Chapter 13 June
June
Present…
Aknock sounds at my door. “Juniper?”
I close the book I borrowed from the library downstairs and stand, smoothing the wrinkles on the skirt of my dress. My clothes are perfect; my makeup is immaculate. They are the only things I can control in this life, so I focus on those things and not on the things I can’t control.
Like my scent matches betrayal.
My life since I walked in to find my alphas laughing with an omega after they sent me alone to a heat clinic has been cold.
I don’t smile.
I don’t talk to anyone. Not even to Veronica. Even if I wanted to speak to the gardener, I couldn’t; he’s gone. He was probably fired for having a five-minute conversation with me.
It’s been a year.
A year of silence and neglect, and of spending my birthday on my own.
A year of learning to protect my heart from scent matches who have proven they don’t want to take care of it or me.
A year when sometimes the pain is so bad, all I want to do is destroy. So, I take the pair of scissors from a drawer in my bedroom, set a timer on my phone for five minutes, and I destroy.
I couldn’t stand the humiliation of being driven to another free heat clinic, so I asked Veronica to get me heat suppressants when my heat was coming. I don’t know if she told my scent matches, but a few days later, she knocked on my door holding a handful of small white pills and a glass of water.
I spent a week in my room, just in case they didn’t work, and only Veronica thought to check on me.
Over the holidays, I spent a few days with my parents and River, who had a break from Haven Academy.
My scent matches didn’t come with me. River was so worried about how quiet I was and how much weight I’d lost that I don’t think I’ll spend Christmas with them again.
I miss my sister, but I don’t want her to worry that something is wrong with me.
I pull open my bedroom door. “Yes, Veronica?”
She shifts from foot to foot, visibly uncomfortable. “There are men who want to talk to you, Miss.”
I raise my eyebrow. “Men?”
“It’s best you come down. They’ll explain it themselves.”
Eyeing her curiously, I motion for her to lead the way. “After you.”
I smooth down my skirt and hair as I trail her down the stairs, curious about what this is about, but eager to return to the only place in the house where I can pretend I don’t have scent matches. In my room, I don’t smell them or see them, and I can spend my days reading or sleeping.
In the library, three men I don’t recognize are talking among themselves, their voices low. Callum, Archer, and Torin stand farther away, watching them. Two of the men are alphas; the third, older with graying blond hair, is a beta.
All eyes turn to me as I step into the room.
I focus on the unfamiliar men. I try never to look at my scent matches if I pass a room that they’re in. They no longer exist to me, and they never will again. “Can I help you?”
I use my most formal voice. The grace and elegant tone I learned at Haven Academy. Everything I do now is about protecting my heart from more pain.
“My name is Garrison Brewer. This is Kylian Sutton, and that is Roman.” The largest man, a dark-haired alpha, smells of wood smoke and cedar, points to each man as he tells me their names, then gives me a small, reassuring smile.
"We have the task of interviewing all omegas matched by Haven Academy. "
Alarm races down my spine. “Is there something wrong with the school? With my sister?” I ask, frowning.
He shakes his dark head. “Nothing like that.” He glances at my scent matches. “Maybe we can discuss this in private.”
“You can discuss it with her here,” Callum says coolly.
Not with my omega or our omega. With her.
Garrison glances at him and says to me. “I’ve come to find out if you’re happy here. If this match is one you wanted, or if it's one you wish to break.”
My confusion grows.
Kylian Sutton, the alpha who smells of whiskey and bergamot, has gray eyes that scare me. I avoid his gaze and keep my focus on Garrison. He’s the biggest guy in the room, but there’s something so calming about his voice that I instantly want to trust him.
Roman, the beta, is quiet, but alert. As if he expects trouble and is ready for it.
“There’s no breaking the bond between an alpha and an omega. Only an alpha can do it if he wants to,” I tell Garrison.
My alphas don’t seem to want to let me go. Sometimes, when I’ve been out shopping with Veronica, I’ve considered running, but the question of where I would run to has always stopped me.
If I left, Pack Wells could have someone bring me back. If I argued, they could order me to shut up. The bites on my neck have bound us together, and there’s no walking away from them unless they want to let me go. I am Pack Wells’ omega, even if they don’t want me.
“There is a bond-breaking ceremony,” Garrison says.
I stop breathing even as my heart starts racing. “What?”
“You’re wasting your time.” Callum glances at his watch, bored and ready to go back to pretending I don’t exist. “She’s not going anywhere.”
“A bond breaking is dangerous,” Kylian says, watching me closely.
“That’s why you wouldn’t have heard of it before.
We can’t have omegas deciding they want to be the one to leave their alphas, can we?
” he adds so sarcastically that I want to trust him more than I did before because he’s giving me a way out.
“How dangerous?” But even as I ask, I realize I don’t care how dangerous it is.
If it means breaking the mate bond, I’m willing to risk my life for it.
“How badly do you want to leave?” he asks me with a slight tilt of his head. There’s knowledge in his eyes. A look that says he already knows I want to leave my mates and his question is just to get me to admit it out loud.
“Would it be a clean break?” I ask, licking my dry lips.
“It’s a permanent break. No going back. You would still have their bites on your neck, but you would no longer be their omega,” Garrison explains.
“You’re wasting your time. She doesn’t want to leave,” Torin says. “She’s too well paid. If you’re through with—”
“I’m not talking to you.” Garrison never takes his eyes off me, even as he interrupts Torin. As if only what I want matters. Not my scent matches. “Juniper? What do you want?” he says softly. “That’s the only reason I’m here. To listen to you.”
I twist my fingers together, my polite mask slipping the longer this unreal conversation goes on. Suddenly, I’m scared.
No, I’m terrified that they’re all lying to me. That this isn’t a way out at all.
"Are you happy here? Do you want to stay with these alphas, or do you want to leave?" Kylian asks me quietly.
"She's fine where she is," Archer snaps.
Garrison doesn’t spare him a single glance. "I'm asking Juniper. I want to hear about her wants and needs. Not yours."
"She doesn't—"
"You can wait outside for this interview." Garrison raises his voice for the first time, drowning out Torin completely.
I don’t know if Torin is scowling at him, happy or sad, and I don’t care. I focus all my attention on Garrison and on what he’s here to offer me. Freedom. True freedom from my scent matches. A broken bond would mean I can walk away, and they can never make me come back.
All this time, my scent matches didn’t want me, have actively avoided me, and now I’m trying to leave them; they want to stop me? Why? So they can torment me some more?
I’d have walked out already, but this decision doesn’t just involve me.
It means losing my family. Maybe forever.
My parents won't be happy if I cause a fuss, and walking away from my alphas will be the biggest fuss I could ever cause. They could forbid me from seeing River. And I haven’t forgotten the warning Archer gave me before.
Leaving means exposing myself to someone who might hurt me. But I can’t stay here.
If I had a lifetime of cold indifference ahead of me, maybe I could have done it. But this isn’t cold indifference. This is hate. This is cruelty I did nothing to deserve, and I want no more of it.
"Juniper?" Garrison asks in a gentle voice. "Do you want to leave these alphas?"
I look at my scent matches who destroyed my hope in love. Walking away means starting over and my parents turning their backs on me, but this isn’t living.
"Yes,” I say firmly, “I want to leave. Now."
A beat of stunned silence fills the room.
“You don’t mean that,” Callum says, his tone disbelieving.
I keep my eyes on Garrison, hardening the wall around my heart. “Can we do the bond breaking today?”
“Juniper?” The mocking edge is missing from Torin’s voice.
Unease ripples around the room, the faintest stirrings that things are not happening the way they expected. When Archer moves toward me, his brow furrowed, Roman blocks him from taking another step closer.
I angle my head so I can’t see any of them at all, even out of the corner of my eye.
Garrison glances at them, and then nods. “The bond breaking can happen whenever you want. If you want it to happen today, it will happen today.”
Another stretch of brittle, stunned silence weaves around us.
“I can have someone pack your—”
Before Garrison has finished speaking, I’m already shaking my head. “I don’t want to take anything with me. I just want to go.”
“Then now it is.” Garrison gestures to the open doorway, and I walk toward it.
“Stop, Juniper.”
Torin’s order tunnels into me. My footsteps stop, my mind turns syrupy, and I hate that their bite has power over me.
A grunt, followed by the heavy thud of something falling, rings out from behind me.
When I turn around, Torin is flat on his back, out cold.
I’m too shocked to do anything but stare, wide-eyed.
Kylian’s voice vibrates with fury as he stares my scent matches down. “She’s leaving. If one of you tries to give her another order, you’ll be eating through a straw. The next one won’t be eating at all. Or breathing.”
Garrison puts his arm around my shoulder and walks me out of the library. I want to fight him. That is the power of an alpha's order on an omega.
Distance helps.
As we leave, I hear Kylian telling them to be at the downtown Council building for the bond breaking. If they don’t attend, they will be forced to.
“Are you sure you have nothing you want to take?” Garrison asks me as he leads me past Veronica in the entryway, who watches me with wide, shocked eyes and one hand covering her mouth.
I try to smile at her, wanting to thank her for everything she did for me, but my lips are trembling, and my eyes are blurring with tears.
“This place has taken more than enough from me,” I whisper. “I just want to forget.”