Chapter Twenty-Three – Mercedes
I imagine it’s going to be a while, and I’m so agitated I do something I’ve never done before in an effort to calm myself down: I run myself a bath.
I do hop in the shower first, to wash off the slick that leaked out of me while I was kissing Warren—that kiss… it made my head spin, but not in a bad way. It was just like kissing Nic, only different. The same kind of passion and urgency, but twinged with Warren’s intensity.
It was nice.
No, it was more than nice. It was… fantastic.
Once the tub is full, I soak. The water is a bit hotter than is comfortable, but my body quickly gets used to it. It’s a deep, larger-than-average tub meant to hold more than one person at a time, so it’s easy for me to fully submerge myself. I don’t look at the scar on my hip; the whole point of this bath is to try to make myself think of other things.
So, because I need to occupy my mind with something else, I think about kissing Warren again, and then Nic. And then, of course, I wonder what kissing Darius would be like. His mouth was between my thighs not too long ago, so I had plenty to think about.
I like it. I like kissing Warren and Nic, and I imagine I’d like kissing Darius, too. It’s not something I ever thought I’d admit. Out of the list of possibilities that could’ve happened after choosing an alpha pack at the Omega Garden, starting to actually like them was never one.
I need to steel myself, bolster up these walls of mine. These guys are finding their way in, like water seeking cracks, and so far I’ve been pretty damn helpless to resist. They have some kind of superpower over me.
Closing my eyes, I hold my breath and sink my head below the water, feeling the warmth completely envelope me. Honestly, I don’t know what’s worse: thinking about the guys or thinking about Jay and the fact that he found me. Both are bad, for opposite reasons—but at the same time, the root of it is the same.
What if these guys change? What if they get worse? What if Nic is all smiles and dimples now, but once my heat comes, he’ll mark me just like Jay wants to and forever bond me to him? It’s enough to make my stomach hurt.
I surface and suck in a breath. I stayed under for a little too long. I try to imagine Warren downstairs, on the phone, calling Darius and Nic and telling them what happened—how he found me sitting on the couch with a knife. I don’t know what those conversations would entail; I haven’t been around any of them long enough to know what they’re like in emergency situations.
My inner omega does want to be comforted, though, and that’s why kissing Warren felt so right.
Sighing, I lean the back of my head against the tub’s edge, staring at the white tiled wall in front of me. This doesn’t even feel real. It doesn’t. Though I can feel the water around my body, its heat seeping into every pore on my skin, I also feel like I’m not quite here. An out of body experience thanks to the stress waging war inside me.
I always did the best I could with what I was given. I survived. I made it through Solus Academy and their bogus classes on omega etiquette. I liked to think I was strong—but even the strongest person can get knocked down. Everyone has a weakness, a skeleton in their closet.
Jay is mine.
He could always make me feel insignificant, like what I want doesn’t matter. The stereotypical angry alpha who isn’t afraid to use his dominance against anyone and everyone; he’ll do whatever he can to get what he wants, and ever since we were kids together at the orphanage, he’s always wanted me.
I don’t know what made me so unlucky to gain his attention, his sick obsession. I don’t know if it’s something I did or something I said to him when we were younger, why he thought it was okay to constantly take from me. To bite me, to whisper in my ear when we were alone how he can’t wait until I have my first heat.
His spies in the academy made it so that I was never truly alone. I was always watched, always monitored. I never had an ounce of freedom, while the other omegas at the academy could meet with potential alphas in the academy’s common room under supervision. Everyone knew I already belonged to an alpha.
The whole thing soured the alpha-omega dynamic for me. Most omegas love being an omega, but I was never among their number. I hated being what I am. I found no joy in it at all. Only dread for what was to come.
And now that I’m here, now that I met three alphas who make my inner omega mewl like a greedy kitten, the dread in me has only grown. Jay will never let me go—but if by some miracle I escape his clutches forever, I might find myself wearing another set of shackles: the ones from pack Alabaster.
The only kind of eternity I want is the kind I can have myself, where I’m free to make my own decisions and my mind isn’t cloudy from constant alpha desire. I don’t want to be a slave to those instincts. Hell, I don’t even know if I want kids.
I’m on birth control right now, which I haven’t even told these guys. I don’t know if that’ll ever change. Would Nic, Warren, and Darius be okay with that, or would they send me packing the moment they find out I’m unsure about popping out pups like I’m some brood mother?
A heavy, invisible weight settles on my chest. Logic tells me they’ll change their mind about me when they discover the truth. It should be a good thing—make my break from them simple and clean and easy—but I can’t deny the way disappointment and depression tugs at my insides at the thought.
I don’t know how long I stay in the bath, but it must be a while. My fingers are wrinkly when I hear someone’s deep voice calling out for me in the hall—their voice muffled by two sets of closed doors: “Mercedes!”
“What?” I try yelling back, but he must not hear me, because he keeps calling out my name. I assume it’s Warren. It doesn’t sound as though he’s going to quit it and leave me be, so I groan as I get up and hit the water stopper to drain the tub.
Everything that happens next happens fast, faster than my mind can comprehend.
The alpha calling my name busts through my bedroom door, and since I know he’s seconds from coming into the bathroom in much the same manner, I hurry and reach for a towel. Can’t move too fast thanks to my sore ankle, but thankfully I’m in the process of grabbing the towel when the bathroom door flings open and a concerned alpha steps in.
And based on the suit and six-and-a-half-foot tall frame, it’s not Warren.
“Mercedes,” Darius says my name again, the intensity coming off him in waves.
I yank the towel over my important parts, covering my chest and the area between my legs to give me a semblance of modesty—which is just silly, considering this particular alpha was on his knees for me just last night.
“Are you—” He was probably going to ask me if I’m okay, but he stops, and just like that his worried expression morphs into something different, something darker.
Why?
Oh, because I was too busy covering my naked bits to remember to hide the bite mark on my hip.
That damned mark sits in plain view of Darius, smack dab on my side, and I’m too frozen, too shocked, to try to cover it.
Doesn’t really matter, now. It’s too late. He sees it, and his green-eyed gaze narrows as his jaw clenches and a vein in his forehead pops. Oh, he’s beyond furious now. He’s absolutely livid, and I hate that my first instinct is to shrink away from him and avert my gaze to try to avoid that fury being flung in my direction.
Maybe I’m not so strong after all.
Darius’s chest reverberates with a low growl as he demands, “Who did this to you?” To my surprise, he doesn’t use his alpha dominance on me, so I’m not forced to answer him.
Which is good—I don’t think I can speak right now. I’m too busy wishing I was somewhere else, anywhere else. Or at that rate, that I was some one else.
He steps closer to me, and I angle my body away from his. Specifically, I angle the scar away from him. “Mercedes,” he whispers my name, sounding gentler now, but I can still detect the rage simmering beneath the surface. “Who bit you?”
I squeeze my eyes shut, keeping my head turned to the side and my mouth zipped shut.
Darius moves even closer to me, and he’s now within reaching distance, because I feel one of his hands lightly touch my arm. “It’s all right,” he tells me, no more bark to his words. He pulls me into his chest and wraps his arms around me, holding me there even though I’m just rod-straight and terrified.
Terrified he’ll tell the others, that they’ll decide I’m too broken, too used up, and want to throw me out. I’m not good at legal jargon; maybe there was a clause I didn’t understand in the contract. Maybe they can get rid of me and keep the money, somehow, since I clearly have a past that involves another alpha.
“It’s all right,” he whispers again. “I’m not—I’m not mad at you. I’m pissed at the fucker who bit you. Is it the same J that vandalized our front window? Give me a name. Tell me something. Anything.” As he speaks, his wide, strong chest begins to purr a low, comforting sound, and even though I’m still on edge, the icy terror in me slowly melts.
In the end, I don’t tell him what he wants to know. The only thing I mutter against his chest is, “Please, don’t… don’t tell the others.” Beyond the taste and scent of my fear, Darius’s musk soothes me in a way that shouldn’t be possible.
His arms tighten around me. “They have the right to know.”
He’s not wrong, which is why I don’t argue with him.
The sigh he heaves I feel in my bones. He says, “You should tell them when you’re ready. It’s clear whoever this is isn’t ready to let you go. You need to tell me a name, mate, and I’ll bring you his teeth.”
A threat that’s only dampened by the fact that he called me his mate a millisecond before. Mate . The word swirls in my head, making everything hazy. My heart swells in my chest on its own accord, like the organ itself has ears and a mind of its own, and it decided it likes being called that.
We stand there for a few moments longer, neither of us saying another word. Maybe Darius is shocked at himself for calling me his mate and wants to take it back—or maybe his heart feels the same way mine does, like this has been a long time coming. Inevitable.
Eventually, Darius is the one to break the silence of the bathroom, saying gently, “Get dressed. Nic is with Warren downstairs. I’m sure he wants to see you and make sure you’re all right.” And then his arms fall away from me and he takes a step back, a handsome frown tugging at his face.
When I meet his emerald stare, I wish I could take a peek into his brain and see what he’s thinking, see if he regrets that slip of the tongue.
He looks as though he wants to say more, but he doesn’t. He averts his gaze and gives me his back as he leaves, taking the air from my lungs with him.
I stand there, alone, clinging that towel against my private parts like it’s my only lifeline. I should’ve been faster, should’ve paid more attention to the way I pulled that towel over my body. The bite should’ve been the first thing I hid, not my chest or the space between my legs.
What was I thinking?
Now Darius knows, and if I don’t tell the others, I’m sure he will, given a bit of time.
I was dumb for hoping I’d be able to do this without things getting complicated. I was even more stupid for thinking I could hide what Jay did to me. As I walk out of the bathroom, to my closet, and slowly get dressed, I can’t fight the way my stomach churns.
Honestly? I don’t know that I’ll ever be ready to tell them the truth.