Touch of Sin

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

AVA

Something was wrong with me.

I knew it the way I knew my own heartbeat, instinctively, undeniably, with a certainty that lived somewhere deeper than conscious thought.

I'd known it for weeks now, this creeping wrongness that had taken up residence beneath my skin and refused to leave.

At first, I'd blamed it on exhaustion. Double shifts at the hospital.

Not enough sleep. Too much coffee and not enough water.

Exhaustion didn't explain the hot flashes that rolled through my body without warning, turning my cheeks scarlet and my scrubs damp with sweat.

Exhaustion didn't explain the way certain smells—coffee brewing, cologne on a passing stranger, the sharp antiseptic tang of the supply closet, made me dizzy, desperate, and wanting in ways I refused to name.

Exhaustion didn't explain the persistent, maddening ache between my thighs that no amount of cold showers or desperate fingers in the dark could ease.

My suppressants weren't working anymore.

The realization had been creeping up on me for days, but standing in the hospital locker room at the end of another brutal twelve-hour shift, I could no longer deny it.

I stared at the small white pill in my palm, my salvation, my prison, my only defense against a biology that had been trying to destroy me since I was fifteen years old—and wanted to scream.

Six years. Six fucking years I'd been taking these things, choking them down every morning like communion wafers, organizing my entire life around the rigid schedule of doses and refills and carefully managed hormone levels.

They'd always worked. They'd kept me hidden.

Kept my scent locked away. Kept my heats suppressed to nothing more than a vague discomfort once every few months, easily managed with a heating pad and a Netflix binge.

They'd kept me safe.

Now they felt like sugar pills. I tossed the suppressant back, dry-swallowing it with a grimace that had nothing to do with the bitter coating on my tongue.

The pill scraped down my throat. Within minutes, minutes that felt like hours, the sharp edge of the wrongness dulled slightly.

But only slightly. Like pressing a cheap bandage over a wound that needed stitches and a blood transfusion and possibly last rites.

"You okay, Ava?" I startled so hard I nearly dropped my bag, spinning toward the voice with my heart hammering against my ribs. Stupid. Careless. Three years of looking over my shoulder and I'd let someone sneak up on me in a goddamn locker room.

Jenny Chen stood a few lockers down, pulling her dark hair into a ponytail, watching me with the mild concern of a coworker who'd noticed something off but wasn't invested enough to push. Beta. Safe. Normal. Everything I pretended to be.

"Fine," I managed, forcing my shoulders to relax, my expression to smooth into something approximating calm. "Just tired. Long shift."

"Tell me about it. That code blue in room 312 nearly killed me, and I was just watching." Jenny wrinkled her nose, then paused. Sniffed the air. Frowned slightly. "Hey, did you change your lotion or something? You smell different lately."

My blood turned to ice water in my veins.

If a Beta could smell something— If Jenny, with her dull human nose, could detect even a hint of change—

"New shampoo," I said, the lie coming automatically, smoothly, the product of years of practice. "Guess it's stronger than I thought. I'll switch back."

Jenny accepted this with an easy shrug, already turning back to her locker, already forgetting the conversation.

Why wouldn't she? Betas didn't know. Couldn't understand.

To them, scent was just scent, perfume or body wash or the lingering smell of hospital disinfectant that clung to everyone who worked here.

They didn't know that underneath the artificial fragrance of my "new shampoo," something else was leaking through.

Something sweet and heady and unmistakable to anyone with the nose to detect it.

They didn't know that the scent creeping through my carefully constructed defenses was a beacon. A signal. A goddamn mating call broadcasting to every Alpha in a three-block radius that there was an unbonded Omega nearby, ripe and ready and desperate to be claimed.

I grabbed my bag and fled.

The drive home was a blur of paranoia and barely controlled panic.

My hands shook on the steering wheel. My eyes jumped to the rearview mirror every few seconds, scanning the cars behind me, searching for familiar shapes, familiar faces, familiar threats.

I checked every vehicle that pulled up beside me at red lights.

Watched for black SUVs with tinted windows.

Watched for men in expensive suits with predatory smiles and eyes that had haunted my dreams for three years.

They're not here, I told myself, the mantra I'd repeated so many times it had lost all meaning. They're not here. They've forgotten about you. You're nobody. You're nothing. Just another face in a city of millions.

Three years. Three years I'd been running, hiding, building a life so small and quiet and unremarkable that surely they would have lost interest by now.

I'd changed my last name. Moved across the country.

Cut off everyone who'd ever known me. Became a ghost, a shadow, a girl with no past and no future and nothing to offer anyone.

Surely that was enough. They had better things to do than chase one worthless Omega across state lines. I didn't see the black SUV three cars back, maintaining perfect distance, matching my every turn with the practiced ease of someone who'd been doing the practice for a very long time.

I never did. My apartment was small and shabby and mine.

That was what mattered, I reminded myself as I climbed the three flights of stairs to my door, my legs aching and my lungs burning from a combination of exhaustion and the suppressant's side effects.

Four walls and a lock and a cheap security chain that wouldn't stop a determined intruder but made me feel marginally better anyway.

I lived alone. Answered to no one. Could come and go as I pleased, eat what I wanted, sleep when I wanted, exist without the constant weight of someone else's expectations pressing down on my shoulders.

Freedom.

That's what this was. Freedom. Even if it was lonely. Even if I sometimes lay awake at night, staring at the water-stained ceiling, and wondered if freedom was worth the price I'd paid for it.

Even if lately, the apartment hadn't felt like enough. I let myself in, locked the door behind me, and slid the chain into place. I dropped my bag on the floor, kicked off my shoes, and stood in the doorway of my bedroom and stared at the disaster that used to be my bed.

Pillows.

So many pillows.

I'd bought three more this week alone, I realized with dawning horror.

Three more, bringing the total to, I counted, my lips moving silently, eleven.

Eleven pillows on a bed meant for one person.

Plus the throw blankets. The fuzzy ones from Target, soft as clouds against my skin.

The weighted one from that felt like being held.

The cashmere throw I definitely couldn't afford but had purchased anyway in some kind of dazed state, handing over my credit card without even looking at the price tag.

All of them arranged in a specific pattern around my mattress. A wall of softness on every side. A barrier between myself and the world. A—

No.

I wasn't building a nest. I wasn't.

The suppressants had killed that instinct years ago. I was just... cold. The apartment was drafty, the heating unreliable, the windows single-pane and ancient. Anyone would want extra blankets in a place like this. Anyone would rearrange their bedding seven times in the past three days.

Anyone would wake up at three in the morning with an overwhelming urge to reorganize their closet by texture, spending two hours sorting sweaters from softest to least soft and not understanding why it mattered so much.

Anyone would find themselves standing in the home goods aisle at Target, piling throw pillows into their cart with shaking hands, unable to explain the desperate need driving them.

"This is fine," I whispered to the empty room, to the pile of soft things that definitely wasn't a nest, to the Omega instincts I'd spent six years trying to suppress. "I'm fine. Everything is fine."

My phone rang. I jumped so hard I nearly tripped over the ottoman I'd moved in front of the bedroom door.

For no reason. Just because it looked better there.

Not because some deep, primal part of my brain wanted a barrier between my sleeping space and the outside world, wanted to make my nest defensible, wanted—

Stop it. Stop.

I grabbed the phone from my bag with trembling hands.

Unknown number. I shouldn't answer. Unknown numbers were never good news. Unknown numbers could be telemarketers, could be scammers, could be—

Could be them.

My thumb swiped across the screen before I could stop myself, some suicidal impulse overriding three years of carefully cultivated survival instincts.

"Hello?"

"Ava? Sweetheart, is that you?" The voice was warm. Familiar-ish, in the way that certain vocal patterns triggered half-buried memories. Female, older, with that particular cadence of someone who'd known you when you were young, when you were different, when you were still innocent enough to trust.

"Who is this?"

"It's Carol! Your Aunt Carol—well, not really your aunt, but you know what I mean. I was a friend of your mother's, back before... well. Before."

My grip tightened on the phone until my knuckles went white.

My mother.