10 Kit
Silence. The night always remained this way, and why I never slept.
Omegas weren’t made for loneliness. Even with me knowing I was better off in solitude, it didn’t make this part any easier.
Anika slept next to her brother, using his familiarity to get her by to not feel like me.
More than once they opened their door for me to join, but I knew I couldn’t.
If I fell asleep next to their warmth, it triggered my mind into a false sense of reality.
One where the boys seeking refuge in my home never left me.
Waking up with a smile was the hardest part because their absent existence cut me ten times deeper when none of them were around me.
Tears would find me when I rose, remembering they no longer existed in my present.
I was forced to lock away how much it hurt me and get on with the day, but those dreams tantalized my mind just like their touch still lingered on my skin.
Now, I was forced to watch them caress someone else the way I still dreamed about.
Sleep was for the weak because that’s where my true weakness lurked.
No one knew, but I nested every night as a reminder to fortify my solitude.
Taking a single drag from my cigarette, I put it out after because I knew the habit was terrible for me. I only had a hit when I felt like this, overwhelmed and overstimulated.
Shrugging my fur robe to be tighter, I held the two sides of it to wrap around me like a warm embrace.
I yearned for companionship because of my nature, but I knew I couldn’t afford the cost of it.
With Drake now gone, my bed was bitterly cold.
My desperation to be loved reeked in the nest I made, but no one ever entered it with love for me.
I was just a safety and a promise to live in the lap of luxury for them.
My eyes peered out the window of the boathouse next to the dock because I strayed a little further away from the compound.
Raphael knew where I stood, so there was no worry for an attack with him at the watch post behind the boathouse.
It wasn’t often that I drifted this far away, but I couldn’t chance Jericho finding me again.
My life was torturous now that I allowed them into my home, but I forgot they claimed an Omega when agreeing to their rescue.
That stupidity slapped me in the face when I thought they’d come in like the pack I last saw, but I’d seen Jericho in their arms when I first escaped.
I’d gone back to what I thought was my pack, but I didn’t stay when that had been revealed.
My hand moved up to clutch the skin over my heart. Deep within each pulse, there was a pinch of pain. I learned to live with it, but it spread now that my torment sat so close. Heartache was a bitch, and mine hadn’t ended all these years later.
With the wind, a grating howl came with it.
Knotty City was known for her high gusts on the river front, and I loved it.
Some say, it was for all the women who drowned and were lost to the depths of the water.
I quite liked that idea. Omegas from the wrong side of the tracks weren’t loved and protected.
We had to deal with being sold and forced to join the packs that bought us for taking a knot properly.
If a young girl didn’t know how, they killed her and tossed her body in the river.
I knew too many names from my part of town who were lost to both.
Being sold wasn’t a dream vacation because those men were savage.
Hugging myself tighter, my breath was lost when I remembered I almost joined them.
My body knew how to take a knot, so I would’ve been sold by the very man who worked for Ryatt and Kayos.
Closing my eyes, I listened to the wail, knowing part of me did die that day.
Part of me cried with their howls in the wind for my innocence that’d been stolen and lost.
“Sing your melodies,” I breathed out with a tear.
“It’s a haunting sound,” a deep voice startled me. Jumping, I turned to find Ryatt within too close of a proximity to me. He took a casual step toward me as though it was that simple to interact again. “You used to open your window at night when it got windy to hear it.”
“They deserve to be heard.” Righting myself, I let my body swivel to stand in front of the window better to not face him. My vulnerability was too close to the surface right now, so I had to shield it. “You’re a little far from your pack.”
“Yes, well, I’m not who Jericho wants to be around right now,” he confessed. “I figured I’d memorize this place for-”
“Protecting your pack better. I know,” I finished for him, giving him a quick glance over my shoulder before focusing on the hurried movements of the water under the moonlight.
Ryatt never changed, and his need to protect his people was always the first thing on his mind.
I knew this because I used to be someone he secured. “I hope all is well with your Omega.”
“It will be,” he clipped. “We just weren’t expecting you to be here, and we hadn’t told him about-”
“Your dirty little secret? Yeah, not many like to share they had a trailer trash Omega in their bed.” Rubbing the outside of my arms, I didn’t give him the courtesy to see my face. My tongue felt swollen inside, hating how worthless they made me feel.
“You’re not a trailer trash Omega, Kit! You never were,” he growled. Goosebumps rose on the back of my neck instantly because I still responded to him without my consent. The gumption and honesty in his bold declaration felt like the same whiplash when he said I’d always belong to him.
“Don’t lie to me, Ryatt.” I closed my eyes and hugged myself tighter.
His hand reached forward to turn me around, forcing me to reveal the brim of water lining my vision.
I held my chin up, but my eyes betrayed me.
My mask had already fallen for the night.
He witnessed the condemning of my soul within my eyes.
There was nothing he could say to change my mind, so I nodded my head when he relented.
“I was, and we both know it. Back then, I was too blinded by the stars in my vision to see it. I was too blinded by all of you, believing I would escape the fate of those like me. It broke me completely when you left. It hurt so much when I suffered at my captors’ mercies because you left me behind.
” I couldn’t believe I let it slip about my past, so I had to change the subject to steer clear of it.
They didn’t need to know who I hunted in secret, waiting for him to mess up for me to find.
“Alpha gave me a chance to leave that name behind, becoming Omega, so I never look back to that hellish existence, trying to forget that version of me, just like you all did.”
“We never forgot you,” he started, never removing his hand from my arm.
“I can guarantee you never talked about me either,” I fired back too hastily.
It told him that it bothered me, so I closed my eyes and reopened them with a smile.
“It doesn’t matter. You found the Omega who fit your life like I couldn’t from my status, and I was found by a man who didn’t mind I was from the wrong side of the tracks. ”
“Right, this godsend of an Alpha.” I could nearly hear how much it displeased him, and it made me love seeing him jealous, even if it wasn’t over me. Ryatt didn’t like that someone had to swoop in to save his family, seeing a powerful empire he didn’t know about. “How did you meet him?”
“My Alpha found me in your aftermath. My Alpha lifted me from my ruin and promised a reign,” I whispered between us.
I technically wasn’t lying because I did find my Alpha then.
Ryatt just didn’t know it had been within myself that I unearthed my strength to save me.
I found who I needed to become after completing my first kill.
“My Alpha didn’t care that I was covered in blood and volatile in my rage and suffering.
He accepted me, he accepted what they did to my body. ”
Touching the mark on my neck, Ryatt saw the movement.
I removed my hand, and he was able to see the scars a little closer.
He wouldn’t be able to tell they were fake, and I sprayed my fake scent on before coming out.
To him, he’d only smell the smoky coriander Anika and I created.
Both were powerful enough smells to mask our own.
“Covered in blood?” Ryatt caught what I let slip. “You never liked violence.”
Angered by it, I scoffed and jerked my arm from his grip.
How dare he pretend to not know what would happen to me?
“You all left me alone in a trailer park filled with Sellers and disgraced loners! Please tell me what you thought would come of that, or did you dilute those thoughts in your haste to get away?”
“Kit,” he tried to soothe.
“Omega!” I slapped him as hard as possible for using the name I didn’t let anyone else.
The impact of my hand over his flesh could be heard in an echo of my violence.
There was a tingling sensation that swept over each fingertip from how hard I swung.
“Kit is dead! She died after being endlessly raped and beaten into taking knots by intruders who had no right to her body! She died because she thought people loved her enough to protect her! She was weak, Omega is strong! Omega protects herself!”
Seeing me unhinged did something to Ryatt.
I saw when the pleasant Alpha left, leaving only the animal at the top of the food chain in my presence.
This he could be a cold-blooded killer, and this side of him who I warped Omega to become.
“Kit was strong, not this obscene, docile idea you’ve let stain your thoughts. ”