Chapter 1 #2
My mother had been dead for two years. Cancer, quick and brutal, discovered too late and spreading too fast. I'd gotten the call from David, from my stepfather, the man who'd raised me since I was ten, the man who'd given me everything and taken so much more in return—and I'd sat in this very apartment and cried for three hours straight.
I hadn't gone to the funeral.
Couldn't go to the funeral.
Couldn't risk being in the same room as them. Couldn't risk their scents, their eyes, their hands, their voices whispering little fox and Red and ours, you're ours, you were always ours—
"I'm sorry," I said carefully, shoving the memories down, locking them away where they couldn't hurt me. "I don't remember a Carol. Are you sure you have the right number?"
"Of course you don't remember me, sweetheart.
You were so young when I moved away. Just a little thing, always trailing after those brothers of yours like a baby duck.
" A soft laugh. "But I've been thinking about you lately.
About how alone you must be out there. Your mother talked about you all the time, you know, right up until the end.
How proud she was of you. How much she worried. "
Something cold slithered down my spine, settling into my gut like a stone.
My mother had known. Had always known. Had helped me run, had given me money and suppressants and a bus ticket out of town, had looked at me with eyes full of grief and guilt and said go, baby, don't look back, don't ever come back.
Would she have talked about me to a stranger? Would she have broken my cover, risked my safety, for what—gossip? Reminiscing?
Trap, whispered the voice in my head. The one that had kept me alive this long. This is a trap.
"I'm sorry," I said again, my voice hardening. "I really don't remember you. And I have to go—"
"Wait! Please, sweetheart, just—just hear me out." The voice cracked, wet with unshed tears. "I promised her. Before she passed. I sat by her bed and I held her hand and I promised I would look out for you. She was so worried, Ava. About you being alone. About you having no one."
My throat tightened. I was alone. Completely, devastatingly alone.
Three years without family. Without pack.
Without anyone who knew my real name, my real designation, my real self.
Three years of twelve-hour shifts and frozen dinners and Netflix marathons that stretched until early morning hours because I couldn't stand the silence of my own apartment.
Three years of falling asleep in a pile of blankets that never quite filled the hollow space in my chest, no matter how many I bought, no matter how carefully I arranged them.
"What do you want?" I heard myself ask.
"I have a cabin," Carol said, her voice brightening with hope.
"Up in the mountains. Powder Mountain, do you know it?
Beautiful area—fresh air, gorgeous views, completely isolated.
I'm getting a group together for a little ski trip next week.
Nothing fancy, just some old friends reconnecting.
And I thought... well, I thought you might like to come. "
A ski trip. With a stranger who claimed to know my mother.
This is a trap.
"Get out of the city for a bit," Carol continued. "Breathe some mountain air. Rest. Heal." A pause, weighted with meaning. "You sound so tired, sweetheart. So... worn down. Your mother would have hated to see you like this."
"You don't know what I look like." I told her with a bit more bite than I intended.
"I can hear it in your voice. The exhaustion. The loneliness." Another pause. "The fear."
My blood ran cold.
"I should go," I said.
"Just think about it. That's all I ask. I'll send you the details—the address, the dates, everything—and you can decide. No pressure. No expectations." A soft, grandmotherly sigh. "It would mean so much to me, Ava. To honor your mother's memory. She loved you so much. She wanted you to be happy."
Low blow. Manipulative as hell.
It worked anyway.
Because God, I was so tired of being alone. So tired of jumping at shadows and checking locks and sleeping with a knife under my pillow. So tired of this half-life I'd built, this existence that wasn't really living at all, just surviving, just enduring, day after day after day.
What was the point of running if this was all I had to run toward? "Okay," I said. "Send me the details. I'll... I'll think about it."
I could practically hear Carol's smile through the phone, wide and warm and somehow hungry. "Wonderful. I'll email everything tonight. I can't wait to see you, sweetheart. It's been far too long."
The line went dead. I stood in my cramped apartment, phone in hand, surrounded by the pillows and blankets and soft things that definitely weren't a nest, and tried to convince myself I hadn't just made a terrible mistake.
The hollow feeling in my chest pulsed like a second heartbeat.
Trap, the voice whispered.
Maybe, I whispered back. But maybe it's worth it. Maybe anything is better than this.
I didn't notice that the cashmere throw I couldn't afford—the one I'd bought in a fugue state, the one I slept with every single night—carried the faintest hint of a scent I hadn't consciously smelled in three years.
Honey. Sunshine. Fresh-cut grass.
Mason.
That night, I couldn't sleep.
I took two suppressants instead of one, washing them down with water that tasted like copper and desperation.
It was dangerous, doubling up. The pamphlet that came with the pills warned against it in bold red letters: Do not exceed recommended dosage.
May cause nausea, dizziness, and rebound symptoms.
I didn't care.
My whole body ached, a deep, bone-level throbbing that seemed to pulse in time with my heartbeat.
My skin felt too tight, like I'd grown overnight and my flesh hadn't caught up.
My breasts were swollen and tender, my nipples so sensitive that even the soft cotton of my sleep shirt felt like sandpaper.
My lower belly cramped with a dull, insistent pressure that was achingly familiar.
And between my legs...
Slick.
I was producing slick. Not a lot. Not the flood that came with a full heat, the embarrassing gush of wetness that had soaked through my jeans the first and only time I'd ever experienced it.
But enough. Enough to dampen my underwear.
Enough to make my inner thighs slip against each other when I walked.
Enough to release the faintest whisper of my true scent into the air.
Burnt sugar. Ripe summer peaches. And something electric, crackling, like the air before a thunderstorm. The scent of an unbonded Omega on the edge of heat. The scent I'd spent six years and thousands of dollars trying to suppress.
"No," I growled, kicking off my blankets—then immediately pulling them back, because I needed them, needed the weight and the warmth and the cocoon of softness around me.
My hands moved without permission, tucking the fabric tighter, building the walls higher.
"No, no, no. This isn't happening. I won't let this happen. "
I'd worked so hard. Sacrificed so much. Left behind everything and everyone I'd ever known just to escape this fate—the fate of being an Omega in a world that saw my designation as a commodity, a prize, a thing to be owned.
I would not go back.
I would not.
Even as I made the silent vow, my hands continued their traitorous work. Adjusting the pillows. Smoothing the blankets. Arranging everything just so, in patterns that made no logical sense but satisfied something deep and primal in my hindbrain.
Building walls. Building protection. Building a nest.
I curled into its center, surrounded by softness, and tried to pretend I was still in control.
I wasn't.
I hadn't been in control since the moment I answered that phone.
The dreams came for me like they always did.
They started soft, almost gentle—a warmth spreading through my limbs, a sense of safety I hadn't felt in years. I was floating in darkness, cradled by something I couldn't see, rocked like a child in loving arms.
Then the hands appeared.
Large, warm, and everywhere, sliding over my skin with proprietary ease. Callused palms cupping my breasts. Long fingers tangling in my hair, tilting my head back to expose my throat. Breath hot against my pulse point, lips brushing the sensitive skin where my scent gland throbbed with need.
And the scents. God, the scents.
Honey and sunshine and fresh-cut grass—deceptively sweet, deceptively soft, hiding something dangerous underneath.
Pine and woodsmoke and bitter winter cold—sharp and harsh and utterly unforgiving.
Cedar and old books and the electric crackle of ozone—calm and controlled and patient as death.
Dark chocolate and whiskey and something spiced—playful and warm and vicious when provoked.
Four scents I'd tried desperately to forget. Four faces that haunted me every goddamn night no matter how many suppressants I took, no matter how far I ran, no matter how hard I tried to convince myself I'd never known them at all.
Mason. The golden boy. The Prime. A smile like sunshine, eyes like honey, and hands gentle even when they held me down. In the dream, he pressed his forehead to mine, his breath mingling with my own.
"There's our girl," he murmured, and his voice was exactly as I remembered—warm,fond, and absolutely certain of his ownership. "Missed you, Red. Missed you so fucking much."
Caleb. The enforcer. Ice-cold and brutal, except when he looked at me. Then something cracked in his frozen facade, something hungry and desperate bleeding through. In the dream, his teeth scraped against my throat, not quite biting, not yet.
"You ran," he growled, and even in sleep, I shivered at the promise of violence in his tone. "You ran and you hid and you made us hunt you for three years. Do you have any idea what I'm going to do to you?"