Chapter Twenty-Eight
Aubrey
Heat pressed into my bones from every direction. Weight against my chest. Breath at my throat. Fingers curled into my shirt like they're afraid I'll disappear.
For one disoriented second, my body goes rigid waiting for pain.
None comes.
The floor is hard beneath my hip, but the duvet cocoons us, and Sera's blanket layers on top, her scent threaded through the fabric.
Espie's breath is damp against my collarbone, her bare leg pressed to mine, skin on skin.
The bond hums low in my chest when I breathe her in, more vibration than sound.
Sunlight creeps across the carpet. The bedroom is quiet. We're on the floor, in our makeshift nest that isn’t really a nest. It’s just a place on the floor we could stand to be in when we first came here.
When's the last time I woke up and nothing hurt?
I can't remember. Years, maybe. Years of waking to Axel's scent, to the clink of the collar, to the knowledge that the day would bring pain in some form or another. Years of bracing before my eyes even opened. Nothing hurts now. My body is heavy in a good way, loose and used and settled.
Now that I'm awake, I remember the heat of Sera’s mouth and the wet slide of her tongue on my cock. My spine arching off the chair when she sucked. The sounds I made, sounds I didn't know I could still make.
My stomach flips. Then lower. A flutter in my belly that has nothing to do with memory. A clench. My body responding now, in the present, to the ghost of what she did.
It felt good. That's the part I keep circling back to. I wanted her yesterday. I wanted Sera's mouth on me, and she gave it to me. She asked first. She gave and I was not afraid.
Slick gathers, pooling where my thighs press together. My body wanting an alpha. My alpha. Espie's scent shifts, gardenia deepening. We're so attuned to each other. Even asleep, her body knows what mine is doing.
She’s the reason I’m aware and functioning and not in a catatonic state in some gray room. Espie and Sera woke me. Kev, Lex and Ezra sustain me.
Espie watched everything with Sera and then she kissed Sera.
If that hadn't felt right to her, I would have felt it. Nothing changed. Or everything changed, because Espie hadn’t wanted to stop at one kiss.
My cock swells, remembering them together.
And now I have a plan for the morning: get my omega and my alpha together.
Espie twitches in her sleep. A small whine catches in her throat and I tighten my arm around her, drawing her in closer.
Her whole body goes rigid against mine a half-second before her eyes snap open, and when they open they see nothing in this room.
They see cinderblock. They see whatever room she was locked in for years.
A bloom of helpless rage streaks through me at Ethan Wallace. That he'd taken a gentle girl and subjected her to hell. It’s a wonder she’s still functioning. I stifle my rage. She doesn’t need that from me.
“Hey, hey. It's okay, sweetheart. You're not there. You're here with me.” I keep my voice low, even, the same voice I use every morning when she wakes the same way.
Her eyes dart to places I can’t see, then she blinks. Awareness filters through. The cinderblock falls away, and the room comes back. Her breath shudders out of her in one long exhale.
She offers me a shy, self-conscious smile. The kind she always gives me. “Hey.”
“Hey yourself.”
She ducks her head. “I’m so…”
I place a knuckle under her chin and hold her steady. “Don’t you dare say you’re sorry. You hear me? Never apologize for that.”
Her cheeks flush. She drops her gaze and nods as a wave of embarrassment flows from her to me. “You okay? And I mean actually okay, not the version where you say you're fine and then I find out later you were drowning the whole time.”
Her gaze finds mine. She strokes my cheekbone with her thumb while she considers. “I am because I’m here with you.” A slight line forms between her brows. “Is it wrong that I rely on you so much?”
I shake my head. “I rely on you just as much, you know.”
She searches my face, feeling the truth of my words. “Last night. With Sera. Was it... I need to know if you're okay. I asked her into our nest and...”
I cut her off because I don’t want her guilt over something that’s not her fault. “It was good. Sera helped me. She… really helped me.”
Espie finds her bite mark on my throat, and traces it. The touch sends a shiver through me, warmth spreading from the scar, down my spine, into my chest. My omega hindbrain hums at the contact, the bond flaring bright for a moment. Claimed. Hers.
“She's different. She’s safe.” Espie says.
“Well, you did kiss her,” I tease and watch her cheeks turn a brighter shade of pink. Gods, this woman is beautiful. Despite everything she’s still accepting life.
“The others were there too. Watching us.” Her touch sends little sparks down my spine each time her fingers pass over her claiming scar. I love this connection I have with her. “They were part of it, even if they didn't touch us.”
I take her hand off my throat and bring it to my mouth and kiss her knuckles. Then I rest our joined hands on my chest.
“Espie. My heat is coming and… and so will yours.”
She goes rigid, every muscle in her going hard. “I can’t go through that again. No—”
“Sweetheart. Listen to me. A natural heat isn't what you went through. I promise you. A natural heat is… it's a good thing. With the right alphas.”
She's shaking her head. I keep my hand wrapped around hers. She needs to hear this no matter how she denies the inevitable.
“And when it comes, you're going to need alphas.”
Her eyes are wide and she trembles. Her mouth opens and closes. Her terror slices through me. She had forced heats, but she never had the relief alphas bring.
“You're going to need them, Espie. I'm not going to be enough. I love you and I will be there for every second of it, but I know what an omega body does in heat. I know what it asks for. And I'm not going to be able to be that for you.”
“I'll suppress it. I'll take whatever they give us at the OHC, I'll push through it —”
“You won't, sweetheart. Your system has already gone through too much.” I don’t know if she’s noticed her developing scent, but I have. “It's already started cycling again, I can scent it on you. Especially yesterday.”
She closes her eyes.
“Mine's coming too. And we’re bonded. It’s likely my heat will trigger yours.”
“We have Sera. She’ll help,” she says, picking up on my thread.
I trace her smooth cheek. Wipe the wetness away. Not so easy to wipe away my twisting stomach. “She will. She helped me yesterday, but… she doesn’t have…”
“A knot. She doesn’t have a knot,” she says.
I didn't hate my heats with my first pack.
They eased me through them. They loved me through them.
It was easy until it was all taken away from me.
I shove aside the multitude of memories my brain wants to throw at me.
“I know what you've seen of alphas, and I know it's the worst version of what alphas can be. Not all alphas are Wallace. Not all alphas are Axel.”
She's quiet for a long stretch. “Promise me?”
“I wouldn’t suggest this if there was any other way. Yesterday was… something happened in me. I felt it. You felt it. We need to try. At the very least. They haven’t done anything we haven’t wanted. They’ve been respectful and yesterday what they did in the kitchen was...”
She catches my lips with hers and my cock swells. “Yeah. That was hot.”
“I was going to say it let me see them in a very different light, but hot works too,” I say. A joke always eases tension, doesn’t it?
She searches my eyes, her gaze flicking between my eyes and I try not to let the endless lump growing in my stomach stop the both of us.
“I trust you, Aubrey.”
“You're mine, Espie. That's the answer to every question.” My stomach chooses this time to rumble, which is not the most comfortable with a hard dick. “Looks like we have a choice. Make love or eat breakfast.”
“Can we do both? Sera did yesterday,” she says, a light in her eyes.
“You’re not helping my situation,” I say.
She sighs, thankfully a little lighter. “Come on. Let’s get our stomach sorted. I make no promises about the rest of the day.”
We untangle. Cool air hits my skin and I shiver, crossing to the dresser. I pull on a shirt and sweat pants. Espie does the same before we head downstairs.
A week ago, leaving this room would've been a negotiation. Bracing. Calculating exits, counting alphas, preparing for threat. Now it's getting up, going downstairs, finding food.
Espie takes my hand. We walk the two floors down together, and the warmth of the kitchen reaches us as we take those last few steps.
Sera sees us first. Her whole face changes, worry melting into relief, then something raw flickering underneath before she can mask it.
She sets down her coffee cup with a slight clink and stands up, shifting on her feet.
“How are you feeling? Are you okay? I didn't know if I should stay last night or if that would make it worse, and then I kept thinking what if you woke up and needed something and I wasn't there, but then I thought maybe you'd want space, and I just — I've been going back and forth all morning about whether I made the right call leaving, and—”
She's gushing, words tumbling out faster than she can organize them. Nervous in a way I've never seen her. This alpha who took me so gently in her mouth is terrified that she broke me.
“I’m okay, Alpha.” She winces and I follow up. “Sera.”
I swallow hard. I need to embody my words.
“What you did yesterday. It was...” I force myself to keep going, even though I want to be different.
I wish I was that young, naive omega I once was.
I wish Axel Turns had never been born too, but that’s just wishful thinking and it will only bury us both in a very deep hole. “You helped me and—”
Say it. She deserves the truth. You deserve to say it.
“I liked it.”