Away
Lyra
Isit wedged between Owen and Adrian in the cab of the truck, and I can't make my mind hold onto anything.
Adrian's thigh is pressed against mine on one side, etched with muscle even through his jeans.
His forearm is braced on his leg as he drives, veins standing out along it every time he shifts gears.
Owen sits on my other side, his long legs angled a little awkward in the small space.
His knee bumps mine every time the truck rolls over a pothole… which is often.
Somewhere far down inside me, I know I should be afraid. Some small part of me still is. But the fear has sunk to the bottom of something deep and dark, and what's left up here on the surface are scents swirling around me.
Crisp pine and bright lemon. Sage runs underneath it all. It moves through me every time I breathe, and breathing is the only thing I seem able to do on purpose.
My fingers find the frayed cuff of the flannel Adrian gave me before we left. It swallows my hands. I work my thumb over the worn hem, back and forth, back and forth, until the fabric goes warm under my touch.
If I keep my mind on the thread, I don't have to feel Crispin's hands. The weight of him pressing me down. The clove and musk of him crowding into my throat.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
And my entire body jolts sideways into Adrian's arm. Thankfully, he doesn't say anything. He just shifts his weight a little, giving me more room without making it a thing.
He seems like a pretty decent guy.
It doesn't really surprise me. After all, Owen is an amazing person, so of course his friends would be amazing too.
Outside the window, the city thins. The streetlights spread apart. Buildings shrink into houses, and the houses get smaller and more tired the farther we go, paint peeling, gutters sagging, lawns gone shaggy and wild.
I watch all of it slide past the glass and none of it reaches me. It's only shapes. Only light sliding by.
I keep breathing Owen and Adrian in, thinking only about the hem, letting the world stay in shapes.
My wrists throb where the sleeves cover them. Lower down, deeper in, there's a raw ache that pulses in time with the truck. I press my knees together against the sensation and keep my eyes on the window.
Adrian slows and steers wide around a crater in the pavement. The old truck swings smoothly around it. We turn onto a street of small houses, then he pulls into a gravel drive beside a pale blue one and cuts the engine.
The truck shudders once and goes still.
Both men open their doors. The warm press of them on either side of me is gone all at once. The seat goes cold, and my hands start to shake again.
Owen turns back to me and reaches out. His hand finds mine where it's lost inside the flannel. He closes his warm fingers around the cuff and the hand buried in it.
"Careful." He guides me toward him, then down onto the gravel, slow, keeping hold of me the whole way. "Watch your step."
The drop isn't far, but my knees don't trust the ground. I lean into Owen’s grip harder than I mean to, and he takes the weight without a word.
We walk toward Adrian, waiting for us on the little porch.
Owen keeps my hand tucked in his, and I press into his side as we go, close enough that my shoulder fits against his ribs.
My legs carry me up the steps on their own.
Terracotta pots line the rail and glass sun-catchers turn under the eaves, throwing small pink flashes across the boards, and I put one foot in front of the other and make myself keep moving.
"Owen." My voice comes out thin. "Does your mate know I'm here?"
For a quick moment, Owen's face goes still. His eyes cut to Adrian, and something passes between them before he smiles like he just realized what I meant.
"Yeah." His warm hazel eyes meet mine. "I texted Nico before we left."
Nico.
His name is Nico.
While Owen has talked about his mate often with me, I fear I'm going to forget the alpha’s name and insult this alpha in his own house.
It's the only clear thought I've managed in an hour, and I hold on to it with both hands.
Adrian pushes the door open and waves me through.
I step inside, and a rush of scents hit me at once.
It’s everywhere in this room. Worked into the walls, into the couch, into the air itself.
Worn leather and rich hazelnut. Pine and sage and lemon, and something warm underneath all of it that I can’t quite place.
It pours into me and my whole body comes awake under the flannel.
My skin prickles.
Heat rolls down through me, low and bright and good, so good that my breath catches on it.
And I fucking hate it.
My body has no right to feel anything good. Not right now. Not with my wrists gone purple and that horrible ache still sitting low between my legs where he put it.
And yet, here I am going warm and soft in a stranger's doorway.
I want to peel this feeling off my own skin. I want to scream until it stops. But instead I press my lips together and dig my nails into my palms inside the sleeves.
"Please, sit." Owen's hand hovers at my back. "You look like you're about to pass out."
I let him guide me to a gray couch, then I sink down. It gives under me, soft, worn through by years of people using it. Exhausted, my body sags into it as I curl my fingers into the cushion and hold on.
"How are you doing?" Owen lowers himself beside me, keeping a respectable stretch of space between us.
I wish he were closer. I wish he’d hold me and rub that bright lemon-sage scent all over every inch of me. I want to be coated in it. Adrian’s too.
I want to sink into my nest, and think about nothing other than the lush aromas of these men.
"Lyra?" Owen whispers my name.
I open my mouth to answer him, but nothing comes out.
Footsteps come down the hall, even and quick, and then an alpha appears.
I know him from the photo in Owen's office.
Nico.
He's big with black hair pushed back off his face, a plain gray shirt pulled tight across his shoulders, and the second my eyes land on him, awareness sparks under my skin.
Heat floods me. Fast and hard and wrong.
He's gorgeous.
The thought surfaces through the fog, stupid and clear.
Dark stubble shadows his jaw, his mouth is set in a hard line, and his forearms are thick and corded where his sleeves are shoved back.
He's sexy in a way that pulls low in my belly, and my eyes drag over every inch of him before I can stop myself.
Some sick part of me wonders what the weight of him would feel like pressed down on top of me.
My stomach turns over as slick gathers between my thighs, warm and shameful. My face burns with it, and I press my knees together, but it only drags at the ache, making it worse.
What the fuck is happening to me?
I want to hit myself.
I want to hit myself until my body quits doing this.
Nico is a stranger to me, and I'm wet for him on his own couch, not even a full day after another alpha held me down and violated me. Disgust climbs my throat so fast I nearly gag on it.
"You must be Lyra." Nico’s voice is so gentle. It reaches me from far off, through the roar of my own pulse. "I'm Nicolás, but you can call me Nico. Any friend of Owen's is welcome here. Stay as long as you need."
I nod.
Or at least I think I nod.
My hands stay fisted in the cushions.
Nico is suddenly closer, lowering himself onto the loveseat across from me, slowly, leaving all that room between us, and even from there his scent finds me. Leather and dark amber and warm earth.
My body strains toward the aroma, and I absolutely hate it.
Horrified, I press my nails deeper into my palms.
"I have to ask you something." Nico’s gaze drops to my neck, and he frowns. It takes me a full second to remember the hickey Crispin put there.
I reach up and cover both sides of my neck, waiting for him to spit it out already.
"What are you running from, omega?" he finally asks.
The question drops straight through me and drags me back. My father's office. The velvet couch under my spine. Crispin's weight bearing down. Clove and musk filling my mouth until I couldn't breathe around it.
Tears sting the back of my eyes.
"I'm not asking what happened to you." The alpha’s voice drops even lower, whispering now. "I only need to know if I should expect an angry alpha at my door, looking for his mate."
"I'm n-not mated." My words crack in the middle. I drag the sleeve of the flannel under my nose next, not caring how unladylike it is. "Nobody's looking for me here. I don't even have a phone for anyone to track." My breath saws in and out. "I'll be gone in a day or two. I promise."
"You can stay as long as you want." Owen sets his hand on my knee, light, warm through the flannel draped over them.
But I can't take his kindness right now.
Not on top of everything that’s swirling in my head.
It's too much.
I’m so scared, and confused, and angry. And Nico is too close, and his scent keeps reaching into me and lighting me up from the inside out.
Even the way Adrian is looking at me is too much.
He stands across the room with his back against the wall, arms crossed over a white shirt that clings to every perfect line of him. His pine scent drifts to me from all the way over there and curls low in my belly.
I have to get out of this room before I come apart on their couch.
"Would it be okay if I washed up?" The words jump out of my mouth. "Please. I need a minute."
"Of course." Nico's brow pulls tight with worry.
"I'll show you." Owen is already on his feet. "I've got some clothes you can borrow."
I push up off the couch too fast, and the room tips. Nico rises at the same moment, reaching out to steady me. His scent hits me full in the face, and for one horrible second my body sways toward him, praying he’ll touch me more.
"It’s okay." Owen's hand closes around mine, steadying me. Then he moves.
He leads me down the hall into a small bathroom with pale yellow tile. He leans over the tub and tells me something about the hot water and how far to crank the knob, but the words dissolve before they reach me.
All I hear is my own blood.
Slick slides slowly over the seam of my sex, and I clamp my thighs together as I watch Owen work.
His hands move over the fixtures, sure and easy, and I can't stop staring at the veins standing up along the backs of them.
Big hands. I want them on me. I want them dragging up under the flannel and spread wide over my bare skin, and the desire comes on so sudden and so total that my breath goes shallow.
Owen turns and points to a stack of towels under the sink, saying something I don't catch. His hair falls shaggily over his forehead when he leans down, and my fingers twitch inside the sleeves.
I want to reach up and drag both hands through it.
The urge sits right there at the ends of my arms, and I fist the flannel tighter and hold still until it passes.
Then Owen straightens, gives me a small nod, and steps out.
The door clicks shut, and my legs give out.
I slide down the wall to the floor and pull my knees up to my chest.
I don't understand any of this.
Not what's happening to me, not what my body is doing, reaching and slicking and burning for men I don’t even know while the bruises are still fresh on my wrists. It's too much and none of it makes sense and I can't make it stop.
The sob I've been swallowing since the doorway finally tears loose.
My wrists throb. The ache low in my body throbs along with them.
Everything he did to me is still there on my skin, and now there's this new horror stacked on top of it, this thing my body keeps doing, reaching and reaching for three strangers when it should be curled up somewhere just trying to survive.
And on top of all this, I’m sure Crispin is out there looking for me.
And he’ll probably find me.
I press both hands over my mouth to keep from screaming. I don't know where I go from here, and I don't know how to make my body stop.
The shower runs on behind me, and steam creeps out over the top of the curtain and curls through the small room, settling damp on my skin and beading in my hair.
It softens the edges of everything. I cry into my palms as quietly as I can, swallowing every sound before it can carry through the door, shoulders jerking with the effort of holding it in.
I fold down over my knees on the cold tile and let the crushing sadness drag me under.