Chapter Fourteen
Charlotte
The bar was crawling with alphas emitting the most aggressive, offensive pheromones, and the stench of it had slowly been inching its way under her skin all evening.
She dodged their hands as they tried to touch her, trying to inch their way up her skirt as she took their orders or delivered their drinks.
They laughed when she wiggled out of their grasp like it as a funny joke, trying to keep a smile on her face even as she feels as if she's going to vomit from it.
"What's your scent, baby?" One of them asks, leaning close as if he's going to take a sniff directly under her skirt. "Why are you covering up all that sweet omega ass?"
"I-I'm not," she stammers, taking a step away from him and putting herself closer to another table of alphas stinking of aggression and sex. The scents clog her nose, making her head spin with them. Metal and sawdust and coffee and stale cigarettes.
Her body feels warm, preparing her to run and hide and protect herself. She feels all her muscles bunching and her stomach turns, as if she may actually throw up.
"I-I-" She stammers, unable to find her voice, feeling like she might pass out now. But she cannot stay exposed when she feels so vulnerable. She needs to run, needs to get somewhere safe. "Please excuse me for a moment."
She practically runs behind the bar to the tiny, cramped utility room and supply closet. Her heart feels like it is skipping every other beat, her head spinning and stomach churning as her vision begins to tunnel.
Oh god, what was happening? Was she dying? She didn't have health insurance. She couldn't afford to die.
"The fuck do you think you're doing–" She hears the beta bartender enter behind her, then sees him pause as he takes in the way she is leaning against the wall at an angle, her chest heaving. "The fuck is wrong with you?"
"I-I don't know," she whimpers. Her body feels hot and cold and shaky and wrong. Everything feels wrong.
She sees the man frown, looking her up and down. His voice softens slightly to irritation, rather than downright aggression. "Is there someone I can call to come get you? You don't look so hot, toots."
"I-" She immediately thinks of her three alphas, craving them and their scents and the security she feels with them. A nest, with all four of them in it, their bites and knots and– they're not her alphas, she corrects herself.
"No," she finally says with a whimper.
"You look like you're going to throw up," he says. "You can't stay here. Go home, I'll take care of the rest of the orders."
She tries to stand up straight and support herself, but her legs feel like they're made of jelly.
She nearly drops to the floor, only just catching herself on the wall, scraping against the rough surface.
Something warm and stinging drips down her palms now.
Blood? Great, that's just what she needed.
"Jesus Christ," he curses, and when he reaches out to steady her, she flinches away. She doesn't want this beta's touch on her. Doesn't want his scent anywhere near her.
"There has to be someone," he snarls, his scent turning aggressive with his frustration and making her want to shrink away. "You can't walk home like this, and I have a fucking bar to run. I can't walk you home. I'm not your fucking boyfriend."
"I-" She tries to argue again and fails. She hands him her phone, the desire to see her alphas outweighing the fear now. She has to get out of here. "Tomas," she says weakly. "In my contacts. Please call Tomas."
She craves his dominance, his protection. She knows if she sees him, everything will be okay. He'll take care of her. He'll take care of everything.
Her heart is still stuttering and skipping beats, and she wonders again if she's dying. Is this what dying feels like? A heart attack maybe? That would have to be like a one in a billion chance, right? Omegas were usually healthy; they didn't die of heart attacks in their twenties.
She hunkers down against the wall, slumping in on herself as she hears him dial the number. Tomas answers on the second ring and she can hear his deep voice on the other end, sounding tinny and wrong through the headset.
"Hi, uh, I have a girl here who says she knows you. Lottie."
Tomas says something in response. "Sure. Yeah. She's not feeling good and needs someone to come get her. Yeah. 8654 Twenty Third Street. Cool, thanks man."
He hangs up and she hears the phone clatter next to her on the floor as he carelessly tosses it beside her. It will probably have another crack on the screen now, just what she needed.
"He's coming right now. Don't fucking puke on my boxes."
With that, the bartender is gone, leaving her alone to try and control her breathing.
Her head swims as she stays crouched on the floor in the dingy, dusty closet, breathing in the smell of mildew and stale beer.
Her skin feels like it's on fire, sweat beading down her forehead and back as a cramp tears through her middle.
She moans, resting her forehead on her knees.
She had to be sick. Maybe she had some sort of virus like the flu.
She prayed she wasn't about to puke in front of Tomas.
There was no way he'd ever want to see her again after that.
Nothing could be less sexy than someone projectile vomiting a baked potato and salsa in your car.
The hairs prickle on her arms a few minutes later, as if her body is so sensitive to him, she knows when he steps foot into the bar. Her breathing feels like it finally turns to a normal rhythm and her stomach settles just at the knowledge that he's nearby.
Seconds later, the door to the closet flings open, and her eyes meet his. He looks so out of place in this shitty place, his crisp clean suit in sharp contrast to the bikers and low lifes who come here.
All the heat leaves her body as she sees him, everything inside her turning cold as ice as he fixes her with his stare. He's furious. She's never seen such anger in him and a shudder goes through her.
Stupid. She's so stupid. The weight of her stupidity threatens to drag her under and drown her as horror and shame battle for dominance in her chest. Her stomach rolls again, and she thinks that will just complete the picture of disgust on his face if she pukes all over his shoes now.
Why did she even call him? She's so stupid. So weak. She called him because she had no one else. Because she's a weak, stupid omega with no one to call, except the men who pay her for sex.
It is clear from the expression on his face that he's angry that she disturbed him at night, without any warning, to come pick her up in this grungy dive bar. Just because she's feeling sick and can't get herself home. Pathetic.
Poor broken omega...
He's probably never going to want to see her again after this.
After she's overstepped the boundaries of their arrangement so completely.
This is probably exactly the sort of thing he didn't want to have from her, why they paid her in the first place.
So they wouldn't have to deal with holding someone's hair while they puked in the toilet, like she's sure she's going to do now.
Maybe she'll drown herself in it while she's there.
Concern flickers across his face as she pales further, huddling further into herself on instinct.
"Charlotte, this–" he pauses, as if unsure what to call the beta bartender hovering behind him "–man says you're not feeling well, and you need to go home. Do you need medical attention?"
She will after this, she thinks. She doesn't know how she'll survive him leaving her.
"No," she croaks, her voice hoarse. She feels lower than the cockroaches scuttling around on the floor with the way he's looking at her. "I just felt sick all of a sudden and couldn't stand up."
He approaches her slowly, as if he doesn't even know her. As if she's just some strange omega he found on the floor in a dirty closet.
"Okay," he says, and his voice turns steadier as he takes in her apron and the notebook and pen still clutched tightly in her hand like a lifeline. "I'll take you home. This is where you work?"
"Yes, sir," she says, her voice weak with shame. He grunts at that but says nothing as he helps her up.
She feels her body calm with his proximity.
Her heart calms its frantic thumping, her legs steady and her tearing cramps settle at last. With his arm tightly around her waist, he leads her out to where his Audi is parked illegally in front of the bar, as if he raced here as fast as he could without a care for traffic rules.
He helps her into passenger seat of the car, and she notices how cool his hands feel against the heat of her skin. Did she have a fever? Maybe she really was sick. Just her luck.
As he slides into the driver's seat, she notes the way his hands grip the steering wheel, as if he might snap it, but his voice is still calm and steady when he asks for her address.
When she gives it to him, she sees his hands tighten further as his lips pull down in a scowl. In the car, she can immediately smell the way his scent sharpens with anger, and she shrinks down in response.
She'll never see him again after this. She knows this is the end.
He's seen how low she is, what a horrible place she works at.
She's cheap. There's no way a man like him would want a girl like her for his pack, even just as a sugar baby.
Not even as a girl they pay for sex. They deserved a girl with class, a girl that wouldn't embarrass them to be seen with.
He pulls the car out front her building, still not caring for the clear "NO PARKING" sign out front.
He doesn't even bother asking if she can walk as he swiftly skirts around the car and opens the door, unbuckles her seatbelt, and hauls her against his chest in one motion.
"What unit?" is all he asks in a clipped tone. He doesn't even break a sweat as he carries her up the flights of stairs, his face darkening with every step.
Tears well in her eyes and she does not even have the strength to fight them anymore, allowing them to start streaming down her face freely.
If this was the last time he held her, she was going to memorize it, memorize every inch of his hard body and scent to carry with her for the rest of her life.
She hands him the key wordlessly as they approach her door, and she can see his eyes flitting over the others in her dark hallway. The carpet is old and smells faintly of dust. Most of the lights are burnt out and the faded wallpaper is peeling in multiple places.
She can hear the couple down the hall having another fight. The sound of a baby crying and the smell of old oil wafts from her closest neighbour. Fee's place a few doors down has a cheerful wreath of cut-out flowers hanging on it.
He says nothing as he readjusts her in his arms to fiddle with the ancient lock on the door that broke regularly. She had tried installing her own locks, but the superintendent had broken them off, citing the fire code. It had always made her feel so unsafe.
Tomas finally manages to engage the lock, then he shoulders open the door without putting her down.
As he steps through the threshold and looks around the single room, his scowl deepens.
He sets her down, his large, steady hands ensuring she has her footing before releasing her, always so attentive with her even despite the disgust he must have for her now.
Her apartment was old and decrepit. A tiny squalid unit the size of his bathroom.
It would not be fit for anyone to live in, let alone an omega, and she knew that.
She had done the best she could with it.
Her nest sat in the corner of the room, piled with her blankets and pillows.
All second-hand pieces that she had worked tirelessly to scrub the scents out of, nearly scrubbing off a layer of her own skin in the process.
There was a clothing rack holding her work clothes, which she had spent nearly the equivalent of one month's rent on when she had been hired at his firm, wanting so desperately to fit in at her internship.
Her other clothes sat tidily folded in piles on the floor beneath it.
There was a kitchenette in another corner, next to the door to the bathroom, and a desk beneath the one window that she had dragged three blocks when she saw it free on a curbside.
It was clean. She scrubbed it spotless every week, but still she felt shame welling in her for him to see how she lived. It was miles away from their grand brownstone with its gleaming marble and original parquet floors and priceless art on the walls.
"This is where you live?" His voice sounded cold, and she knows she is in trouble now.
This is where he's going to tell her to get lost, to never darken their doorway again.
He must be disgusted. He must think her so low class, so far beneath him.
She shrinks in on herself, wrapping her arms around her middle.
"Y-yes, sir," she says. His angry gaze finds hers, and she does nothing to stop the tears still streaming down her face in shame and grief.
"Why did you not tell us you needed more help?"
That wasn't a question she was expecting, and she stammers to offer a response. "I–you–you've helped enough—"
He cut her off, his voice sounding as if he is near to snapping. "You think I would let my omega live in a place like this? It isn't even safe," he gestures to the broken locks still partially attached to the door.
"It's safe enough!" She scrambles to show him how she wedged her chair under the door handle at night so no one could break in. All her instincts are desperate to appease him, to make him stop smelling like this and to purr for her again.
His scowl only deepens at that. "And when you went into heat? How safe do you think this would be then? These walls cannot even block the scent of cooking, let alone your heat pheromones."
"I haven't!" She rushes to placate him, trying to say anything that would make him happy. "You know I haven't gone into heat. If I did, I would—"
He cuts her off again, his dominant alpha musk filling the air. "This is not negotiable, Charlotte. Pack your things. Now. We're leaving."
Without a thought, she obeys him, her eyes wide as saucers. She had never seen Tomas genuinely angry. She found she did not have it in her to argue with him, her tears already flowing down her cheeks as it was, her thoughts jumbled and confused.