Chapter 6
Charlie
Adrian’s fingers brushed against mine before curling around them in a gentle way. I had to blink the world back into existence, unsure of how long I sat stiffly on Alpha Harris’s lap.
“Come on,” he said, voice low. “They’ll want food soon.” So did I, but that part was left unsaid. It was well past my dinner time, and my body was protesting a missed lunch, and now a late dinner.
I slipped from the Alpha’s lap, a chill replacing the warmed against my backside as I did so.
Adrian didn’t let go of my hand, which I wasn’t sure if I liked or not. It’d been so long since I’d seen him; so long since I got to speak my mind to someone who actually cared about what I thought. Not that I’d willing talk openly here in a stranger’s house.
He led me down the hall, the Alpha’s voices drifting after us. Their words were low, but still whispered around in the air, following us like a breeze through an open window.
Adrian didn’t flinch. He just kept walking, my hand clasped in his own. My palm was slightly sweaty, but not from fear. Never with Adrian. But from the way my mind instantly spun in swirls of thoughts that wouldn’t stop.
The kitchen was warm, clean, and quiet. He let go of my hand and moved to the counter, pulling out bread, slicing it with practiced ease.
I followed mechanically. As if we’d done this a hundred times before. Making sandwiches was easy, something I did do on kitchen duty weekly.
We worked in silence for a while, me laying out slices, him layering meat and cheese like it mattered.
“You okay?” he asked eventually, not looking up.
I didn’t answer. Truthfully, I wasn’t. I hadn’t been in a very long time. Most likely not since that first time I was rented out.
I knew my role, knew my place. But it was never going to get any easier. Not for our kind. I wasn’t lucky enough to be picked by a kind, caring Alpha, and that wasn’t ever going to change.
I glanced at him. He was focused, calm. But his hands moved faster now. Adrian was content, not seeming to have a care in the world as he placed another layer on the bread.
The voices in the other room rose in laughter, echoing off the mostly bear walls.
“I’ve worried about you,” Adrian lifted his eyes to me briefly. “I hated leaving you.”
“Everyone leaves.” The words were whispered, afraid that somehow the Alphas would be able to hear them.
People left. Left me disappointed and sad more than anything. but each of the Omegas I befriended over the years disappeared. Either like how Adrian left, who got a happy ending it seemed, or they were killed by the hands of an Alpha.
My ending would most likely be at the hands of one, too. It was destiny, or so my gut told me.
“It’s different here.”
I wanted to huff at the words, but kept it under control.
Yeah, it was different here. Alpha Harris wasn’t rude or commanding, yet. But it wasn’t even the first twenty-four hours with me in his care. There was plenty of time for him to destroy me.
Well, there wasn’t much left of me to be destroyed.
Adrian’s hands moved, stacking sandwiches like it was a ritual. I watched him, the way he always made the corners line up, like symmetry could protect us. It was a practiced move that we learned together through our schooling, yet he always made it look ten times better than myself.
“You remember the linen closet?” he asked suddenly, voice soft.
I blinked. “Which time?” I remembered a lot of times, both good and bad.
He smiled, just barely. “The time we hid there during inspection.”
I did remember. The hallway had smelled like bleach and fear.
The Betas were stomping through rooms, checking drawers and perfection of rooms. Adrian had grabbed my wrist and pulled me into the closet, wedging us between folded sheets and old towels.
We were fifteen, and oftentimes trouble found us when we least expected it.
“You were shaking.”
“I thought they’d find us.”
“They didn’t,” he said. “We stayed there for hours. You fell asleep on my shoulder.”
I looked down at the sandwich in my hands. “It was warm.”
“It was quiet,” Adrian said. “No rules. No eyes. Just us.”
I nodded. That closet had felt like a secret. “You hummed something,” I recalled. “I didn’t know the tune.”
“I made it up,” he shrugged, like it hadn’t been a big of a deal. But to me, it meant more than anything I ever could of thought. “For you.”
Growing up at Lockswell’s, there were few things I wanted to remember; few things that mattered to lock away in my memories. The times with Adrian were all I ever wanted to never forget.
He had been the one thing that made my days worth living. His lightness, his hopefulness, gave me just a bit of a boost to keep my head above water.
When one day, I woke up and Adrian wasn’t at breakfast, I knew. I knew he had been taken off the property and wouldn’t return. Living at Lockswells’ wasn’t great after that. Not that it was all that cracked up to be to begin with.
“I don’t miss it,” Adrian mumbled, wiping the counter of crumbs after placing the sandwiches on a plate. Two on each plate.
Maybe I wasn’t allowed dinner, since I had yet to service my Alpha. Omegas didn’t get rewards without first doing something to earn it. And I had yet to do a single thing to prove my worth, my time, towards the Alpha who wanted me for the time being.
My stomach grumbled, asking for food that it wouldn’t receive. It wouldn’t be the first, nor would it be the last.
“You’ll see. It’s better on the outside.”
I dropped my eyes, away from the food. He could say that about himself, but I knew better. I knew that it was just as bad, if not worse, to be outside of the prison gates that contained Omegas rather than out here. I knew the power that Alphas held, where there were less rules they had to follow.
It was only a matter of time before my entire body was black and blue. And who knows, it was likely that the two Alphas in the other room were talking about just that.
“I wish you’d believe me, but I understand why you can’t.” Adrian shot me a sad smile, one that was filled with not just sadness and understanding, but also knowledge of what he’d himself been through.
“All Alphas aren’t the same,” I said, voice low but steady. He had to know that. He’d been marked by clients’, ones who ignored the rules, who carved their cruelty into him like it was owed.
“Some of us aren’t the monsters you were conditioned to fear.”
I flinched, turning sharply. My hip slammed into the counter’s edge, the jolt grounding me in the moment. Alpha Harris stood there, gaze unreadable, like he was waiting to see which version of him I’d choose to believe.
“You think I don’t know what they did to you?” he asked. “What they made you believe?”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. The words were there, but they were locked behind the rules I’d swallowed for years.
He stepped closer, not enough to crowd me, just enough to be felt. “You don’t have to trust me. But don’t lie to yourself about what you see.”
I looked at him then. Really looked. And for a moment, I didn’t see an Alpha. I saw someone who’d been broken differently. Someone who’d learned how to carry it without letting it rot him from the inside.
Alpha Harris didn’t step back nor did he didn’t raise his voice. He just looked at me like he saw something I hadn’t meant to show.
“I used to flinch too,” he said. “Not from pain. From kindness.”
That stopped me.
He went on, voice steady but low. “It felt like a trick. Like softness was just the setup for something worse.”
I didn’t move.
“I learned to brace for silence. For the moment after someone said they cared because that’s when the rules changed.” His gaze didn’t waver. “So I stopped believing in softness. Until I met someone who didn’t ask me to.”
I swallowed. The counter edge still pressed into my side, grounding me.
“You don’t have to trust me,” he said again. “But don’t punish yourself for surviving the way you had to.”
Then he stepped back. Just enough to give me space.
“How about we get some dinner, before it gets too much later.”
I managed to nod. I didn’t move until he did, and I still waited a good thirty seconds before I got my feet to carry me in the same direction.
Somehow, through the few seconds my attention was on Alpha Harris, Adrian left the kitchen, and with it the only bit of bravery I had.
My knees threatened to fall, weak as my thoughts jumbled into one giant mess.
Just because an Alpha feared something, didn’t man I feared the same thing, though. I didn’t flinch, exactly. I was just…accustomed to how pain came with touch. I was accustomed to my thoughts not mattering to another. I was…an Omega.
Omegas were to keep quiet, to serve, and do was they were told.
I feared pain, which in turn caused fear to touch. It was normal. And I had been taught ways to ignore it, to ignore the fear that would always be invoked into my soul.
And I needed to remember that right now, because once my feet got me to Alpha Harris, I had to shut it off. The fog needed to return so I could remember my place.
There was no hope of me becoming like Adrian. I wasn’t someone’s pick.
I was simply here because I was available.
When I got to the dining room, one single glance was more than enough to calculate my next move. Moore and Adrian sat in chairs, as though they were equals. They shared one plate with two sandwiches between them. Adrian had a smile on his lips, a look of pure happiness in his eyes.
He was adored here.
I was not.
I was only an Omega who was conditioned, shaped, rehearsed under a hundred different rules.
I sank to my knees beside Alpha Harris’s chair, head bowed, eyes shut against the room’s weight.
My stomach gave a soft, hollow protest. But hunger didn’t mean I deserved anything. It was just another reminder: need didn’t equal permission.
Alpha Harris didn’t speak right away. He ignored me, as I was used to. For I was merely just a piece of furniture, taking up space with my presence alone.