Chapter Fifteen
A nders was the first to notice me standing there, small and fragile against the frame of the doorway, too quiet for three alpha males to notice. I didn't breathe; my heart couldn’t decide on which beat to take.
"You don’t understand!" Blake said, and my skin prickled at the thunder in his voice. Their words circled, suffocated.
"I understand just fine," Zach snapped. "You think you can control everything?" Flashbacks stung like bees... voices raised, my mother screaming, the smell of blood. The scent of them grew wild, animals scrapping in a cage. Without realizing it, my hand found the doorknob. Then I was gone, the door’s explosive crack behind me leaving a fresh silence in my place.
“Fuck, now you’ve scared her!” Zach yelled.
“Calm it down,” Anders said.
"No... he’s too bloody focused on protocol to even see what’s happening!" Zach yelled. I could hear his pacing, the urgent beat of his feet on hardwood floors. “There’s something she’s not telling us!”
Blake’s voice calmed. "I see exactly what’s happening. You’re the one ignoring reality."
Reality. I almost laughed, still listening in from the other side of the door.
"We should talk to her about this." Anders’s voice was calm. "We can’t make decisions for her."
“She needs protecting!” Blake said, voice straining against itself. If only he knew the half of it! "She’s an Omega, and you know what that means. She needs us—"
"—to leave her alone!" Anders’s words spilled out. "I don’t care about your rules. We can’t just swoop in and declare ourselves."
The air had a heartbeat, thick with tension and pheromones. My skin felt tight, too hot. I listened in from the corridor. Their words were louder, sharper, as if they needed to be cut into pieces.
My father’s face flared like a match. His last words licked my skin and fled, leaving scorch marks behind.
"Summer?"
The sound of my name in Blake’s voice was an anchor in a sea of chaos, a hook that caught me before I could sink completely into my memories. I wasn’t sixteen. Not anymore. Not again.
My breathing turned shallow, stuttering.
My heart was too big in my chest.
"Let her make up her own damn mind," Zach said, softer now. A different kind of plea.
The air crackled with animosity, a volatile energy that warped my perspective, fueled by their rage. The world contracted, dissolved around me, until nothing remained but the path I took before. Back on the night that changed everything.
My panicked footsteps on the hallway floor ricocheted through my skull.
Air rushed in, precious and raw, and with it the thin whistle of breath through my nose. I pushed against the stairwell door and stumbled downward, each flight more distant, more frantic than the last. The path blurred. I counted each floor, whispered the numbers as I passed them by: 8, 7, 6, 5.
A little over three years ago, I had moved to Shaker City to find the only thing that mattered... freedom. Freedom from the laws that tried to make omegas into broodmares. Freedom from the pack that killed my parents, and now, now I needed freedom from the very alphas that promised to keep me safe. I needed the freedom to run.
4, 3, 2.
And now I was nineteen, hiding from the system that had tried to claim me. I didn’t need anyone to remind me what the world was like.
1.
The street.
Sidewalks swarmed with bodies, and I couldn’t tell if they were obstacles or if I was the obstacle myself, a rogue piece out of place in a pattern that would never fit me. It felt like before. It felt like the gunfire. My father’s body on the floor, my mother over him, blood seeping around them. "Go!" she had screamed at me. "Run!" I had. It had saved me. It always saved me.
I could still hear the low throb of Zach’s pacing, of Blake’s voice rising like a storm. I could still smell their argument as it twisted and turned, bleeding through the room until I lost myself in the panic of that memory, in their argument, and my past.
Breathe.
I dodged between two Beta women, heard their huffing voices behind me. Someone else turned to look, but I didn’t care, didn’t care about anything but putting distance between me and them. Distance between now and what had already been. Darkness was still ahead of me, each breath newly wrung from the chill of the night sky.
"Summer?"
The sound of my name again. This time, gentler, softer, landing on skin instead of bone.
"Summer!" A figure moved across the street, quick and decisive.
Maddie.
Her hair was pulled back in a sloppy bun, the loose strands flaming bright under streetlights as they escaped, snapped away from her head. She was a beacon, a warning light. But what was she warning me about?
I didn’t remember crossing the street, only that suddenly she was in front of me, arms out, ready to catch what was already falling.
"I’m..." I said, but the word didn’t finish, lost somewhere behind my shallow gasps and sharp-edged urgency that told me I couldn’t stop, couldn’t stop the tears that bled out of me.
"Oh my god," Maddie said. Her voice rose, and carried me with it. I leaned into her, solid ground after running on clouds, collapsing in her embrace.
"It’s okay," she said. "I’ve got you. I’m right here."
We stayed like that, her arms a constant pressure, until my pulse found something like a rhythm and my breath found something like a pattern.
"You know what we need?" she said, a grin in her voice, teasing out a laugh I didn’t know was in me.
"What?" I managed.
"Hot chocolate. With so much whipped cream, you can’t see the drink underneath." Her hands shifted from my arms to my shoulders, then she tilted her head toward a nearby café. "C’mon. I’m buying."
My legs were stilts, my mind on the carnival ride that bent and warped them.
We stepped into the café; the noise swallowing me up like the best kind of secret. No one noticed us. No one seemed to care. We were two girls, young, nondescript. Her red curls wild, my brown hair tangled. It made us invisible. It made us safe.
Maddie slipped into a booth away from everyone else, and I sat down opposite her. She reached out for my hand. She was warmth and gingersnaps, baked, sweet, and perfect.
After giving our order to a server, she said, “Talk to me,” and I did.
Her eyes stayed wide and worried. The server brought over our hot chocolates, and I curled my hands around the mug in front of me. The hot chocolate burned in the best possible way, scorching through the cold that had taken up residence in me. I recalled it all for her, words tripping out of me like amateur dancers. "I thought I was stronger," I said, hating the shame in my voice. Her hands reached again, like always.
"I thought I could do it," I said, because I’d already said I couldn’t. "I thought I could just pretend it didn’t matter."
"Too much testosterone for you?" she said and smiled.
"You don’t understand," I said. "Blake is like some force of nature. He wants everything arranged, everyone in line." The whipped cream melted and swirled, a blur of sugar, the way my feelings were. "But—"
"But you want him," Maddie said, a small smile of triumph at the edge of her voice.
"I don’t know," I sighed. "He wants me to trust him. But after everything, it’s hard to, you know?"
She nodded. "And Zach?" Her tone was softer now.
I looked out the window, into the depths of the shadows, as if I might see him pass. As if he might look in and grin. Catching me in here with my secrets exposed. "He’s different," I said, voice quieter. "Everything’s a joke to him. He never takes anything seriously."
Maddie squeezed my hand. "That’s what you need," she said. "Someone who knows how to laugh. Someone who doesn’t care what the world expects."
I shook my head. But... she was right, and it scared me.
"He’s intense, Maddie. Not like Blake. He knows how to get what he wants." I blinked, vision clearing. "And he wants me. They all do."
"And you?" Her brows raised.
My eyes found hers, and the truth came with them. "I like him. Heck, I like them all. They’re my scent matches. When I’m around them, I can almost taste them, feel them everywhere on me. It’s like an addiction, and they’re my drug of choice." The words escaped, and I knew I couldn’t get them back.
We both blew on our drinks. Hers was black, smooth, and strong. Mine had candy bits melting on the surface, colors slipping and hiding beneath whipped cream.
"Anders," she said. Not a question.
"Anders," I repeated. A statement. A fact. The undeniable thing I’d been trying to deny.
We both drank again, sips this time, more careful.
"He’s so understanding," I said, hating the tremor in my voice. "He looks at me and knows what I’m feeling. Like I can’t hide anything."
"And?"
"He said they should respect my choice. That I get to decide." I wanted to believe that more than anything.
Maddie’s hair bounced around her face. Her curls had found a way free, wild as ever, haloing her in warm tones. "It’s a good thing, you know," she said, "when they make you feel this way. It means you’re alive."
My laugh was shaky, more like a sigh that forgot itself on the way out. "Or it means I’m going to explode."
"You’re stronger than that," she said. Her eyes narrowed playfully; the challenge clear. "Summer, you stopped running the moment you moved into Shaker City.”
“How can you say that, though? I was a hermit. I never went anywhere.”
“That doesn’t mean you were running.” She smiled. “That means you had gone through something traumatic and were fearful of it happening again.” I nodded, taking another sip. “Maybe your scent-matched therapist could help you out with that?”
I pursed my lips. Maybe he could. Maybe if I told them all, they all could. Would it be so bad if I were honest with them? But what if that put them in danger?
My voice wavered, split in two, and barely mended. "I was going to be different," I said. "I came here to be on my own. To prove I didn’t need anyone."
She watched me through the mess of words, waited for them to settle, waited for me to catch my breath.
"I don’t think I can do it," I said, as if saying it meant defeat.
"You’re afraid to love them."
I shivered at the word, the weight of it heavier than the empty mug in my hands.
Maddie stood, leaning across the table. "I think," she said, and I knew it would matter, "you’re only afraid of yourself."
We were alone in our corner of the world. The clatter of dishes and voices filled the spaces between her words, but nothing could fill the space inside me.
She was wrong about that, though. It wasn’t me. It was the past.
"I’m scared, Maddie."
"I know you are," she said. "But I know you too." Her hands came back to the center of the table, open. "You don’t have to decide now. Just let it happen. Let yourself feel." She gestured at the empty mug in front of me. "Want another?"
I nodded, unsure if she meant the hot chocolate or the feeling. Unsure if it mattered.
"Whipped cream on top," she said, and we both knew she meant it as a promise, a way of making everything seem easier, lighter, bearable.
I knew she was mistaken about one thing. Not everything could be sweetened, but she was right about everything else.
"I’m lucky to have you," I said, as she walked to the counter. "Lucky you put up with all my craziness."
She laughed and didn’t turn back, but I could see her in my mind. My other half, my best friend. The one person who never ran and always came back.
When she sat down again, I reached for her. Held on like a lifeline, like she was all that kept me afloat.
"You’ve got this, Summer," she said. "I promise."
And for the first time in a long time, I almost believed it.