Chapter Eighteen
Aubrey
The patio chair is wide enough for a pack, piled high with cushions and a thick blanket.
Espie is curled against my chest, her face tucked into my throat. Her heartbeat moves slow against mine.
Gardenia and clover close around me, and beneath that, where her scalp presses to my jaw, clean sweat, warm skin, the faint soap she uses.
Sunlight warms me to my bones. I didn't think anything could reach them again.
Her nose drags along my pulse, breathing me in. “You're awake.”
“Mm.”
“Don't move.”
“Wasn't going to.”
She makes a small pleased sound against my throat and burrows closer. My hand threads through her hair.
“Sun's good,” I manage.
“Mm.” Her voice is slurred with sleep and heat and something softer. “Let’s stay here forever. I like this chair. It feels right.”
Sera sits in a matching armchair close to us, book open in her lap, half her attention on the pages and half on us.
She brought us strawberry smoothies an hour ago, set them on the patio stones beside the chair.
I drank the whole one. Espie drank hers.
The sweetness is still on the back of my tongue and the cold of it has settled in my belly, and the sun on top of all that has dropped me into a sleepy half-place where my limbs feel too heavy to lift.
All of the alphas are sitting in the sun on the patio with us, but keeping their distance. Kev is further back. Lex to the side. Ezra somewhere behind me. They speak in low voices.
“You put basil in it.” Lex's voice, dry, unhurried. “On purpose.”
“Yeah. On purpose.”
“I'm going to need you to reflect on that choice, Dawson.”
“Reflect on your own choices. You put sugar on scrambled eggs once.”
A quiet snort from Sera. Ezra murmurs something in reply. I breathe in the sun and the weight of my omega. My eyes drift shut.
A glass clinks. A man laughs. Low. I know that laugh.
The marble is unrelenting beneath my knees.
I don't know how I got here. I was in the garden and now I'm on the marble and the collar suffocates me and Axel presses me down with a heavy hand, and the lights are bright and the air smells like champagne and cologne and money.
Axel's cologne. The one he wore to these nights.
Sandalwood rotten over something chemical.
The hum of men's voices is low and unpleasant.
No.
Not this. Not here. I'm not here.
My knees ache. The collar cuts. I’m naked and freezing cold. The auctioneer's voice climbs over the hum of the bidders and the girl on the block sobs.
Red hair. Freckles across her nose. The auctioneer points out she’s a virgin and the bids increase.
They don't see her.
We're not people to them. We're inventory.
She’s sold.
A man steps forward. Copper-rot scent, something dead underneath.
He takes her by the arm. Her eyes find mine and there's a question in them, a plea, help me please help me, and I can't move, can't speak, can't do anything but kneel here with Axel's hand heavy on my shoulder and watch her disappear through a door I will never see behind.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
My mind warps, or maybe I blacked out. One moment I was witnessing someone else’s horror and now I’m back in my own.
Restraints. Leather around my wrists, buckled too tight, the metal of the buckle bruising into the bone. Leather around my ankles, my knees forced open, no give in any of it no matter how hard I pulled. I pulled until my wrists bled. They left them on anyway.
Liquid forced down my throat, sweet and chemical, something they mixed with gin to make it easier to push past my teeth.
Mick's hand on my jaw. His fingers pinching my nose shut so I had to swallow or drown.
The chemical hit my stomach like an anvil and started cooking my insides from the center out, and I was already calling for an alpha I would have given anything not to want.
No no no not again not again not again.
Mick grips me so tight he leaves bruises on my thighs.
He laughs at me when I try to close my legs because I can’t.
Not with the bar between my knees holding me open.
I can’t stop any of it because the cocktail is working and I’m screaming inside my skull and on the outside I’m making the sounds they want to hear.
Axel’s hand clamps against the side of my throat. He likes holding me still while he assaults me. He grinds his rings into my skin, liking the marks they leave. He murmurs good boy, because going limp is the only option I have.
Slick pours from me, betraying me, and that is the worst part. Worse than the leather. Worse than the cocktail. The way my body keeps doing what they want no matter how much I beg no.
My chest locks. Air won't come. My hands are shaking. My vision grays at the edges. I can't stop it. I can't stop any of it. My body is about to do it again. What they used to drag out of me. What they opened me up for.
“Aubrey.”
Far away. A voice I know from another world. Hands on my face, solid, and her voice is the rope I'm climbing.
“Aubrey. Please come back.”
I gasp. The air tastes like sun and grass and gardenia. Not champagne. Not cologne. Not cruelty. Espie. Her hair is in my eyes and her hands are on my face and her scent has thinned out, scared for me.
I grab her wrists and hold on like she might disappear if I let go. Her pulse jumps hard beneath my fingertips, alive and steady, and that’s what tells me I’m not back there.
“There you are,” she whispers. “There you are.”
My hands shake in hers. I feel her heartbeat in my fingers where I'm gripping too hard when the cramp hits. Vicious, sudden, folding me around her. The air punches out of me. Espie's hands are on me before I understand what's happening.
“Aubrey?”
I get the word out and the next cramp takes the rest. “Spike. Heat spiking.”
Another wave rolls in. Lower. Slower. It doesn't stay in my belly.
It climbs. Crawls up my spine, pushes out through my pores.
My skin goes too tight. Slick gathers between my thighs, wet and involuntary, and the shame of it hits hotter than the heat itself.
My cock swells against my belly. Sweat breaks at my temples and the small of my back.
“Okay.” Espie's arms flex. “Okay. I've got you.”
“I can't stop it.” My voice is rising again. A whine I can't push down. “I can't stop it, Espie, it's just happening.”
Another cramp doubles me. A keen tears out of me. Her scent floods me and I think for a second she has to be enough. She's the one I chose. She has to be enough.
“Let me try to help you,” she breathes against my lips.
Her thin thighs bracket my hips, her hands fisting in my hair, the press of her breasts soft and warm through her shirt.
Her hip bone knocks mine and she adjusts.
She kisses me like she can fix this. Her hands are everywhere.
In my hair, on my face, fisting my shirt.
She is not going to stop until something gives.
Her lips are soft. She tastes like sleep and chamomile and I kiss her back, I grab her shirt and pull her in and drown in her.
Her tongue slides against mine and I chase it and I slide my cock between her thighs.
The cramp keeps climbing and a low groan rips out of me.
“It's not working.” Her voice shakes. “Aubrey. It's not working.”
The cramp drops me and I curl around it and keen and she's shaking too, her scent gone sharp with her own distress, her breath coming too fast against my neck. My pain is in her body. Tears on her cheeks.
“I'm sorry.” I can barely form the words. “Espie. I'm sorry. It's not enough.”
“I know.” Her voice cracks. “I know. I wish I was. God, I wish I was enough.”
She's crying. I'm making her cry.
I have to make it stop. Not for me. For her.
“Aubrey.” Her breath is ragged against my throat. “Please. Sera can help. Let her help you.”
Sera.
I lift my head, and there she is. She's leaning forward, book abandoned, her whole body oriented toward us still in the chair. Amber eyes locked on mine. Her hands are braced on her knees and her jaw is tight and she's breathing slow and careful.
Alpha. Female. Alpha. Sera. She could help. I don't know where the certainty comes from, but it’s there. She helped my mate. Stayed at her side when Espie was in need.
“Alpha.” Her name rasps out of me. “Please.”
She's out of the chair, coming to me. Her scent thickens. Basil sharper. Blood orange deeper. The cedar reaching me first, before her body does. Her shadow falls across my legs. Then across my chest.
Yesyesyes.
She reaches the chair and pauses at the edge, hands hovering. I reach for her. “Please.”
“Okay, omega. I’m here. I’m coming.” She climbs in.
Slow. So slow. One knee on the cushion, then the other, settling her weight carefully beside me. Espie's heartbeat is still going against my ribs on my other side. Sera arranges herself along my side, a warm line from shoulder to hip. Her hand hovers until I nod.
Then she touches me. Her palm lands flat on my sternum, just over my heart.
Warm. Heavier than I expected. She doesn't move it.
Doesn't stroke. Doesn't press. Just holds it there, a steady weight through the cotton of my shirt, and my heart hammers against her hand like it's trying to reach through.
Her scent folds around us. Basil first. Sharp enough to cut through the sour of my own scent. Blood orange next, ripe and heavier. The cedar underneath, deeper than anything I've smelled in a long time. It pours into my lungs layer by layer and my body takes each one in order.
The cramp loosens half a degree. Easing. The clench around my pelvic bone gives up a fraction of its grip. Air goes further into my lungs. The tremor in my hands slows.
My shoulders come down. My jaw unlocks from whatever shape it had frozen into. Something in my chest lets go. A knot I didn't know I was holding. My breath comes easier. The gray at the edges of my vision pulls back further than Espie's breathing ever got it.