Knot Their Pawn (Knotting-verse #4)

Chapter One – Kayla

Alphas are the lucky ones in society. They get to rule it all and tell the rest of us how to live. They make the laws, they enforce them, they run the big companies from coast to coast. You can’t trust them when they say they’re going to make things better; it’s something I always believed.

But, as I stand across the street from the newly renovated Solus Academy—sorry, the New Omega Academy—I can’t help but wonder if, sometimes, alphas do back up their promises with action.

Solus Academy had been a staple in the area for a long time. Everyone knows about the school for orphaned and unwanted omegas, the ones who fell through the system’s cracks. There’s a school for alphas and betas just like it, too. Now it’s under new management, and they were quick to make changes.

I wonder if it’s any better than it was. Rumors swirled about the place.

It’s funny, but not in a ha-ha kind of way. Everyone says omegas are the backbones of society, that without omegas we would be nowhere, and yet they’re the most abused, the most forgotten, and definitely the most used.

I’m an omega, sadly. It’s not something I’m proud of, but at least I’m not at that academy.

If I was, I’d have been forced to a pack a long time ago, since I’m twenty-five.

Maybe the ones running the place now don’t force matches like the old management did, but I’m not in the know when it comes to that place.

I do wonder, though, how different my life would be if I didn’t have Jeremy, my brother.

If N.O.A. is for the omegas who fell through the cracks, what does that say about my brother and me?

Our parents died when we were young, but Jeremy was old enough to take responsibility for me as my alpha guardian.

For years, we’ve been hopping from apartment to apartment, doing whatever small jobs we could just to get by.

It’s not easy scraping by in a big city like this, but you’d be surprised at how many of us there are.

Walking downtown, surrounded by the big skyscrapers, all you can think about is the glitz and the glamor and the men and women in suits all around you, but there’s so much more to this place.

And not all of it is good.

“Hey, Mackayla,” my brother’s voice pulls me out of my thoughts and brings me back to reality, “bus is pulling up. Let’s go.”

I turn away from the academy across the street and hurry to the bus stop a good ten or fifteen feet away.

In the middle of the day, it’s just my brother and I waiting for the bus.

We have a very important meeting today, but before that meeting, we need to hit the nearest thrift store so we can try to look the part.

Alpha Life is going through a hiring wave.

It’s a pretty big company, from what I understand.

It’s all about fancy, high-end clothes and stuff for alphas with lots of money—it’s a long shot for nobodies like us, but if we can get our feet through the door, maybe we won’t have to keep sharing that studio apartment a few blocks away. Maybe we could move up in the world.

It probably won’t happen, but my brother is hopeful. I don’t have the energy to carry such hope around; ever since our parents got mugged and killed, hope became a foreign concept to me, something I didn’t care to keep inside myself.

And let’s be honest: these days, I barely have enough energy to keep going.

It’s a necessary evil, Jeremy has told me time and time again. It saves us money, prevents anyone from looking at us—at me—too hard. Turns out, if you eat under a certain number of calories a day, most typical omega traits don’t fully develop.

The sweet, alluring scent. The full, curvy figure. The heats.

To everyone who asks, and on my forged I.D. card, I am a beta. Small, sure; I still have the tiny stature omegas typically have, but I don’t have to worry about anything else. Just the occasional headache and dizzy spell, but they’re things I’ve gotten used to over the years.

I hurry over to Jeremy right as the bus pulls up, and I wait beside him as the doors are slow to open.

He pulls out our fare and pays for both of us, and then we go to sit.

Most of the bus is empty, so there are plenty of seats to choose from.

We end up in the back, far enough away from everyone else that we won’t be overheard.

But no one really pays attention to us. Why would they?

We’re nobodies. Even my brother, an alpha, isn’t all too impressive when you compare him to other alphas physically.

He’s short for an alpha at five-foot-ten.

Four years older than me, he wears his experience on his face, more wrinkles than his skin should have.

He’s skinny too, but not as skinny as me. His hair is a pure brown, while mine has twinges of red, especially if I’m out in the sun. We both have the same green eyes, remnants of our mother.

He checks his old, mostly broken phone for the time as his other hand clutches the small bag that contains a folder with our resumes. “Bus was ten minutes late on the route,” he mutters with a frown. “Fucking sucks, but we’ll make do. We still have time before the interviews.”

Alpha Life is hiring a bunch of people, supposedly. A little hiring fair that people can stroll in off the streets with their resumes in hopes of getting hired. I think my brother is hoping one of us gets a job there and can bring in the other, but I don’t think a simple job is the end of it.

No, if I know my brother, and I like to think I know him pretty well, there’s more to it. More to it he doesn’t want to talk about just yet. If anyone’s full of schemes, it’s Jeremy, and since I have nowhere else to go, I’m his sidekick and partner in crime more often than I’m not.

I don’t have a choice, really. It’s not like I can run away. Even masquerading as a beta, I’d be fresh meat on the streets. I’m forced into his schemes.

Besides, even if I wouldn’t be fresh meat, my brother always told me he’d find me if I ran away from him, and I was never naive enough to believe he was wrong. He’d never let me go, even if I had somewhere else to call home.

A pack. Mates. People who might actually take care of me in the ways omegas are supposed to be cherished.

No, I stopped dreaming of such things years ago. Again, there’s no point in having hope for anything these days, not when you’re me.

I don’t say anything to him as we ride through the city. My brother is busy texting God knows who, his fingers furiously working on overdrive as they tap his cracked screen. I have a phone, but it’s a cheap one that only does calls with prepaid minutes.

I zone out for a while, and it’s only when my brother stands and gestures for me to get up with him that I stop disassociating. We walk off the bus at the correct stop and have a good ten-minute walk between our location and the thrift store.

It’s a store we’re familiar with, let’s just say. It’s a good place to find nicer things cheap, even if said nicer things are a few years old and unwanted by the richer masses.

It’s a big store, too. Rows and rows of clothing racks, along with racks of donated toys, books, and other household items. They don’t carry much furniture, but what they do have is always in the back corner of the store, furthest away from the door.

Any nicer dresses they tend to hang in the front windows to attract passersby.

My brother reminds me before we split up: “There’s twenty bucks for each of us. Try to stay under that.”

I nod, and I wait until he goes off to the men’s section before I head to the women’s to search through the racks.

Sometimes you’ll find diamonds nestled amongst the clothes, but most of the time it’s old T-shirts with questionable stains. I’d settle for a decent-looking sweater if they don’t have any long-sleeve, button-up shirts. Any pair of stain-free dark pants will do.

It’s not a quick process, going through the clothing racks at a store like this.

You might think you stumble upon a nice shirt or good pants, but after a thorough examination of the item in question, you find hidden stains or seams coming undone that I never learned how to fix.

It takes a good while each time to survey the clothes.

But I find a maroon shirt with a flower pattern on it.

The left sleeve is missing a button, but all in all, it’s a decent-looking shirt that I think is interview-worthy.

I then move to the bottom section to find myself some nicer pants, and after a while I come across a pair of black pants for ten dollars.

With the shirt being eight and the pants being ten… that’s my twenty-dollar limit right there.

Holding onto them, I glance down at my feet. I wear old, black flats, but I suppose the bottom of the pants would cover most of them up. I could make do with my old shoes.

By the time I make it to the front of the store, my brother is already waiting for me.

He found some okay-looking slacks and a teal green button-up shirt.

He glances at what I have in my hands, but ultimately doesn’t say a word.

Together, we head up to the register and pay, and then we go to a nearby dark alley where we change.

Soon enough our old clothes are stuffed in the bag.

Jeremy pulls out the folder with our resumes, and he hands it to me as he slings the bag over his back and checks the time.

“We have thirty minutes to get to the Alpha Life building.” His green eyes meet my gaze as he tucks his phone into his pants.

“You remember everything we talked about, right?”

I nod.

He gives me a smile, but there’s no warmth behind it. It’s tight, cold, maybe even menacing. I learned a long time ago that Jeremy is not someone you go to when you need a hug or any comforting words. He’s much more prone to tearing you down and backing up his words with his fists.

Jeremy is not the definition of a loving brother. He took after our father when it comes to how he shows love.