Chapter 12
Miraya
My two calls went about as well as I expected.
Auntie Teja called bullshit on every last thing I told her, until I had to give her a sugar-coated version of the truth.
She knew I was grabbed off the street, and now I was staying with the alphas who stopped me being attacked because I felt most safe here.
It was as hard to admit that last fact to myself as Teja, but it was true.
I did feel safe here, safer than I would at home with my heat coming.
And the hormonal Miraya I was trying to ignore—it was a battle I was quickly losing—wanted to be close to her alphas when it hit.
That was how I thought of Prodigy and Tybalt now, whenever my logical side slipped. Mine. My alphas.
My second phone call was to my mum, and it went from bad to worse. The greatest hits were:
Me, choking back tears, my soul tearing: “I met my mate and he—”
Mum, talking over me in her excitement: “That’s amazing, honey. No wonder you stayed away from home all this time.”
Me, trying desperately to salvage the conversation: “No, Mum, he—”
“What’s he like? Is he handsome? What does he smell like?”
Leather and vanilla, I tried to choke out, but my throat closed up. “Like smoke,” I managed to say, my eyes screwed shut. “Like fire and smoke.”
“You always did love a bonfire,” she replied, a smile in her voice.
“You’ll have to bring him to meet the family as soon as possible.
Nikhil!” she called, shouting for my older brother.
I sighed. Nikhil would care about me finding my mate as much as he did about current events and personal hygiene.
He was thirteen, and in full teenager-mode at all times. “Nikhil, your sister met her mate!”
His low voice replied something I couldn’t make out, no doubt scathing and bored.
If I’d been home, if I’d met my mate and it had ended happily, I might have kicked the wires out of his game console for that.
Instead, I hugged my knees to my chest in the middle of my nest while my mum chatted away, so genuinely happy for me that I couldn’t stand to correct her.
I wished I had a fairy tale ending to prove to her that dreams really did come true, like she said they always did, but life didn’t work out that way.
Now, as the sun began to set, casting the clubhouse in golden tones, I curled my feet beneath me in the cosy chair by the fire in the common room and cracked open one of the books Prodigy got me this morning.
I’d debated staying in my nest all night, but I was going stir-crazy on my own, the silence droning and maddening.
I’d followed the boisterous, argumentative tone of Tybalt’s voice to this room, where I ought to feel stifled and threatened and on edge.
But Tybalt’s presence was calming, lulling me into feeling almost normal.
Plus, I’d showered every last scrap of scent from my body and covered the rest in dark, musky perfume so no one was drawn to my irresistible heat scent.
Yet, I supposed. Even if some douche approached, thinking he could talk himself into my nest, I knew Tybalt would break his nose.
He was getting to that point now as he argued with some massive guy with trashy tattoos and not much hair at the bar across the room.
I kept him in my line of sight even as I began to read, a fire crackling merrily to my right.
“I don’t give a dolphin’s flying fuck,” Tybalt snarled, bringing a smile to my face. “You were put in charge of the gatehouse, so you stay the fuck inside the gatehouse. It’s not rocket science, Crook.”
“You don’t get to talk to me like that, you jumped-up little wanker. You’re half my age—”
“I really wouldn’t, Crook,” a handsome man in his fifties advised, bringing a tumbler of whiskey to his smiling mouth. “He strung up the last man to piss him off, and he’s been cutting off bits of him day by day.”
I blinked, having to read the last sentence in my book three times before I processed it.
Tybalt was cutting off bits of someone each day?
Shit. I should have realised just how unhinged he was when I saw him beating the life out of my buyer, but I’d assumed he was just handy with his fists, not the kind to torture someone.
Wait. Was the last person to piss him off Lance Brown…? Who else had earned his wrath in the days since?
I stared at Tybalt, shock cracking through every beat of my heart. But he wouldn’t. There was no way he’d have my buyer strung up.
He got your phone somehow, a helpful voice pointed out.
I would have got up and confronted him about it—or maybe just kissed him until neither of us could breathe—but a familiar scent hit my senses and I flinched so hard my head whacked into the chair back. That dull ache was nothing compared to the excruciating agony that devastated my chest.
It was like a web of cracks in a pane of glass; the pain hit my soul with whip after whip of pain, so vicious that I gasped, my eyes burning, watering, dripping tears.
My hands shook on the book as I numbly slid my new bookmark into the pages and closed it, getting to my feet. My legs shook, the acid burn of rejection flaring into a tsunami, an eruption of lava.
Sweetie’s throat was marked. A bite scarred the rich gold of his throat, violent in its freshness.
It was days old at most. ChaCha’s neck had a matching bite, their claim on each other defiant and clear.
The network of fractures inside me shattered, the shards of my soul cutting and sharp.
I needed to get out of here. I couldn’t stay a single second longer. I couldn’t breathe.
“Right, we’re off for the weekend,” Sweetie said to Guardian and two other high-ranking bikers I’d heard people call officers.
He hadn’t noticed me here, as if I mattered about as much as a speck of dust. My entire being was bleeding, straining towards the broken shreds of a bond he’d killed, and he didn’t even know I was here.
“Call me if any shit goes down and you need—”
“A chef?” Guardian interrupted, teasing.
“Shut the fuck up,” Sweetie grumbled, but his whole expression softened when ChaCha laughed.
She was tucked into his side, the two of them a united front, a happy couple.
And it hurt, even as I snarled at myself that Sweetie was none of my business, that ChaCha must have been a great person if she had so many friends who spoke so highly of her.
Unfortunately, the other voice in my head sneered Saint Fucking ChaCha right back at the other voice.
No wonder he loved her; she had a god-awful name to match his.
I waited until they’d crossed half the room, clearing the path to the door, and then I made a run for it.
His scent was everywhere, and hers too, a sweet, fruity scent that filled my lungs like liquid until I drowned.
I cut off my air and rushed out the door, stumbling down the hallway like a drunk, my chest ripping itself apart.
“Miraya.” Tybalt’s voice hit me like a life raft, pulling me out of the depths I drowned in, but the pain went nowhere. It dug into my insides, gouged trails that welled nothing but torment.
“Leave me the fuck alone,” I snapped, the pain seeking an outlet and falling from my sharp tongue.
“Not happening, warrior,” he replied, far too calmly.
Fine, if he wanted to follow me that was his questionable choice. But I couldn’t do this alone. Endure this pain, accept that my mate was never going to want me, murder that last tiny shred of hope that had refused to give up until this very minute.
Stupid. So stupid, that hope. I knew Sweetie didn’t want me, and yet.
I guessed deep down, I’d been waiting for them to break up.
But fuck that. I was no one’s second choice, no one’s rock bottom offerings.
I was the star fucking prize, the greatest woman anyone would ever have the hope to be mated to.
At least that’s what I yelled at myself inside my head as I fled across the clubhouse, aiming for the double doors that led out into the garden.
I threw myself through them and gasped down clear, biting air, so cold that it stung as I forced it into my lungs.
Purging the mingled scent of leather, vanilla, and sweet peaches.
Her scent, all over him. A message, loud and clear.
Not his scent on hers; ChaCha’s scent on him, like he’d drowned himself in it, like garlic to vampires, iron to fae.
A fine haze of raindrops clung to the air, and I tipped my face up into them, letting the water soak my hair, my clothes, my skin. Cleansing me of the sight and scent and sound of my mate. No, he wasn’t my anything. He was just Sweetie. Just some guy in a biker club.
“Your book’s getting damp, warrior,” Tybalt said, spinning me to face him and locking his arms around me, the book clutched between us. As if the paper warping mattered.
But it did, I realised, when my omega turned frantic.
My whole body shook, teeth chattering together.
The book was a gift from Prodigy, from my alpha, and the thought of ruining it made me want to cry.
No, I was crying. Gasping, heaving sobs that only grew in frequency, tumbling together until I struggled for air between broken, howling wails.
“I ruined it,” I wept, an omega whine making my voice pitiful. “It was a gift and I-I ruined it.”
“You didn’t ruin it,” Tybalt disagreed in a firm tone. “It’s only paper; it’ll dry out.”
I shook my head, my fingertips biting into the cover, tears falling down my cheeks. I wasn’t rational right now, wasn’t anywhere in the realm of rational. My hormones had full control, the rest of me slaughtered by the never-ending pain.
“But it was a gift.”
“It’s just a—oh.” Tybalt pulled up the hood of the leather jacket I hadn’t taken off all day and tucked me closer, my head on his shoulder and his scent of woodsmoke and fire dominating my senses with every broken gasp and jagged breath. “A courting gift.”