Chapter 20 Danny
I’D TAKEN THE bus in the southwest direction, so that I wouldn”t freeze if I had to sleep outside. I had to stay far away from Tennessee. Hotels were tempting, but cost far too much. Even the cheapest were way out of my budget.
I picked up a knife and some mace. I wasn’t sure it would work against a Fae or a demon, but it might help if a human came after me.
In Missouri, I saw a flier advertising an omega shelter. I went there immediately. “Hi. Do you have any space?” I asked. The last thing I wanted to do was take a spot from someone who needed it.
“We do. Come on in.”
I didn’t want to tell them I was pregnant. But if it helped keep me hidden, then I would. “My Alpha is in a coma, and his family wanted to take my baby.”
Her eyes went to my stomach. “You’re pregnant?”
“Yes. Just a few weeks in.”
“So there are people who will be looking for you?”
“Yes. But I can stay hidden. I’m not in contact with any of them,” I said.
“We don’t have private rooms here. You’ll be in a room with other male omegas without children. If you’re still here when the baby’s born, then you”ll be moved into the family area.”
All of that sounded good to me. “Is there a limit on how long I can stay?”
“Not officially.” She gave me a tiny smile. “We have resources if you’re struggling to move out. And there won’t be a public record of your time here.”
That was comforting. But that was all the comfort I had. Everything else was gone, vanished into thin air: my university, the classrooms where I felt at home, the place I wanted to launch my career, all the books I was going to read, the papers I was going to write, the classes I wanted to teach. My degree. My apartment, where I was always welcome. My brothers. My cousin. My future nieces and nephews. My Alpha.
I had so much. And now it was all gone.
Not all. I had the baby. And eventually, it would be safe to contact my brothers. I still hadn’t called any of them. Maybe I was paranoid, but if the Fae wanted to do so, my brothers’ phones could be monitored or their records traced. Maybe not Luke’s, because he was paranoid as hell, from what Hollis said. Gatlin didn’t always keep up with security the way he should, but his pack was trying to improve that.
I wasn’t sure what a half-human, half-Fae child was worth to Saxon’s clan. What lengths would they go to to find me?
“Come with me,” the receptionist said. My spot in the shelter was in a large room filled with twelve other beds. “We don’t put the pregnant omegas in bunks.”
Each had a burgundy bedspread and a navy pillow. A nightstand stood beside each one with a box of tissue on top. “The bathrooms are communal.” She led me to the bathroom, where a row of showers lined the wall and a row of toilets inside stalls lined the other.
“The kitchen is a shared space with male and female omegas and families,” she explained. “It’s not fancy, but it’s safe.”
I wasn’t picky. The house where I grew up wasn’t nice. Our apartment had been crowded. We’d lived in the dorms. But in all of those places, I’d had Hollis, Haven, Cason, Ace and Baylor. Since I was four years old. Now I was alone.
In their common area, there was one shelf of books. A tattered copy of Sherlock Holmes’s A Study in Scarlet was wedged in the corner, along with Pride and Prejudice, which had a ripped cover. The rest were current bestsellers.
Just a few weeks ago, I’d been in a bookshop on the Thames in London, with Saxon urging me to buy as many books as I wanted. My eyes burned.
Get a grip. That whirlwind trip to London wasn’t my life. I’d made it out of an abusive home once. I could start over now, to save my baby.
***
No. I was wrong. I couldn’t start over. Not really. I was alive, but that was it. I was aware how lucky I was to have my brothers, but living without them in my daily life was a new reality that I could hardly bear. I should have known how much I relied on my brothers. But the truth was, I didn’t realize. I hadn’t had any idea of the scope of how much I relied on them, how essential they were to my daily life.
Each morning in the shelter, I vomited as soon as I could get to the bathroom.
But I also woke up in pain. My entire body ached. Every cell screamed that I was missing something. Some integral, vital part of my life was gone. Decimated. Destroyed. Instead of going into the dining hall in the mornings, I crawled back into bed.
It took me a full two days in the shelter to realize what was going on. I’d been gone from Saxon for a week. And in that time, I’d learned something vital: I was in love with Saxon.
Not only was I in love with him, I felt like I could feel him. And I could feel the absence of him. It wasn’t fair. He was injured, and I was pregnant, and we were separated. When I concentrated, I was aware that he was still unconscious. That night, his dreams woke me.
Saxon. I’m here. I tried to let him know. No response. Right. Because he’d been attacked by a demon. How could I feel him? We weren’t mates. We’d taken no vows. We had shared a heat, under duress. We’d assumed we’d drown together. It had only been seven days without him. Christ. How long could I go on like this? How did anyone survive it?
After the second day, one of the other omegas took pity on me, and brought me a can of carbonated water, a pack of crackers and a banana. They thought I was lying in bed because of the morning sickness. I didn’t have the strength to explain
“Eat before you get out of bed,” one of them said. “It helps.”
Not only was I missing my Alpha, I was missing my brothers. If I were at home, Hollis would have informed me of all the relevant pregnancy facts. And Cason would insist on stockpiling a horde of food next to my bed.
I choked on the water.
“It gets easier,” one of my new roommates said. “It’s better to be away from him. I promise.”
I only nodded. All of the other omegas in the room had run from cruel Alphas. I couldn’t tell him that I hadn’t run from an abusive mate.
I just thought I’d missed Haven and Hollis after they moved. That was nothing compared to the grief I felt now. I couldn’t see them. I couldn’t text them. Half the night, I dreamed of them, of mundane times together. I picked up my phone to text them about fifty times per hour. I didn’t even have a smartphone anymore. I didn’t dare call them from the flip phone. Instead, I’d started imagining conversations with them.
The other half of the night, I dreamed of Saxon. But not of mundane things with him. I dreamed of awe-inspiring dates, where we traveled to England’s Lake District. To Galileo”s tomb in Florence. To the Musee d’Orsay in Paris and Oscar Wilde’s home in Dublin. I’d seen those places only on a screen, but in my dreams, one of Saxon’s strong arms was wrapped around my waist.
In other dreams, he held a child in his arms.
Ourchild.
A child I’d said I didn’t want. But now the thought of having created a life with Saxon overwhelmed me with emotion. This was our baby. Potentially the last part of Saxon I’d ever have.
I rubbed my stomach. “I’ll do everything I can to make your life as good as it can be,” I whispered.
Was I doing the right thing? In Crestfire Hill, my baby would have five loving uncles and at least two cousins. He’d also have Zander. And Luke and Gatlin. Here, he had no one.
My baby would have Saxon’s family too, for better or worse.
I couldn’t go on like this. But what choice did I have? I had to protect my child. Saxon would want that. He wouldn”t want me to hand our baby over to his mother; I was sure of that.
The next morning, I woke up like usual. Despondent. Missing Saxon. But determined to survive. In the shelter, none of us were supposed to go out alone. We had a system where we traveled in groups of fours, with each omega having a designated partner. With those of us that were expecting, a staff member went with us.
We went to the post office to send our mail out, since no one was allowed to give out the shelter’s address. We visited the library, where a librarian had set up a computer just for the shelter, so an IP address couldn”t be traced. Once a month, the shelter went to a movie, or to a bowling alley.
On the eighth day away from Saxon, I dragged myself along to the post office. The beginning of April had brought a torrent of rain, and then a bright sunny day. The other members of the shelter were cheery. All I felt was a bleak sense of hopelessness.
Now that I’d been at the shelter for a week, I could apply for a job within the shelter. We had cooks, cleaners, and child care providers. There were opportunities to work outside the shelter too. The local nursing home employed people from our shelter, and so did the hospital and a department store.
Once a week, a social worker came by to help the residents find jobs. “What skills do you have?” the social worker asked me.
Reading. Writing. Critical thinking. Rhetorical analysis. Editing. Proofreading. Research. But without my degree, those skills meant nothing.
I chose the department store. With an air of moody despair surrounding me, I wasn’t good company for elderly people or people who were ill. And if the Fae were still after me, it was best if I was in a solitary job. My assignment was to unpack the garment boxes and hang the clothing on hangers.
The other employees chatted freely, or wore earbuds. I did neither.
“You’ll rarely be out on the floor,” he said. “You’ll start out at minimum wage, but there are opportunities for raises.”
I unfolded a green sweater, added a sensor, and pulled the sweater onto a hanger. I did it again, and again.
Something stirred in my consciousness. Something familiar, but new at the same time. Saxon. Are you awake yet?
I had no way of knowing.
I pulled another sweater from the box. This is your life now. I wasn’t going to be immersing myself in British literature. The past four years, evaporated.
Eight hours later, I clocked out of the department store.
Someone stood on the sidewalk in front of me.
Not someone. Something
A demon.