12. Cameron
Cameron
My heart is racing in my chest. I don’t think I’ve ever been this nervous sneaking into a place before. And I’ve snuck into plenty of compounds I probably shouldn’t have to speak to vulnerable omegas for previous projects of mine.
Maybe I’m so anxious because this doesn’t feel like a project anymore.
When did that change?
Interacting with her definitely felt like a job, especially at the beginning when I bought into the persona Andi projected into the world. Only now do I know it came from a place of necessity, from a place of survival, just like the mixed responses other omega victims I work with have had.
Fight, flight, freeze, and the less well-known fawn response are all things that happen when people are confronted with dangerous situations.
Andi’s had to fawn her way through her entire life. It’s the only way to survive under the roof of a woman who’s demonstrated she’s willing to go as far as keeping Andi captive under a bullshit conservatorship.
I take Andi in, my breath catching in my throat. She doesn’t look good. There’s a glassy look to her eyes that’s different from the type of look people get under the influence of alcohol or substances. She looks like an omega in shock.
An omega who’s been wasting away for the past month. Her skin is pale and thin, showcasing and highlighting features of her skeletal structure I wouldn’t be able to see if she were healthy.
“Sorry,” I say, dragging my gaze away from her and to Juno and Cleo. “I know you told me to wait for the signal, but... I couldn’t help myself.”
I take a few steps closer to Andi, who’s as still as a statue, blinking at me with wide eyes that look far too big for her face now. They’re sunken in and lifeless. That spark I saw there, present since I first met her and cornered her outside of that club bathroom, is gone. Not even an ember left.
“Hey, Andi,” I murmur, stepping closer to her and opening my arms. “I know I’m probably not who you’d want right now, but—”
I don’t even have a chance to finish my statement before she’s stumbling forward into my arms.
Feeling her pressed up against me makes me grit my teeth and bite back a growl. It’s even worse than seeing the damage the past month has done to her.
“I’ve got you,” I murmur against her head as her delicate shoulders tremble.
“I don’t care,” she mumbles against my shirt, her voice soft and muffled.
“What?”
“I don’t—I don’t care that it’s not any of the others. This is the—the best hug of my life.” She pulls back from the tight embrace to blink up at me with teary eyes, some of her mascara streaking down her face.
“Oh, Sweet Tea,” I murmur, reaching up and brushing away some of her tears with the pad of my thumb.
“Don’t worry, cry as much as you need to,” Cleo whispers as she passes us. “Juno and I brought makeup so we can touch you up before you go back.”
Juno grips Ezra’s sleeve and tugs him further into the bathroom. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen an omega drag around an alpha that she’s not with like that, but I’m not surprised that Everett’s sisters are the kind of omegas who take no shit.
I run a hand up and down her exposed spine, and she trembles against me, pressing herself closer.
My chest vibrates with a soothing purr before I can stop it. Her chamomile scent is acrid—bitter and twisted in the air around us, a sensory showcase of the intense, constant stress she’s had to endure alone over the past few weeks.
Everyone has been incredibly worried about Beck’s health, both mentally and physically, after this whole disaster exploded in our faces. But he’s had a safe place to stay, comfortable bedding and nesting materials, and an alpha he loves and trusts to take care of him.
Andi’s been denied all of these things.
She’s an omega in distress right now. Any good doctor at the OCN would immediately remove her from her current circumstances and create a robust healing plan with lots of reassuring physical contact to balance out her hormones after such a stressful experience.
But I think we all know that Gina won’t let a good doctor anywhere near Andi right now.
Not when that could ruin her chance of keeping Andi under her custody with the permanent conservatorship.
Based on the intensity of her scent, she’s been braving this storm of unbalanced omega hormones alone.
It means she’s denying Ezra’s offers to help, or he hasn’t had any opportunity to offer.
After he managed to find a way into Beck’s greenroom, it was obvious that he still had feelings for Andi, so I’m sure it pains him to see her like this too.
But seeing the two of them barely interact earlier shows me that Andi doesn’t entertain those same feelings.
It makes something twist inside my chest, a strange sense of importance that increases the intensity of my purr.
“We all thought it would be best to have one of us here, with Juno and Cleo,” I murmur, still holding her close to my chest and giving her the physical comfort her body obviously desperately needs right now. “But it was too risky for anyone officially associated with Beck to show up. I’m so sorry.”
There were enough degrees of separation between Cleo, who had a genuine invite to this event because she’s also a musician, and Beck for her to be here with Juno.
But anyone specifically traced back to being on Beck’s team would’ve been strange enough for it to get back to Gina if word had gotten out.
Which is why I’m here.
“Don’t apologize,” she rasps, still trembling in my arms. “Please.”
“Oh.” My breath punches out of my lungs at her whispered ‘please.’
“I’m—I’m so glad you’re here, Cameron. You apologizing just makes me feel like you don’t wanna be here.”
Her words are surprisingly coherent, considering how fragile she looked when I first laid eyes on her. Maybe this physical contact is helping her?
“Okay, no apologies then. For what it’s worth...
” I swallow hard, trying to think of how to phrase the jumbled mess of emotions in my mind that’ve been festering from the sleepless nights and copious amounts of coffee consumed with the others, trying to get Andi to safety.
“For what it’s worth, I’m glad I get to be the one to see you. ”
“Really?” She pulls away from my chest once more, wiping at her cheeks. “I thought you hated me.”
“Nah, that’s ‘cause I was a fucking idiot before. Plus, even back then, I never hated you. Just... disliked who I thought you were.”
She lets out a soft snort. “Disliked who you thought I was, huh?”
“Yeah, idiot, remember? It’s obvious now that all the things I thought I hated about you were either shit I got over the moment I pulled my head out of my ass, or things your mom wanted the world to see.”
Her expression crumples at the mention of Gina. At the reminder that after this rendezvous in the bathroom of an event she was dragged to, she’ll have to go back to that prison.
Her hands fist into the fabric of my dark button-up, and she buries her face back into my chest.
“Where’s your scent?” she mumbles softly.
“What? Oh, I put on de-scenters so I wouldn’t leave any of my scent on you after you left. Just in case anyone on Gina’s team noticed or something.”
She lets out a soft hum, burying her face even further into my chest. It almost sounds... disappointed?
I feel a little bad. Almost like I’m taking advantage. She’s obviously in a vulnerable state. Would she really act like this around me if she weren’t practically starved of all the things she needs to survive as an omega?
I shake my head, reaching up and pressing my hand to the nape of her neck, my hand massaging the tense muscles there in the way I watch Eli do to Beck all the time when the male omega is stressed.
She lets out a soft noise, no hint of disappointment anywhere this time around.
I can debate the morality of my touching her like this later.
There’s no point in wondering whether she’d welcome my affection if this hadn’t happened to her, because it has.
She has been kept in solitary confinement, has been starved both physically and emotionally, has been kept prisoner by her own mother.
I’ll give her all the comfort I can.
“Okay,” she murmurs. “So you can’t leave your scent on me... but can I?”
“Can you what, Sweet Tea?” I ask, my brows drawing down as I blink at her.
“Can I scent mark you?” she huffs, as if that’s the most obvious conclusion from her words.
And maybe it is, but that certainly doesn't help with the feeling that I’m taking advantage of her.
“Please, Cameron?” Her voice goes so soft I can barely hear the tremble in it. Fuck, that tremble. I can’t say no. Especially when she asks me so nicely.
I’m not a saint.
She reaches up, running the blunt edges of her nails, ones that don’t suit her normal style at all, up the back of my neck. They run through the tight curls of my hair right at the base of my neck as she pulls me down towards her.
I move along with her direction until I’m low enough for her to rest her face in the crook of my neck. She presses her cheek against the sensitive skin there, practically nuzzling into me.
Then, she turns her head, and I feel the ghost of her lips against my skin.
Fuck.
“Hey,” I rasp, my hands resting against her hips. The sequins on the dress are rough against my fingertips. God, this must be miserable for her to wear.
“Hmmm?” she hums against my skin, her lips pressing against my neck.
Double fuck.
It’s not quite a kiss. She’s honestly just resting her face against me, but I can feel her soft breath against my skin in a way that sends awareness shooting down my spine.
“You don’t have to do this,” I say, my throat thick.
“But I want to.”
Triple fuck.
And then she actually kisses my neck. A soft sigh leaves her lips after the tender brush of her lips.
“I wish you weren’t wearing de-scenter’s right now,” she says, her lower lip sticking out in a pout.
“You—you like my scent that much, huh?” The words leave my lips as a half-hearted attempt at a joke.
Any semblance or hint of humor leaves me when I see the seriousness in her gaze.