Chapter 11 #2
Whatever Montgomery gave me is winding its way through my system. It pulls my body hotter degree by degree and makes the large, tense, adrenaline-fueled alphas around me smell good enough to eat. I breathe shallowly and picture the heat as a physical thing I can push back.
We are running for our lives, hussy.
The omega writhing under my skin does not give a single fuck.
“Are you okay?” Weller asks, pitched under the radio, for me alone. “Your breathing is off. You feel warm.”
I could deflect. I’m good at deflecting.
“Montgomery dosed me,” I say, feeling a bit sheepish that I’m just now bringing it up. “The champagne. I think he’s forcing my heat.”
Weller’s hand closes over my knee, and Tristan drawls, “And you were just giving me shit about keeping secrets. I thought your scent smelled stronger.”
“You should’ve told us right away.” Weller taps his fingers against his leg. “You going into heat will change everything. We’re not prepared.”
“We were escaping. It didn’t feel like the ideal time for a pack meeting about my body.”
“How do you know it’s coming?”
“I could tell immediately after drinking the champagne.”
Freddie turns in his seat. “How close are you?”
“It’s not super strong yet - I think I have some time.” My thighs press together like I’m a liar. “Whatever he gave me... it’s trying. But I think I can hold it until we find suppressants.”
Weller opens the kit again and reads every label under the passing streetlights. When he reaches the end, he starts over.
Owen finally eases off the gas when the fuel gauge drops low. He pulls into a station with two pumps and half the letters missing from the sign.
“Gas or ass,” I joke. “Nobody rides for free.”
Freddie laughs while the others perform the fastest threat assessment in history. One camera behind the register. A back door beside the coolers. A clerk too committed to his phone to look up. Nothing here feels interested in us.
A television above the lottery tickets shows a news report on what’s left of Whitney’s burning mansion. My portrait appears beside Montgomery’s beneath a red banner.
DOCTOR’S OMEGA DAUGHTER MISSING AFTER VIOLENT ATTACK AND FIRE
The anchor’s mouth moves beneath the words while my portrait replaces the fire. One vulnerable omega with a troubled past, newly identified as Dr. Emmett Montgomery’s daughter. Police are asking for tips.
I angle my face away from the register.
Troubled past, my ass.
Freddie takes a basket and fills it with anything I study for more than two seconds. Weller pays for gas while Tristan watches the windows. I’m reaching for chips when a pretty omega follows Freddie down an aisle.
Dark hair, big tits, shirt cut low enough to make sure nobody misses that fact. She tugs the neckline even lower, then asks him to reach a box from the top shelf. Her fingers touch his chest and she smiles at him. He steps backward instantly but it’s too late.
A violent little rumble starts beneath my ribs. I want to snap her fingers off.
I come from behind her, move between them, and turn to face her. “He can’t help you.”
She looks at me with disdain. “Didn’t ask you. He doesn’t smell like he belongs to anyone?”
I yank down the collar of his shirt and point at the spot where I marked him. “Walk away before you get hurt.”
Freddie is frozen and the woman looks to him for help, which is adorable, because he’s looking at me.
Good boy.
She mutters under her breath and stalks away with a box from the lower shelf. I catch Freddie’s shirt and pull him close enough to make my claim feel less theoretical.
“Please don’t talk to women that want to fuck you,” I murmur. “I’m way too jealous for that.”
His smile fades and I think I need to reel the crazy in, but then his scent melts into a honey trap.
Oh.
He steps into me, one hand settling at my waist while his gaze fixes on my mouth. “Okay.”
That’s unreasonable. Controlling. Probably unhealthy.
I really fucking like it.
“That’s why you’re my favorite boy, Freddie.”
His eyes light, and his thumb passes over my lower lip. “Anything else I can do for you?”
He’s going to be a problem. A fun one.
“That’s all for now.”
We eat in the car like we have never seen food. Everything tastes like salt, grease, and heaven. Freddie passes me bites from whatever he opens. Weller takes anything he thinks will poison me with chemicals, and I steal it back when he looks away.
Tristan unfolds the map across his knees. The little notebook I always see him with slips from his pocket.
I grab it before he can.
“Give that back,” Tristan says.
“We had minutes to escape and you packed your diary?”
“It’s not a diary.”
Owen makes a dark sound from the front. Freddie turns toward the window, his shoulders shaking.
The first page is complete gibberish: dates, circles, slashes, arrows, tiny symbols, lines struck through other lines. I flip to the next and find more of the same.
“Is this code? A schedule? Are you communicating with aliens?”
Tristan holds out his hand. The more annoyed I get, the more everybody else enjoys it.
“What are the circles? Why does this date have a happy face?”
Weller sighs. “They’re your orgasms, Bianca.”
My fingers stop on the page. “Excuse me? What do you mean by my orgasms?”
Owen is quick to answer because subtlety has never survived long around him. “You told us your boy best friend gave you hundreds. Did you think that wasn’t going to make us competitive?”
“You’re in a competition with Ezra?”
“Not a competition,” Tristan says. “A correction to the record.”
“You packed a notebook tracking my sex life during an emergency.”
“There would be gaps in the data.”
“That assumes I ever let you touch me again. You all need mental help.”
“Undoubtedly.”
He grabs the notebook while I’m still deciding whether to throw it out the window. Over his shoulder, the woman from the chip aisle stands at the end of the pumps with a phone to her ear, staring at our car.
“We need to go. Now.”
Owen starts the engine before I can finish telling them I got into it with the omega staring at us. Two miles down the road, a cruiser appears across the median.
The cop passes going at least fifty, slows, then taps the brakes. Owen takes a right without signaling, then a left into a neighborhood where every house is dark.
Only when the cruiser fails to appear after ten minutes does Tristan whisper in my ear.
“What could you possibly have to fight about in less than ten minutes with a total stranger?”
“She was putting the moves on Freddie.”
Tristan’s thumb pauses. “Ah. A territorial dispute.”
“She said he didn’t smell taken.” I fold my arms and hear how petulant that sounds. “Which is stupid. He’s been sleeping on me all week. I’ve been stuck in that house with you. This entire car smells like us?—”
“It does,” Weller says.
“Then why couldn’t she smell me?”
He takes his time turning toward me, which means I’m about to receive an education I did not request. “Scent by proximity is ambient. More of a suggestion than a claim.”
I sit up. “So the bond isn’t enough.”
“Not to a stranger,” he says. “A bond is felt more than smelled. An alpha’s nose is better. Most would register four claims on you and reconsider. If the claim reads faint, some will still try. Same for us.”
“Let me understand. I’m wearing your marks, you’re wearing mine, and I’m still expected to rub all over you all the time so random omegas get the memo?”
“Pretty please,” Tristan says as Freddie makes a noise into his fist.
I hate that I have no clue how to do this part. My life has become a list of things I taught myself: how to hunt, how to disappear, how to make my body useful when fear rendered it frozen.
Nobody handed me instructions for being theirs.
“How do I fix it?”
Weller’s gaze drops to my mouth. “All contact counts, but especially sexual contact. Outside of that, use your wrists. Your throat. Press your scent into our skin.”
“Daily,” Tristan offers, without a shred of professional integrity.
“Hourly,” Owen says, “is better.”
“Nobody asked either of you.”
“You asked how to fix it.” Owen’s eyes meet mine in the mirror. “I’m strapped into this seat for the next few hours, Princess. You want to practice, you can come sit in my lap, start at my throat and work down. Really take your time with it.”
Tristan leans close enough that burnt amber moves over my cheek. “I’ll hold still for you too. As long as you want.”
Embarrassment should make me want to disappear. Instead, my palms itch with the need to put my scent everywhere that woman failed to find it.
Apparently I’m going to learn this the same way I learned everything else.
Hands-on.