Chapter Fifteen
Espie
Warmth pulls me from sleep. Body heat soaks through cotton, pooling in my joints, loosening muscles I've held clenched for years. My brain keeps waiting for concrete under my cheek, for the chemical burn of suppressants, for the guards’ boots on concrete heading for my door.
The waiting is a reflex now.
But there's only warmth. And Aubrey pressed against me.
He's chest to chest with me, his breath slow.
Our legs are wound together under the duvet, my knee hooked over his hip, his arm heavy across my waist. I don't remember moving closer in the night or reaching for him.
My body did it without asking permission, the same way it's been doing everything lately.
Even in the dim light, the sharp jut of his collarbone shows through the pajama shirt, the hollows under his cheekbones deep enough to cast shadows.
He's so thin. Starved down to bones and angles, and it makes me want to burn the world.
But his face in sleep is soft. Long lashes fanned against pale skin.
Ash-blond hair falling across his forehead.
He's beautiful, even wrecked like this. Maybe especially wrecked like this.
We match.
His scent fills the space we've made. Cedar and chamomile, warm from sleep, mixing with my gardenia until I can't tell where he ends and I begin.
My shaking has stopped, or at least faded to a tremor I can ignore. My heartbeat is steady. No scramble to figure out where I am and who's touching me.
I woke up and didn't want to run. The thought should scare me. It does, a little, in some distant part of my brain still waiting for the trap to spring. But the fear is muffled, held at arm's length by the warmth of him against me.
Then I remember the bath. Lex’s hands threading through my hair. The purr that rolled from his chest into mine, heavy enough to pull the fight right out of me.
I’d leaned into his touch. I’d wanted it.
The anger flares. Omega biology. Traitor cells and traitor hormones and a traitor designation that makes me soft for any alpha who knows the right tricks.
They purr and I melt. They touch me gently and I arch into their hands like a cat.
Haven and the Facility should have burned that response out of me, but here I am, still panting for scraps of kindness from people who could crush me.
Aubrey's fingers flex against my hip. A small movement, but I go still. He's awake. His breathing has changed, gone shallow, and his arm has tightened around my waist. I don't know how long he's been lying here in the dark with me.
“Are you okay?”
Three words. Hoarse and broken, barely a whisper. His voice is scraped raw from disuse. His eyes are open. Hazel-green with flecks of gold, watching me in the dim light under the duvet. Yesterday those eyes were clouded. Now they're focused. More present.
My omega. My scent-matched mate. I still can't wrap my head around it. He’s broken and beautiful and mine.
I've known him for no time at all, and somehow he's already become essential.
It doesn't make sense. None of this makes sense.
But he's there like a second heartbeat, his pulse against my wrist where we're pressed together, syncing with mine until we're breathing the same rhythm.
Whatever this thing is between us, it goes both ways.
“I'm here,” I say. My voice comes out rough, catching on the words.
His other hand finds mine under the duvet, threads our fingers together, holds on.
“So are you,” he breathes.
His forehead presses against mine. We stay like that, breathing each other's air.
I trace the line of his collarbone through the too-big pajama shirt.
I can't stop. Every second I'm not touching him feels wrong.
He mirrors me, his thumb stroking slow circles on my hip, his fingers threading through mine.
His voice catches. He starts again. “They didn’t hurt us in the bath.”
“No.”
The alphas' hands on us. The purring. Being washed and dressed like we were precious instead of property. Aubrey's hand slides up my spine, slow, mapping the knobs of my vertebrae through the cotton. I press closer, tuck my face into the curve of his neck.
“I didn't hate them touching me.” The confession costs him. His breath shakes on the exhale.
“Me either.”
His arms lock around me. Tight. Almost too tight. I hold him back just as hard, fingers digging into the fabric of his shirt. I don't know why I need to be this close. I don't know why every inch of space feels wrong. I just know that letting go isn't an option. Maybe not ever.
“They were gentle,” I whisper against his throat.
“I know.”
“I keep waiting for it to stop.”
His lips brush my hair. “Me too.”
His hand cups the back of my head, fingers sinking into my curls. His thumb traces the edge of my jaw. When he speaks again, his voice is different. Distant. Like he's reaching for something buried deep.
“I had... good alphas. Once. Tom. Liam. Matteo.”
I go still.
“Thomas ran Haven. Before it was... what it became.” A ghost of a smile in Aubrey's voice, there and gone.
“I was so young. And in love. He taught me to drive in this old Ford, the gears were shot.
I'd grind them and he'd just... laugh. Never got mad.
He told me I was capable. That I mattered.
That I wasn't just... something to be kept.”
My ribs squeeze tight around something fragile, something that might be his grief or might be mine. Hard to tell the difference anymore.
“Axel killed him.” Flat now. “Him and Liam and Matteo. All three of them. Car accident.” His laugh is bitter. “Wasn't an accident. And then... Axel.”
Axel Turns. The name slams into me. I know that name. I know that man. He worked with Wallace. I pull back enough to find his eyes in the dim light. They're wide and wet, reflecting what little filters through the duvet.
“Gods.” The word comes out cracked. “I'm so sorry, Aubrey. I’m sorry he had you. You didn’t deserve him. None of it.”
The miracle is not that he’s here with me. The miracle is that he survived at all.
We stay there, breathing together. What is there to say? He knows what Axel was. I know what Wallace did. We're both still here, somehow, and right now that's enough.
“Sera is not like them. She’s different,” he says. He pulls back, watching me closely.
Different. Yes. She pulled me out of that hellhole, carried me when I couldn't walk, held me through the worst of the withdrawal. She's an alpha, but she's not the thing I see when I close my eyes and remember the cold rooms.
“She is different. She got me out,” I say quietly.
“Thank the Gods she did, because she brought you to me,” Aubrey says.
His hand cups the back of my head. My fingers are still tangled in his shirt.
The kiss is soft. So soft. His lips are dry and a little chapped and I don't care.
I don't care about anything except the fact that he's kissing me and I want more.
I kiss him back, my hand sliding up to cup his jaw, feeling the scratch of stubble, the sharp line of his cheekbone.
His eyes are open. Watching me as he kisses me. Soft. My heart lifts so suddenly it almost hurts.
He's real. He's here. He's not going anywhere. For once, just this once, my mind and my body agree on something. Yes. This. Him.
His tongue traces the seam of my lips and I open for him, let him in, taste him properly. A sound escapes me, somewhere between a sigh and a whimper, and he swallows it down. His arm wraps tighter around my waist, pulling me flush against him until there's no space left.
This. This is what it's supposed to be. I'm giving this kiss and he's giving it back and I didn't know.
I didn't know it could be like this. Heat spreads through my limbs.
Then slick pools between my thighs. The shock makes me gasp against his mouth.
I'm slicking. For him. For an omega. But he’s my omega.
My mate. My heart and soul. My everything.
“Gods, Espie. I want you so badly. I feel you inside me and I love that. I want to be inside you so I feel you closer,” he says.
His desperation sinks into me, matching mine. Even holding me close, he’s too far apart. I want him inside me everywhere.
His scent shifts first, cedar blooming thick and heady, and then the heat of him against my hip, and then his own slick, warm where his thighs press against mine. We're both slicking. At the same time. For each other.
Aubrey’s nostrils flare. He comes back to himself, sharper, more present. More male. That part of him that's been buried under years of abuse and months of catatonia claws its way to the surface.
He becomes someone instead of a ghost wearing a body. Yesterday he was barely there, curled in on himself, flinching from shadows. Now he's looking at me like he wants to devour me. The transformation is terrifying and beautiful and I want to cry and laugh at the same time.
This is who Axel tried to destroy and he's still in there, fighting his way back.
“Yes, Aubrey. Yes to anything you want to do to me,” I whisper.
The kiss changes. Harder. More demanding.
He's taking now, not receiving. His hand grips my hip and pulls me flush against him, and there's no mistaking how much he wants this.
A low sound rumbles in his throat, not quite a growl, not quite a purr, something between that makes my spine arc.
I don't pull back. I meet him. Match his intensity.
My scent spikes, perfuming back, claiming him the same way he's claiming me.
This is mine. This response is mine. Not forced by synthetic alpha pheromones or heat or any of the biological bullshit I can't control. I'm wet for Aubrey because I want him. Me. My choice.
I hook one leg over his hip, then the other, locking my ankles at the small of his back. He makes a sound against my mouth. I drag him closer, until there's nothing between us but two thin layers of cotton and the heat of him, hard and insistent against the seam of my pajamas.