5. jude
jude
Reece walks back through the curtain with applause still following him, already loosening the cuffs at his wrists like he’s finished something casual. Tate straightens immediately, pulling at the front of his own shirt even though nothing is wrong with it, and that’s how I know.
My stomach drops before Reece reaches me.
“No,” I say, and this time I don’t care who hears it.
Reece’s smile stays in place. “We’re past that.”
I step back, but Aaron shifts in from the side and Tate blocks the way behind me. Neither of them grabs me. They don’t have to. Backstage is narrow, crowded with tables and gear and people moving too fast to notice anything that doesn’t look like a disaster yet.
“I’m not going out there,” I say, louder now.
A volunteer glances over as Reece’s hand comes down on my shoulder, easy and friendly from the outside, hard enough underneath that I feel each finger through the hoodie. “Careful,” he murmurs. “You’re making a scene.”
The laugh that pulls out of me sounds wrong. “That was your plan.”
His eyes go flat for half a second, the charm slipping just enough for me to see what’s under it. Then the announcer says something about a special addition, and the crowd noise swells.
I twist, trying to pull out from under his grip. “Get off me.”
Tate looks at me then, his face is pale, and for one stupid second, I think he might do something. Then Reece shifts closer, and Tate’s gaze drops again.
I drag in a breath to shout for Marsh, but Reece’s hand clamps over my mouth before the sound gets out. Everything in me locks down at once. His palm is warm against my mouth, his fingers pressing into my cheek, the contact so sudden and ugly that my body blanks before it remembers how to fight.
Reece leans close enough that his breath hits my ear. “Be a good little boy,” he muses, “and get yourself mated or something. It’ll be the best thing you’ve ever done for this team.”
I slam my elbow back, but Aaron catches the clipboard and wrenches it out of my hands.
The headset tears free next, static crackling once before it drops against my shoulder.
Reece lets go of my mouth only long enough to grab my arm, and Tate moves when he does, shoulder turning to block the view from the volunteer table.
The announcer’s voice rises through the curtain. “And now, we have a very special addition to tonight’s swim program lineup.”
“No,” I say again, but it comes out scraped raw.
The three of them guide me forward and push me through the curtains, leaving me nowhere to go except the stage.
For the first few seconds, the stage lights blank out the room completely.
I can’t see faces, only white glare and the dark shape of the auditorium beyond it.
I hold onto that because it’s the only mercy I get.
No eyes. No mouths. No paddles. Just heat on my face, floor under my shoes, and the ugly pressure of Reece’s hand still sitting in my memory, pressed over my mouth like I was something he could silence and move.
Then my eyes adjust as I catch the crowd staring up at me, recognition in some of their faces and shock on others. There has rarely been an Omega on this stage for several reasons. Knotlocke Academy is known for their scandals, not their stupidity and auctioning off an Omega...
I twist to look at the announcer, hoping I can get a word in to say that all of this is a mistake. I don’t get that far.
She smiles too wide and says, “Some of you will remember our next guest as Knotlocke’s most talked-about Omega last year.”
The noise changes. It doesn’t explode, doesn’t give me anything dramatic enough to hide behind.
It ripples through the room, recognition and curiosity moving under the applause until my skin starts crawling beneath my hoodie.
I can’t smell intent. I’ve never been able to, not the way everyone assumes I should.
A room full of interested Alphas is just a room full of faces I have to read at speed while my body screams at me to run, and there are too many of them.
Too many eyes, too many mouths, too many hands already lifting paddles before anyone says what they’re bidding on.
The announcer keeps talking, mentioning all the things Reece threw at me.
Comeback. Resilience. School spirit. I look for the side steps and see a volunteer smiling because she doesn’t know.
I look toward the wings, where Reece stands half-hidden in the dark, one shoulder against the curtain, watching me like this is the part he paid to see.
The first bid comes from somewhere in the middle, then another near the front, then another before the announcer can finish repeating the last number.
Eight hundred becomes twelve hundred, then fifteen, then two thousand, each one landing less like money and more like another person deciding what it’s worth to keep me under the lights.
The last time strangers made that kind of calculation about me, I couldn’t get out of the water fast enough.
My breath catches, and the stage floor tilts under me for half a second, my body only remembering that incident.
It remembers water. It remembers noise turning into pressure, hands reaching too late, my bag open with the spare blockers gone, and everyone looking at me afterward like my body had betrayed them personally.
Another bid cuts through the noise, higher this time, and a few people laugh at the entertainment.
I take a small step back before I can stop myself, then freeze because the wings are behind me and Reece is there.
The only exit I can see is down the front steps, past the volunteer, through the crowd, and my brain starts counting distance like this is a race I can still win if I just find the right lane.
Then Bishop’s voice cuts through the room. “Five thousand.”
The row in front of him twists around, and the murmur that follows is sharper than the bids before it. I find him near the aisle, paddle raised, looking at me, and there’s something in his face I can’t read fast enough because my body is still caught between running and falling apart.
Silence follows for several seconds as hushed whispers run across the room but no one outbids them. The announcer recovers quickly, probably because she knows a save when she sees one and wants it finished before anyone changes their mind.
“Sold,” she says, her smile thinner now. “To paddle 359!”
The applause starts scattered, then grows because everyone else needs the room to feel normal again. I stand under the lights while the words move around me without landing. Sold. My body is still waiting for the next hand, the next shove, the next person deciding where I’m supposed to go.
Bishop is already at the stage steps by the time I understand the gavel came down.
He stops at the bottom, angled enough to block part of the room from my view without trapping me against him, and says, “Hey. We’ve got you.
Come on,” low enough that it feels like he’s speaking under the applause instead of through it.
It shouldn’t help as much as it does, but my feet move before the rest of me catches up.
One step, then another. The stairs are short, but the crowd stays behind me like heat against my back, and my knees feel wrong by the time I reach the last one.
Bishop stays exactly where he is, close enough to be there, far enough that I don’t have to flinch away from him to prove I still can.
Hollis is behind Bishop, and I’m not even sure when he got there. Someone that big shouldn’t be able to move that quietly, but his hand is already hovering at my back, close enough for me to feel the warmth of it through my hoodie without him touching me.
I take the last step, my balance slipping for half a second. I lean back before I can talk myself out of it, Hollis’ palm settling between my shoulder blades.
For the first time all night, I don’t feel like Knotlocke’s most talked-about Omega or the thing Reece shoved into the light because he knew people would pay to stare.
Bishop is watching my face, Hollis is waiting for the smallest sign before giving me more weight, and it hits me so hard I almost can’t breathe.
They might actually see past what happened to me.
They might see me.