Chapter Seventeen – Warren
The night air is cool, but not cool enough. As it fills my lungs, I stand there on the patio, in front of the firepit, feeling itchy. These damn clothes are trying to choke me. That, or the omega in the house really got to me by asking me about my parents.
It’s not something I like talking about. She must know the gist after everything Nic told her, so why bother asking me for more details? It isn’t like knowing more details will make the story end any differently.
I’m not outside for long before I hear the door to the house open and shut, and as the breeze blows by again, I’m met with an incredibly sweet scent. I breathe in deep and close my eyes, relishing in that damned scent.
Fuck. It really is enough to drive me mad.
Mercedes moves to my side. “Hey,” she speaks softly. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.” Even as I say it, it sounds like a lie.
“I have an idea. Let’s have a fire and burn those clothes.” When she says that, I manage to open my eyes and look down at her, and I find she’s grinning up at me.
That… that’s actually the most perfect thing she could’ve said.
“Wait here,” I say. I get everything ready: fresh logs in the pit and my matches. Before long, I have a fire started, and together, we stand side by side as we watch it grow and build, slowly traveling across the logs until the entire patio is lit by an orange hue and we can feel the heat radiating from the flames.
Only once the fire is large enough do I tug at my shirt to untuck it from my waist. I shoot Mercedes a sly look and say, “Watch this.” And then I tear the shirt off me, causing the rest of the buttons to pop off.
She gets hit with two of the flying buttons, and she giggles.
I toss the shirt into the firepit. It’s warm enough that I don’t care my chest is free of clothing. It feels freeing—plus, out of the corner of my eye, I’m pretty sure Mercedes is checking me out while trying not to be obvious about it.
Hey, if she wants to ogle my meat suit, all she has to do is ask.
Hmm. Better not call my body a meat suit out loud, otherwise I might freak her out.
I whip off my belt and toss it into the fire next, then my shoes and socks. My fingers work on the button and zipper to my pants, and I bend over as I tug them off. Soon enough I’m tossing the bundled-up pants like I’m throwing a basketball into a hoop instead of clothes into a fire.
And just like that I’m next to Mercedes in nothing but boxers.
I’ve never felt freer than I do right then, and I suddenly understand why she wants freedom above all else. To be restrained, confined, put into small boxes; it goes against everything. It doesn’t make sense. Why shouldn’t we all have the freedom to choose?
I sink to the stone, leaning back as I marvel at the fire, and Mercedes sits down near me. She reaches for her boots and unzips them, freeing her bare feet and wiggling her toes. She does not, however, toss them into the fire; she instead sets them aside. I can tell by how worn they are that she wears them a lot. They must have quite a bit of sentimental value.
“You don’t want to throw your dress into the fire?” I ask her, a smirk on my face.
She chuckles. “No, I think I’ll keep my dress on. If you’re cold—”
“I’m not. The fire’s warm enough.” Plus, alphas tend to run hot, anyway, something she probably already knows.
Her face is turned in my direction, a soft smile tugging at those luscious lips as she looks at me. “Do you often burn your clothes like this?”
“Believe it or not, no. It’s not a habit or anything.” I bring my knees up to my chest and rest my forearms on them. “Darius never seems to mind wearing suits and all that shit, but I’d rather claw off my own skin than wear one.”
“That seems a little extreme.”
“Maybe I’m just an extreme person.”
She glances at the fire. “Maybe you are, but that’s okay. Some people are more intense than others. There isn’t anything wrong with that.”
The way I’m sitting, combined with the light from the bright fire in front of us, must be enough, because she spots something on my back and leans behind me. “What are these?” The question comes out of her in a rush, though she’s tentative all the same.
A part of me wants to give a snarky answer: Scars, what do they look like? But I don’t let myself snap at her. I flex my hands into fists, able to picture my back perfectly. The thin lines crisscrossing up and down my spine, over my back, creating an ugly canvas of flesh.
But, because I hold myself back, I answer her softly, “A reminder.”
“A reminder of what?”
“How bad alphas can be.” I’m sluggish in meeting her heavy stare. I probably understand more than the others why she’d want to run. I witnessed the abuse an alpha can unleash on an omega firsthand.
Mercedes asks, “Who did this to you?” A pause before she adds, “Your father?”
Though it’s the last thing I want to talk about, I nod anyway. Can’t hide the scars now. She would’ve seen them sooner or later; might as well get it over with sooner so it’s done with. “He, um, wasn’t a good man, not like Mr. Alabaster.”
“He hurt you, and your mom?”
Something in me stings at the mention of her, and I close my eyes as my face drops to my lap. “Yeah. He had a whip he liked to use on me, when I didn’t listen to him, when he thought I misbehaved. He always made sure to patch me up before school. I told Nic. Just some off-handed, stupid comment—a bad joke. For a long time I thought that’s just how it’s supposed to be, how all alphas treat their kids, their omegas.”
“Nic said he called Omega Services,” she whispers.
“He did, but there’s not much they could’ve done. He had friends to bury it, and my mom wouldn’t testify against him. I was just a kid, so I followed her lead. Hindsight’s twenty-twenty. Maybe if I would’ve had the balls, she’d still be alive.”
“Warren.” Her voice cracks when she says my name, and I’m slow in meeting her gaze. “You were just a kid.”
“Doesn’t matter. I didn’t try.”
“It does matter. You were a child. You can’t blame yourself for what he did. You couldn’t have stopped him.”
I frown as I shift my eyes to the fire. “It’s too easy for alphas to hurt the ones they’re supposed to keep safe.” Swallowing hard, I whisper, “Nic’s not like that, though. He’s good. All of him. There’s not a single bad bone in his body.”
She lightly touches my arm, and the instant she does, I fight a shiver from surfacing. “You’re good, too. I don’t think there’s a bad bone in your body, either.”
“You don’t know me.”
“Maybe not, but I do know that you worrying about it means you care, and that’s not something that can be said for every alpha.” Her hand falls away from my bare arm, and I resist the urge I have to grab her hand and put it right back where it was. “Is that why you didn’t want me here? Because you think you’re going to turn into your father?”
Shrugging, I mutter, “Maybe.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
I love how sure she sounds, and I wish I could be as sure as she is. Still, that fear, that anxiety, is always going to be there in the back of my mind. It’s what keeps me up at night, especially lately, now that there’s an omega in the house.
I decide to try to change the subject off me: “How did you end up at Solus?”
“My parents died in a car crash. My mom was pregnant with me at the time. They were able to operate on her and get me out. I was a miracle.” Just by the way she says it, I can tell she doesn’t believe it. “But there was no one to take care of me, no extended family who wanted me, so I went to an orphanage until I presented as an omega, and then I was shipped to Solus Academy.”
Fuck. That’s rough. That’s… about as rough a story as most of the omegas there, I bet. They really did draw the short end of the stick, huh?
“Sometimes,” Mercedes mutters as her lips tug into a beautiful frown, “I wish I would’ve died with them.”
Hearing her say that makes me feel a certain type of way. Angry, but not at her. Angry at the world for making her think life isn’t worth living. Pissed that her life at Solus wasn’t the life she should’ve had. Furious for all omega kind, really.
I scoot towards her, stopping only when her body is an inch or so away from mine. “For what it’s worth—and I’m well aware it probably isn’t worth much—but I, for one, am glad you didn’t die.”
Silence stretches on between us, so heavy it’s easy to lose yourself in the gaze of the other. I want nothing more than to lean in and kiss her, to pull her onto my lap, wrap my arms around her, and bury my nose against that neck again, breathing her in all the while. Hold her and comfort us both in the process.
But, since I can’t do that, I decide to lay back and stare at the darkening sky over our heads instead. Mercedes lays down with me, her head less than a foot away from mine as we both stare at the great, big sky.
Eventually, the fire dies down, and we’re surrounded by a world of night. We stare up at the cloudless, starry expanse. The night air is cooler, but the heat from the firepit lingers even though the flames have died down.
“I never knew there were so many stars in the sky,” she whispers, clearly in awe. “You can’t see many of them when you’re in the city, with all the lights bright, no matter what time of day or night it is.”
“It really is something else, isn’t it?” I ask. “Makes you feel so… small, in the grand scheme of things.”
“Like specks of dust in the cosmos.”
I smile at her description; it’s as apt as it could be. I turn my head toward hers and study her side profile in the darkness. Her hair is pulled down thanks to gravity, allowing me a fully unobstructed view. She’s so focused on the night sky she doesn’t realize I’m staring at her.
At her cute nose. At her smooth cheekbone. At the slight pucker of her lips.
Fuck, those lips…
“Do you know any of their names?” When she asks this, she turns her face toward mine, and I quickly return my gaze to the sky, pretending I wasn’t just drooling over her.
“I know a few of them.”
“Which ones? Point them out to me.”
I point to the three stars, mostly aligned, on the horizon. “Those three right there make up Orion’s Belt.”
“Where?”
“The three right there.”
“Which three?”
“They’re right there.”
Mercedes huffs, “They’re all right there. Which three are we talking about here?”
I roll onto my side and scoot my face closer to hers, and I lean my head against hers as I take her hand in mine and lift it toward the stars. Curling down all but one of her fingers, I make her point to Orion’s Belt as I say, “There.”
She giggles. “Oh, those ones.”
“And right there—” I move our hands and make her point to a different set of stars, tracing the shape of them with her pointed finger. “—is Ursa Major. A lot of people call this group the Big Dipper, because it looks like—”
“A measuring cup?”
Now it’s my turn to grin. “See, you’re catching on.” I move her hand again, but before I can say what I’m making her point at, something fast shoots across the sky, lighting up a path before fading into nothing.
“What was that?” she asks.
“That,” I say, sounding incredulous, “was a shooting star, I think. Holy shit. I’ve never seen one of those before.”
She sucks in a breath. “Really?”
“For real.” I mean, shit. What are the odds, when I’m laying here with her, and we see a shooting star zip across the nighttime sky, at the exact same moment? “You’re supposed to make a wish.”
“Oh, okay. I wish—”
“No,” I say, quick to turn my face to look at hers. I’m so close to her my nose brushes against her cheek. “You can’t say it out loud. Just in your head.” Though I still hold onto her hand, I lower it. I don’t let go, and she doesn’t seem to mind.
“Ah, in my head. Okay.” Her eyelashes flutter shut as she must think of her wish.
I don’t need to close my eyes to make a wish. I don’t need to spend more than a second thinking about what to wish for, either. Laying there with Mercedes, with her hand in mine, I know exactly what I want.
When she turns her face toward mine, I can feel her warm breath as she exhales. “Did you make a wish?”
“I did.” I squeeze her hand a bit harder as I say it, and something unspoken passes between us, the weight of my action telling her precisely what I wished for. Staring into her dark eyes, being so close to her, I can’t help but wonder what she wished upon that star.
Her freedom? Something else?
“Warren,” she whispers my name in a way no one else ever had in my life, “I… it took a turn I wasn’t expecting, but I enjoyed tonight.”
“I enjoyed tonight, too.” I pause before adding, “I enjoyed it even more once I threw those clothes into the fire.” My comment gets her to chuckle, and I greedily listen to the sound, memorizing it and locking that laugh away for later.
“Better be careful, or you’ll burn through your entire wardrobe before you know it.”
“Then I guess I’ll just have to walk around the house naked. I’m sure Darius and Nic won’t mind. Would you?”
“Maybe I wouldn’t.” She bites her bottom lip, and I swear I get hit with her perfume, a direct dose right into my bloodstream since we’re so close. It’s the opposite of a bad thing—although, given the fact that I only wear boxers right now, it’s probably best not to lose myself in her too much.
Nic was right. She’s obviously running from someone. I don’t want to come on too strong and scare her off, not now, not after tonight. Not after I came to the conclusion I should’ve come to the same night Nic and I saw her at the Omega Garden.
This omega, she’s meant to be ours.
“It’s getting late,” I whisper, not so smooth in abruptly changing the subject. “We should get inside. I’m sure you’re cold.” I sit up, pulling her up with me, and I slowly get to my feet. Though I still hold onto her hand, I hold onto it with less gusto.
I walk us toward the patio door, holding it open for her as I finally release that small, soft hand. She slips inside the house, ducking under my arm, but she only makes it a few steps in the dark hall before she whirls around to face me.
“What?” I ask her.
“I—” She pauses, and it suddenly occurs to me we left her boots out there.
“Your boots. Right. I’ll get them for you.” Before she can fight me on it, I rush back outside and grab her boots. Within ten seconds, I’m back before her in the house, offering those boots to her. “Here.”
Mercedes takes them, and as she does, her fingers brush up against mine. I have to fight the way my body reacts, just from that simple, quick touch. It’s like a fire is instantly lit inside of me, and putting it out is not possible. Its only fate is to grow.
“Thank you,” she whispers. She starts to turn away, but she freezes, and then she slowly faces me once more. “That’s not what I was going to say, though.”
“Oh. Was there something else?” I swallow hard after that. I have to constantly think of other things, like roadkill or my supreme hate of dress clothes, to keep my lower half in check. Wearing nothing but boxers, I pretty much feel like I’m swinging naked—and that would be bad on multiple levels.
“I guess I don’t really know if people do this since I don’t date, but…” She kicks at the ground, an adorable, awkward gesture. “It was a nice date. I wouldn’t mind a kiss goodnight.”
A kiss goodnight. My mind whirls, her words echoing, becoming louder and louder until I feel like I’m going insane.
My face must tell her a different story, because she turns away and shakes her head. “Never mind. I’m sorry. That was… I don’t know why I said that.” I’d bet anything her intent was to run away and go hide in her bedroom while wishing she never mentioned it.
But I’m not going to let her do that. No. Now that the shock from the suggestion wore off, I’m all for it. Of course I am.
I grab her wrist and stop her from fleeing, and I pull her back to me—perhaps a bit too hard; as she whirls around, she practically collides with my chest with an audible oof . I move my hands to her waist and whisper, “Don’t. I just… wasn’t expecting that, not after… I really am sorry for what I said that first night. I’d never hurt you.”
Mercedes sighs and closes her eyes, leaning her cheek against my bare chest and soaking in my warmth. Her skin is a few degrees colder than mine, but she warms up quick in my arms.
One of my hands entangle in her hair. “Please,” I murmur, “don’t hurt Nic.” And don’t hurt me. But I don’t say that part out loud; I can’t. Something inside stops me from voicing that particular plea, something that doesn’t want to be seen as weak.
When I became an Alabaster, I spent all of my time proving myself, both to the world and to me, that I wasn’t some weak alpha who let those he loves get hurt. It’s a never-ending job, and I’ve never complained.
Out of everyone in the world, however, Mercedes is the last person I could hold my own against. Whatever she does, whatever she wants; I’ll be helpless to stop her. If she hurts Nic, if she hurts me… there isn’t anything I could do. We’re in her hands now.
“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” she whispers.
I want to lean down and kiss her more than anything. Tonight brought us closer than I ever thought possible—Nic was right to make us have this little date night—but I fear I’ll cross the point of no return the moment I feel her lips on mine.
So, instead of kissing her alluring mouth, I instead lower my lips to her forehead and kiss her there.
My wishing star came and went. Only time will tell if my wish will come true.
My wish? I want her to be mine.