Chapter 22 #2
"Not like yours," he pressed, moving closer, lowering his voice to something almost intimate. "I can smell it on you. Something's different tonight." My heart stuttered. Could he tell? Did he know?
"I'm fine, Ethan," I said, forcing steel into my voice, meeting his analytical gaze without flinching.
"You're not," he countered, his head tilting slightly, studying me like I was a puzzle he was determined to solve. "But you don't trust me enough to tell me why. That's... unfortunate."
"Why? Because you want to help me?" I couldn't keep the bitterness out of my voice.
"Because we all do," he said quietly, something almost like hurt flickering behind his clinical mask. "We've only ever wanted to help you, Ava. To take care of you. The data on Omega wellbeing is clear — pack bonds provide stability, security—"
"I don't want to hear about data," I cut him off, setting down the champagne glass harder than necessary, the crystal ringing against the bar top. "I don't want to hear about bonds or biology or what's supposed to make me happy."
"Then what do you want?" he asked, and for a moment, he sounded genuinely curious. Genuinely confused.
To be free, I thought. To choose my own life. To be more than a data point in your research.
"I want to be left alone," I said instead, and walked away before he could quote more statistics at me.
Leo found me in the library, hidden behind a shelf of books, trying to make myself small enough to disappear.
He was only twenty-three, just five years older than me, but sometimes he seemed like the oldest of all of them.
Not in maturity, god no, but in the weight behind his eyes.
The way his jokes always felt like armor.
David's biological son from a one-night stand, discovered at eight years old and thrown into a world he'd never asked for.
Maybe that's why he saw through me so easily. He knew what it felt like to not fit.
"There's my favorite flight risk," he said, dropping into the chair across from me with a grin that didn't reach his hazel eyes. "Having fun?"
"Go away, Leo," I muttered, not looking up from the book I wasn't reading.
"Can't," he replied cheerfully, propping his feet up on the table, crossing his arms behind his head in a pose of deliberate casualness. "I've been assigned guard duty. Mason's worried you're going to make a break for it."
My blood went cold. "I'm not going anywhere," I said, forcing the words out through numb lips.
"Liar," Leo said softly, the teasing gone from his voice, something raw and knowing taking its place. "You've got running in your eyes, Red. Had it since the day you presented. We all see it."
I didn't say anything. Couldn't say anything.
"You know what I think?" He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hazel eyes intense and searching. "I think you're not scared of us. I think you're scared of how much you want us."
My heart stopped.
"I think," he continued, relentless, each word landing like a blow, "that every time Mason touches you, you want to lean in.
Every time Caleb gives you one of his little carvings, you want to cry.
Every time Ethan explains why we'd be good for you, part of you believes him.
And every time I make you laugh, you hate yourself for it. "
"Stop," I whispered, my voice cracking.
"I think you love us, Ava," Leo said, his voice dropping to something almost tender, almost wounded. "Already. And that terrifies you."
I stood up so fast my chair scraped against the floor, the sound jarring in the quiet library.
"You don't know anything about what I feel," I said, my voice shaking, my hands trembling at my sides.
"Don't I?" He stood too, blocking my path to the door, his tall frame suddenly seeming to take up all the space in the room. "I've watched you for three years. Watched you fight it. Watched you pretend you don't feel the pull. But I see you. I've always seen you."
"So what?" I was crying now, tears streaming down my face, and I couldn't stop them. "So what if I do feel something? That doesn't mean I have to give in. That doesn't mean I have to become your... your..."
"Our Omega?" he finished quietly, the word hanging in the air between us like a sentence. A life sentence.
"I'm not going to be someone's possession," I choked out, backing away from him, my back hitting the bookshelf. "I'm not going to spend my life as some... thing that belongs to you. I won't give up everything I am just to keep four possessive Alphas happy."
Leo's face went pale, his cocky mask crumbling into something that looked almost like pain.
"That's not what we want—" he started, reaching for me.
"Isn't it?" I slapped his hand away, my voice rising. "Four Alphas, one Omega. I know how that story ends, Leo. I become the center of your world, and in exchange, I disappear. I give up my dreams, my independence, my whole fucking identity—"
"Ava, please—"
"I can't," I sobbed, pushing past him toward the door. "I won't."
And then I ran. Not to the front door, they'd be watching that. Not to the back, too many people. I ran to the service entrance, just like my mother had told me, and burst out into the cold night air.
The car was exactly where she'd said it would be. Three blocks east. Keys under the mat. A bag of supplies in the trunk.
I drove until dawn, my mother's words echoing in my head: Run and don't stop until you've built a life that's yours.
I stopped at a clinic in a town I'd never heard of, used one of the fake names my mother had prepared, got the suppressants that would bury my Omega nature so deep I could almost pretend it didn't exist.
I called her from a payphone two days later.
"Are you safe?" she asked, her voice carefully controlled, giving nothing away in case anyone was listening.
"I'm safe," I confirmed, clutching the phone like a lifeline. "Mom, I don't know how to thank you—"
"You thank me by living," she cut in, her voice cracking just slightly. "You thank me by being happy. By being free."
"I love you."
"I love you too, baby." A pause. A shaky breath. "Now hang up and don't call again for at least six months. They're watching me. Let them think I'm as heartbroken and clueless as everyone else."
"Mom—"
"Go, Avalon. Go live your life. And if you ever decide to come back, I'll be here. But only if it's what you truly want."
I hung up before I could change my mind. For three years, I ran. Changed cities every few months. Used the names my mother had created, spent the money she'd saved, built a life that was mine and mine alone.
The suppressants made me sick sometimes, headaches, nausea, a bone-deep exhaustion that never quite went away.
I took them religiously, because the alternative was becoming the girl I'd been at that party.
The girl who couldn't stop crying because she felt too much for four men she didn't want to love.
I told myself I was free.
I told myself I'd escaped.
I told myself the ache in my chest was just withdrawal from the suppressants, not longing for the people I'd left behind.
I told myself a lot of lies. Then they found me.
Here I am. Back where I started. Exactly where I swore I'd never be.