thinking?
I extend my hand, and the alpha clasps it, shaking vigorously.
“I’m going to flush that shit down the toilet and then we’re going to have a little talk.”
I nod because I’m not sure what else to do.
He releases my hand and gives me his phone. “Call Leo. He was completely losing it before. Now I know why.” His look is all reproach.
“Okay,” I whisper, that shame magnifying.
I fumble with the phone, find Leo in the recent calls, and hit his contact.
“Terry?” Leo’s voice is breathless and panicked down the line.
My stomach fills with butterflies at the sound of him.
“It’s me.”
“Addie,” he breathes out my name. “Oh my God, Addie! What happened? What was that, before? You felt … you felt … not right.”
“I’m okay,” I assure him, because I don’t want to tell him what I was about to do. What his father tried to order me to do.
“Are you sure? I mean, I know you’re not okay, of course you’re not, but before it felt like I was losing you,” he rambles. Then his voice turns harsh. “Addie, what happened?” It’s flat, but not a command. I get the feeling he’s avoiding that after last time—but it is a demand.
I take a deep breath and speak on the exhale. “Your father was here.”
Leo’s inhale is audible and sharp down the line. “That asshole! What did he do?” And that is edging right up to a command.
I feel Terry come out of the bathroom behind me, the swirl of the water flushing echoing into the room.
Glancing at him, he smiles gruffly at me, nods his head.
If he’s telling me to tell Leo the truth, then he’s crazy—I don’t know what Leo will do with that information, but nothing good.
I won’t let him do anything that could end with him getting hurt.
“He told me to … leave you.” There. That should cover it.
“Leave me how?” Leo says coldly.
I swallow. “Just, you know, leave you alone, I guess.”
After a moment, Leo says, “Addie.” His tone is quiet, dangerous.
I blink rapidly, shame flooding me. I know Leo can feel it because his breathing has gone funny on the other end of the phone.
“It’s okay,” I say quickly. “He can’t command me, no one can anymore. It’s okay. I’m okay.”
“But you weren’t before … You felt like … Addie!” He says my name with so much hurt and anger, I cringe. “Don’t you ever think about that again. You hear me? If I lose you …” His voice cracks, and guilt pummels me.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I thought it’d help.”
I turn my back on Terry, who’s inspecting the contents of my vanity like he’s trying to give us the semblance of space and privacy.
“I thought it’d get you out of this mess I’ve dragged you into,” I mumble.
“Addie!” Leo shouts and I wince. “Don’t you dare … How could you …”
He takes a deep breath, and I’ve never heard or felt anything like this from him—he’s enraged, sure, but he’s shattering apart. I feel every nuance. He’s splintering, and each piece that breaks off tears through him with agony.
“Don’t you ever do something because you think it’d be better for me, you hear me?
I want to be in this with you, no matter what this is.
Surfing at ass o’clock in the morning in the dead of winter or breaking you out of a brothel, I don’t care.
If you’re there, I’m in. Don’t ever question that again.
And don’t … don’t you ever fucking leave me,” he finishes, his voice breaking.
“I won’t,” I whisper. “I’m sorry.”
“No, Addie, no, you’ve got nothing to be sorry for, just please … hang in there, okay? Talk to Terry. We’ll make a plan. Okay?”
“Okay.” I nod, even though he can’t see me.
“Okay,” he breathes out shakily. “I miss you so fucking much. How are you?”
So I tell him, downplaying the horror of the shakes, the sweating, the headache, the symptoms of a bond that hasn’t been properly taken care of post-mating.
He makes a noise like he’s in pain. “You’re worse than that.” But before I can correct him, he says, “Talk to Terry. If he leaves you the phone, can you hide it?”
“Yes.” A phone. A line to Leo.
“Good. And Addie?”
“Yeah?”
“I fucking love you so much, you know that? Always have, always will. I’ll get you out of there.”
“I love you too,” I say quickly. “So much.”
“I know,” he says, and I both hear and feel the smile in his voice. “I can feel it.”
“Me too,” I say and smile. “I can feel it everywhere. You’re like, obsessed with me, dude.”
He laughs, and it feels like I can breathe for the first time since Benji had Leo pinned against the wall with a gun at his throat.