Chapter 15
Madi
Dr. Rose wasn’t lying when she said this week was going to be hard.
My temperature fluctuates hourly between feverish and freezing.
Right now, though, I’m burning up. I’ve put on elastic shorts and a white sheer oversized top over my bathing suit so I could go outside and sit on the patio to watch the waves.
The rain has stopped for now, but the dark incoming clouds promise more of it.
The cold wind is exactly what my flushed skin needs, and the sound of the ocean is peaceful.
Zachary went back to working and I’m grateful for solitude.
My phone pings and I stare down at the message.
It’s from a new number, but it’s the same text as Friday night.
Unknown number:
I’ll pay anything for your heat!!
Name your price.
I know it should be happening any day now.
I don’t sell sex, asshole. I sell my time. Only the special ones get sex.
When I search for the number online, it confirms what I already suspected, unknown source.
After I get back, I’ll change my number.
I don’t want to hear from any old clients or donors after this.
I’ll have to find a new job, too. Harper would let me work at the gallery for a while.
I have my savings, but I’d hate to dip into them.
I’m sure the guys will offer me money, but it feels wrong to disappear and stay on their dime.
No, I can make my own way in this world. Even if Alric insists on trying to bankroll me.
I haven’t seen him today. If he’s hiding from me, he’s doing a good job. I did more exploring of the villa and only saw Zach and Hunter.
Alric is a puzzle I thought I had figured out.
He was livid when I arrived after disappearing on him, an asshole in the bathroom, generous at dinner, but tender, in his own way, when he held me while I shattered in his lap.
Now, I don’t know how to act around him.
Even thinking of him twists my stomach into knots.
As if I summoned him, he quietly leaves the house and heads over one of the small hills. I don’t think he sees me as he left from a different part of the house and my seat is tucked in the corner. His suitcase was packed with much more forethought than mine, and he wears a warm coat.
I shouldn’t follow him.
But I’m bored, trapped here, and I want to know where he’s going on this rain-soaked island.
Hopefully, he’s not traveling far, since I’m in flip-flops and I can only avoid so much of the muddy parts, but still far away enough that hopefully my presence can go unnoticed.
He hasn’t turned around yet. After a few minutes, he comes to a short stone wall with a swirling metal gate below a stone arch.
The wall encloses a small cemetery peppered with marble crosses, wild plants growing around them.
Okay, so I shouldn’t have followed. This is clearly a private moment, one not meant to be disturbed by a nosy omega. He places a bouquet of flowers that I didn’t notice he had been carrying down on the marble slab engraved with beautiful designs.
“You can come out. I can scent you from here.”
I jump at his voice, but I do step into the sacred space. “Sorry, I probably shouldn’t have—”
“I grow weary of that word,” he says in his signature surly tone.
“Huh?”
“You keep apologizing. I’ve heard you utter the words ‘I’m sorry’ more times in the past sixteen hours than I have the entire time I’ve known you. I never want to hear those words leave your lips again. You’ve never had anything to apologize for.”
Have I really been saying it so often? I hadn’t noticed. He turns around and walks toward me, his expression burning. “I actually hate who you are here.”
The fuck? Back to asshole alpha.
“Believe me, I loathe being here.” I try to leave. I don’t need to deal with whatever shitty mood he’s in, but he grabs my arm. It’s not tight, I have the strength to rip myself out of his grasp, but he looks down at me with glossy eyes.
“As long as I’ve known you, you’ve been a ridiculously confident woman.
You had me buy you a $12,000 painting within ten seconds of meeting you.
You deserved everything in this world. You claimed it, demanded it.
Being here with us has turned you anxious and uncertain, extinguishing the luminous light within that drew me to you in the first place.
You’re hiding from us, and not telling us what you need.
The scent of your distress is burned into my bones.
So yeah, I hate it. I miss the Madeline who wasn’t scared and timid, and I fucking hate myself for making you that way here.
For the second time in my life, I feel like an absolute failure. ”
He lets go of my arm, but he doesn’t step away. He towers over me, face full of regret. I want to tell him he’s right. That this turn of events has left me in turmoil.
“Yeah, because I’m fucking terrified.”
His handsome face twists with torment. “Of us? We would never ever hurt you in any way. We want to worship the ground you walk on and would beg at your feet for a moment of your affection. Alphas would do anything for their omegas. Including letting them walk away. So why are you terrified?”
“Because I’m trapped on an island I can’t escape.
My entire future just got blown up. Because I swore to myself I’d never be in a pack, and yet here we are.
I never wanted scent matches, but we’re immeasurably connected now.
My heats will be more painful unless you are all there.
I won’t be able to sugar baby anymore because the scent of other alphas will repulse me now, and we’re all going to need pharmaceutical intervention to keep us from going literally insane when I walk away. ”
I expect him to demand my reasons for not wanting a pack. To rip open my broken heart and bleed my wounds all over him so he can finally understand why I’ll never see him again after this week.
Instead, he asks, “Why did you leave, Madeline? Why did you drive away on Friday?”
This was easier to explain. It doesn’t make me want to curl into a ball and cry.
“I told you when we were sitting at dinner, we want different things. You want me to be someone I can never be, or did you forget you paid for my time? I really did want you to go off and find the right omega for yourself. I didn’t want to stand in the way of your happiness.”
He moves even closer to me, my chest barely reaching the middle of his stomach.
“There has to be more than that. We’ve had a connection for the past year.
One that could not be swept aside, unless there was a good reason.
Even if you didn’t allow yourself to feel it like I did.
You could have had your heat, lied that you didn’t have time to reach out to me, and we could have dated for longer. ”
My frustration grows with every word he says.
“You’re my client and I don’t owe you an explanation.
You knew what you were getting into with this relationship.
I told you on the first date we had, I hold all the cards.
I see you if I want to, and if I don’t, I’m gone.
Alphas don’t get to say how long a sugar baby relationship lasts; this was a business transaction. ”
“Fine. What about as your scent match? Do I get an explanation for that? I know it has something to do with your past.”
This conversation is overwhelming. I don’t know how to make them understand I'm not the omega they need.
I’m suddenly seven years old again in my mother’s bathroom. Her heat has ended and she soaks in the large tub, the bubbles hiding most of the bruising and bite marks that never broke skin.
“Thank you,” she says. Her smile is tired as I scrub her hair with shampoo.
Charles, one of my dads, comes in dressed for work.
My mom sits up, face a little brighter when he leans down and kisses her forehead.
“You did great with your heat, I’m sure next year we will bond you.
Just be a good omega until then.” He ruffles my hair when he walks by.
If I had the ability to growl, I would have.
My mom collapses back in the tub so I can finish cleaning her hair.
“Are you hurt, Mama?” My voice trembles, scared for the answer.
She shakes her head, but the way she winces with any quick movement tells me something different.
“No, baby. You’ll understand when you’re older. Heats are a unique time for omegas. One sort of forgets themselves, especially alphas.”
“But you were screaming,” I whisper. “I could hear you, but the doors were locked.” My nanny, Sarah, had found me trying to break open the door. She dragged me away, claiming my mother was fine, but how could she be?
“That’s from knotting, I’ll explain it when you’re older. Your dads are very passionate.”
She says dads, but they don’t treat me like a daughter, just like they don’t treat her like she’s someone they even like.
An icy wind hits us, blowing me out of the past and into my shivering body. Guess that fever is gone.
Alric takes off his jacket and gently places it on my shoulders. I’d fight him on it, but I know that would annoy him.
Maybe one little piece of honesty.
“I only see clients for one year. Well, technically, eleven months and around two weeks. That’s as long as I can push things before they start expecting to share my heat.
I’ve been on heat suppressant for six years.
I’m only about to have one now because my doctor refuses to let me postpone it any longer. ”
“It’s not safe for your body to be on that many hormones for so long.”
“Yeah, that’s what everyone keeps telling me.
I didn’t break things off with you because I didn’t like you or because you weren’t a good client, the clock simply ran out.
There has to be some cutoff. Anything longer and clients think our relationship is more than it is.
They start wanting bondmarks and babies after that kind of investment in time and money.
It’s more than I can give them. I don’t expect anyone to understand why I don’t want to pack, but they do need to respect it. ”
We stand in silence. This isn’t a topic I’m willing to discuss anymore. If he has more to say, he’ll have to keep it to himself for now.
“Is this your family cemetery?” I ask.
He slowly blinks and looks around as if being reminded that he’s here. “Yes, generations of my family have been buried here, but most importantly, this is my mother’s final resting place.” He turns to face marble surrounded by grass and tiny flowers.
“What was her name?”
“Eleni Petridis.”
Since he doesn’t want to hear the words I’m sorry, I say instead, “I know the pain of losing a mom.” I slide my hand into his.
The rain starts and he sighs, squeezing my hand tighter. “Go back inside where it’s warm. I’m going to start dinner soon, but I think I’ll stay here for a little while.”
I can’t tell if he’s sending me away because he doesn’t want me out in the cold, or if he actually wants to be alone.
“Do you want me to go?”
“No,” he says simply, staring down at his mother’s memorial.
So I stay.