Chapter Three
Espie
Sera is trying not to scare me. The furrow between her brows runs deep, and her scent has shifted toward anguish.
She grips the arms of the chair until her knuckles pale, her whole body leaning toward mine.
She has the power to take. She's choosing not to.
I don't know if it's real or a different kind of trap. A longer game. A softer knife.
A purr rolls out of her chest and I hate the way my muscles loosen, the way my breathing slows to match the rhythm of that sound. Warmth spreads through my chest, and my omega perks up like a starved thing, which she is. My body leans toward her, drawn by that vibration.
Safe.
Safe.
Safe.
This is another manipulation, and I know that, but my bones are turning to honey, and my eyes are stinging and I want to crawl into her lap and press my ear to her chest and let that sound wash over me until I forget my own name.
She must see something in my face. The terror underneath the craving. The way I'm shaking harder now, my body at war with itself. Her purr stutters. Stops.
My chest aches with the loss of it, a hollow space where that sound filled me with warmth.
Screaming at her to start again. Screaming at her to get away from me.
Clawing out of my own skin because it doesn't belong to me anymore, it belongs to whatever she's doing to me, and I can't make it stop. I clamp down the whine that rises.
“I’m sorry, I’m… I thought that…” Her tongue swipes to wet her bottom lip. “You can scent me. Your body knows who we are to each other. It will help.”
She tilts her head and exposes her throat. Her scent gland is there, beneath the skin. So strong. So concentrated. This is the source. This is where she's most herself, most Alpha, most everything my biology was designed to respond to.
“Please, sweetheart. Just try.”
I freeze every muscle locked tight so I don’t move. My omega is screaming at me, clawing at the inside of my skull, demanding I go to her, bury my face in her throat, and breathe until there's nothing left of me.
Wallace never made female Alphas. His experiments were always males. Easier to sell. Easier to control. Females too rare. Too complicated. If she's manufactured, she's new. I don't know how to read her.
My spine goes cold as she rises from the chair. Slowly. So slowly it almost hurts to watch. She's moving through honey, giving me every possible chance to stop her. Each movement telegraphed. I should run, should fight, should do anything other than lie here and shake. I don't. I can't.
“S-stay away from m-me.” My voice cracks on the last syllable. Pathetic.
Her scent shifts, the blood orange curdling, the cedar going bitter and black. Guilt. Fear. Not fear of me, I realize with a jolt. Fear for me.
“Okay.” Steady. Calm. The voice of someone who has done this a thousand times. “Okay. I'm stopping. I'm not moving. See? I'm right here. I'm not coming any closer.”
She holds perfectly still. I see what it costs her in the white-knuckled grip on her own thighs, the way her whole body strains toward me. How long until the leash snaps?
“I know that doesn't mean anything to you right now. I know people have said it before and then hurt you anyway. I'm going to keep saying it until you believe me.”
I don't need your help. I don't need anyone's help.
The tremors are getting worse, and she sees it. She can scent the fear bleeding off me. Can probably scent my slick too. It’s warm and wet between my thighs, and my face burns with shame. My body answering hers the way my fucked-up biology dictates.
“You're shaking so hard.” The basil in her scent sharpens enough to sting my nose.
“I hear your teeth chattering from here.
That's the withdrawal. Your body is fighting off whatever they were giving you, and it's going to get worse before it gets better.” She pauses.
“I can help. If you let me. Only if you let me.”
So I am in withdrawal. Not a drug then? But then again, how can I trust anything she says. She might tell me anything that isn’t the truth. Gods, this is so fucked up.
“I'm going to tell you what I want to do.” Her voice stays low. “And then you're going to tell me if that's okay. If you say no, I stop. If you say nothing, I wait. If you say yes, I move. That's how this works. You're in control here. Do you understand?”
I don't respond. Don't nod. Don't do anything except keep my gaze locked on her, my breath shallow, my heart hammering so loud she must hear it. She watches me for a long moment.
“Okay. I'm going to take that as permission to keep talking.” Her scent softens, the sharp worry-basil easing.
“I'm going to pick you up. Lift you into my lap and hold you against my chest. That way you can scent me properly, right at the source.
Your body will be able to tell that I'm real. That I'm not trying to trick you.”
She pauses, watching my face.
“You can say no. You can always say no at any time.
I'll sit in that chair across the room and I won't touch you.
I'll wait as long as you need me to wait. Days. Weeks. However long it takes.” Her voice cracks slightly.
“But I think your body needs this. I think you've been alone for so long that kindness feels like a trap, and I understand that.
I've worked with omegas who've been through things you've been through.
I'm not asking you to trust me. I'm asking you to let me hold you.”
My face must give her permission, and she nods slowly.
“Okay. I'm going to move now. Very slowly. Nothing happens behind your back. Nothing happens where you can't watch it.”
She slides from her chair and circles around beside me. I track every movement. Every inch she closes between us. Rabbit and fox. Prey waiting for the moment the predator decides to stop pretending.
Her amber eyes lock onto mine, and I search them for cruelty. For possession. For the sharp flicker that always comes right before someone decides they own you.
I don’t find it.
That doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
“I'm going to reach toward the mattress now. Resting my hand there so you can see where it is.”
Her hand moves slowly, so slowly, and settles on the mattress inches from my body. My breath stops. Lungs locked. Too close. Too close. She doesn't reach for me. Her hand rests there, palm down, fingers spread. Showing me she's unarmed.
“Good. You're being so brave.”
Brave. I'm not brave. I'm frozen.
Her other hand appears on my other side. Now she's bracketing me, and the trapped-animal part of my brain is screaming cage cage cage even though she's not touching me. Even though there's still space. Even though I could still... I couldn't. I can barely lift my head.
“I'm going to slide my hands under you now. Under your shoulders and under your knees. It might feel strange. Your body might want to fight. That's okay. That's normal. You don't have to relax. You don't have to do anything except let me hold you.”
Her hands slide under me. Every survival instinct is screaming at me to fight. To do anything except lie here and let her put her hands on me. I can't move. I'm locked in place, my spine a steel rod, my breath coming in short sharp gasps that don't get any oxygen into my lungs.
“You're okay.” Her voice is low, steady. The kind of voice you use on wild, wounded things. “You're okay. I've got you. I know how scared you are. And that's okay. You're allowed to be scared. You're allowed to feel whatever you're feeling.”
She pauses, her hands warm and solid beneath me. My heartbeat slams through my whole body.
“I'm going to lift you now. Nice and slow. You're going to end up in my lap, with your head against my shoulder. That's all that's going to happen. Nothing else. Okay?”
I can't speak. Can barely breathe.
“I'll take that as an okay,” she murmurs. “Here we go. Nice and slow.”
She lifts me easily. She’s much taller than me, and heavily muscled.
Both my thighs together are barely the size of one of hers, but that’s not surprising.
Seven years of not enough food and too much fear have whittled me down to bones and skin and trembling.
She lifts me as if I'm made of paper. As if I'm precious.
As if I might tear if she's not careful.
Don't. Don't be careful with me. It's worse when they're careful first.
“That's it. I've got you. You're okay.”
She climbs onto the bed, her back against the headboard, and arranges me in her lap. Each adjustment slow. Deliberate. My body tracks every shift of her weight, every flex of her arms.
“I'm shifting you a little, getting you comfortable. Your head is going to rest against my shoulder. Right here. That's it.”
My face is inches from her throat. Her scent gland. “There you go,” she murmurs, and the vibration of her voice hums against my cheek. “Breathe. Can you do that for me?”
I'm rigid in her arms. Every muscle locked. My hands are fisted at my sides, nails digging into my palms.
“You don't have to relax.” Quieter now, almost a murmur. “Your body is doing exactly what it's supposed to do when it's scared. That's not weakness. That's survival. You've been surviving for a long time, haven't you?”
Her hand comes up slowly, like it’s a snake waiting to strike, which is all kinds of stupid. I know it is but I can’t stop my trembling. Or the way I can’t take my eyes off her hand.
Immediate. Reassuring. “I'm going to rest my hand on your back.” Her palm lands between my shoulder blades. “There. That's all. My hand on your back, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart. The word shouldn't affect me the way it does. Shouldn't burrow under my ribs and find the space my mother's voice used to fill. She called me that. Before. When I was still someone worth calling sweet.
This close to the source, her scent is different.
Concentrated. Flooding me with every breath.
Crushed basil. Blood orange. Sun-warmed cedar.
I turn toward the warmth, drawn toward her scent, toward the place where she's most herself.
My nose brushes against her throat, against the slight swell of her scent gland, and the smell of her floods my system so completely that I forget how to think.
“That's it,” she breathes, and the vibration of her voice presses against my lips, my nose, my cheek. “That's it. You can scent me, can't you? Right at the source. Your body knows what that means.”
Clean. Pure. Real. No chemical edge. No synthetic burn. No Wallace. Her. Alpha. Mate.
The word surfaces from somewhere deep and I shove it down. Too late. My omega has already latched onto it, already purring it into my bones.
“I'm real, sweetheart. This is real. And I'm never going to let anyone hurt you again, myself included.”
Someone came for me.
Seven years. Seven years of knowing nobody comes for the ones left behind. Of forgetting what it means to be held by someone who doesn’t want to hurt me. Someone came. She came.
I press my face harder against her throat, drag in her scent and cry. Ugly, wailing sounds tear out of me, grief hemorrhaging from open wounds. I grab her shirt, clutching at her. I'm going under and she's the only thing keeping me above the surface. I shake so hard my teeth rattle.
“That's it,” she murmurs against my hair. “Let it out. Let it all out. I've got you. I'm not going anywhere.”
She starts to purr again. The vibration moves through her chest and into mine.
Skin to skin. Bone to bone, and I go liquid against her.
All that rigid terror melts into nothing.
My spine curves into her body, my fists loosen in her shirt, my face presses harder into her throat where the purr is loudest. I can't hold myself together anymore.
I don't want to. The sound unravels me thread by thread and I let it happen, let her take me apart, too tired and too broken to fight.
This is how they get you. This is how you disappear.
Her arms close around me, and her scent shifts as she holds me, the blood orange warming while the cedar deepens into honey.
She's calming down.
The thought surfaces through the fog. Her Alpha is getting what it wants. Holding me. Comforting me. Being needed. I'm feeding it by lying here and shaking. By letting her touch me. Is that all this is? Another kind of taking? Her arms don't constrict. Her hands don't wander. She holds.
“You're so strong. I know it doesn't feel that way right now, but you are. You survived things that would have broken anyone else. You're still here. You're still fighting.” Her hand strokes slow circles on my back. “And I'm going to take care of you now. That's my job. That's all I want.”
I cry harder. All of it. All at once. Everything I couldn't feel while I was living through it. Feeling would have killed me then. It might kill me now.
She doesn't shush me. Doesn't tell me it's okay. We both know it's not okay. Nothing has been okay for years and maybe nothing will ever be okay again, and she doesn't pretend otherwise.
“I've got you,” she says again and again, her cheek resting against the top of my head. “I've got you. You're safe. I've got you.”
I hate breaking in front of a stranger. For clinging to her shirt, face wet and snotty against her throat, making sounds I didn't know I still had in me. Weak. Pathetic.
My body reached for her when my mind was gone, and now she knows. And part of me, even while I'm falling apart in her arms, is tracking the exits. Filing away the information. Planning the route I'll take when my body finally obeys me instead of betraying me with needs I never asked for.
I’ll run and never look back.
This doesn't mean I stay. I don't belong to anyone. Not anymore. Not ever again.