8. Chapter 8
Leo
I’m back in Addie’s nest for the third night in a row.
I’ve managed to dodge my father by going home once I know he’s gone to work and leaving before he gets back.
My father’s never been late to work or left his job early.
He’s a foreman at a munitions factory about an hour inland from Hollow Point, and if he were to arrive after his workers or leave before them, he’d lose the opportunity to berate them for committing that crime, a pleasure he’d never deny himself.
I’m safe. For now. I’m ignoring his calls too.
My savings will buy me thirty-four more days. Tristan, the red-headed omega, printed out my bill and explained it to me when I left this morning. The clinical way he narrated it made me feel nauseous.
“One thousand for each night. Adrian said to add blow jobs, hand jobs, no penetration, and so I’ve rounded up because I know, based on the stench you’re leaving on him, that you’re doing a lot of that.”
Two nights so far had seen two thousand three hundred dollars charged to my credit card.
Plus the two hundred I left on his vanity so he could buy himself more food, or whatever he spends money on these days.
He’s always been a pretty simple guy, spending any cash he made working with his dad—when there was work—on materials for his surfboards, a new wetsuit .
. . I insisted he spoil himself with anything he wants, but my casual mention of the run-down diners I’ve seen around the streets of The Bell on my way to the garage where I’ve been parking was not casual at all. He needs to eat more. A lot more.
I’m still living at home, so my pay from the military—basic training and now the Air Force—mainly goes into savings.
As an alpha, and unlike an omega, I could certainly move out and get my own place before I bonded, but it would be an unusual move at my age.
Most alphas stayed with their alpha until they bonded because it was, in theory, easier to have that steady hand around while they got their control sorted.
My father’s an asshole, but he isn’t an abusive asshole.
I’ve been on just over two grand a month for almost four years.
I started in Basics, seven weeks later went into Airman Basics, then six months after that, I was an Airman E-2.
The pay didn’t change much, and since I was still living with my alpha, I didn’t think about my finances too carefully.
My savings, when I checked, are at forty-three thousand dollars.
Damn my need for that vintage V8 Ford Mustang.
I needed something to drive all over the country looking for Addie in, but thirty grand was a ridiculous amount to spend on a fucking car.
I can always sell it if it comes to it, though.
Regardless, I’ve got thirty-four days to get Addie to go into heat so I can claim him. Ideally it will happen soon, because it’d be good to have some money left over to head south with.
Addie’s come is cooling on my stomach, mine on his chest. I shiver at the thought of it.
I’ve managed to last a bit longer, which is a fucking relief.
The thought of Addie having to deal with my virgin dick is mortifying, but so far, he seems happy with everything we’re doing.
Well, he smells pleased, if a little sad.
But I don’t think he’s sad because I’m not performing as well as some of the other alphas he’s had.
I clench my jaw and the red haze threatens.
“Leo?” Addie asks, uncertainty in his voice, in his scent.
Right, I need to get that under control. It’s okay for me to completely lose my shit when I’m not here, but I can’t let Addie smell it. It’s not his fault, nor his problem. He’s been in the trenches of this place for years; he does not need my bullshit on top of it.
I look down when Addie looks up, his head pillowed on my chest.
“Sorry,” I murmur and push his sweaty hair off his forehead, then lean down to brush my lips over the divot between his eyes. “I’m just thinking about how you have to be … well, here.”
Addie drops his head back down and his scent blooms with shame.
“Not like that,” I say and tighten my hold on him.
He nods, but his scent doesn’t change. I frown at the cracked ceiling of this tiny closet and try to figure out how to make that stop.
At least it smells like nothing but us in here—I’d left my hoodie from last night, and tonight I brought the contents of my laundry, the clothes I’d worn before I started coming here.
I was worried Addie would think it was filthy, but he grabbed it all with greedy hands and spent half an hour decking out the nest with my jeans, socks, boxers, hoodies, and undershirts. It made my heart soar and my stomach turn over.
But I need to ask him something inappropriate, and I’m not sure how to word it.
If we were courting, the timing of his heat wouldn’t be something I’d bring up—he’d go into heat when he went into heat, and I’d wait if it was three months or a year away.
Omegas varied, but most had quarterly heats, while others could go six months, and some annually. It really depended on the omega.
In our other life, I’d have waited that year and courted him with nothing but joy that he was even giving me that. Except now I don’t have that kind of time. I have thirty-four days. Maximum.
“Addie, umm …” I run my hand up and down the bumps of his spine and just try to say it.
Addie makes a curious noise. His scent is still awash with shame, but it remains sated, rich with the pristine air of contentment. It gives me some courage.
“When do you think … Well, I just wondered … Ah, heat?”
Eloquent, Leonard. Real fucking eloquent.
“Oh,” Addie says and his scent does something complicated—spikes with lust and anxiety. “Umm, it’s scheduled. So, it’s probably … umm …”
Scheduled?
“What do you mean, scheduled?” My hand pauses on the dip of his lower back.
“I’m on suppressants, we all are. And umm, we get scheduled because …”
I’m stuck on suppressants.
“Suppressants?” I ask, voice rising. “Aren’t those really fucking dangerous?”
I feel him cringe away from me. Right, dial down the anger. It’s not like he chose to be on suppressants.
“Yes, but it’s better than—”
He cuts himself off.
“It’s better than what?” I run my hand up to his nape and cuff him gently. Massaging the muscles, I lightly stroke my thumb up and down his mating gland. It works—he relaxes.
“Than going into heat more than once a year,” he mumbles.
I swallow very deliberately and choose my next words very carefully. He’s been here for three years. That’s at least three heats. And something about those heats is so bad that he’s glad to be on suppressants.
Suppressants that are known to fuck with an omega’s endocrine system—I’m no biologist or dynamics specialist, but we’ve all heard the scandalised whispers about omegas who use them.
Barren. Erratic heats when they come off them.
Heats so bad they could die an excruciating death without an alpha helping them through it.
Well, omegas can die without someone helping them through it anyway, and that’s something else I’ve tried not to think about over the years.
Addie never smelled like anything after his heats, so presumably he used a beta service.
But smell or not, those days when he came back to school with black bags under his eyes, skin pallid, leaning against me with his full weight at lunch and recess, I had my first experiences with the red haze.
“What happens,” I begin slowly, thumb pressing on his mating gland to calm us both. “With your heats?”
Addie buries his face against my throat, and I feel the word as much as I hear it. “Auction.”
“Auction?” I ask faintly. Is he saying omegas in heat are auctioned off? Addie has been auctioned off in that state? Sold and left to be used by some alpha for days when he was out of his fucking mind with need?
A snarl rips out of me before I can stop it. Addie whimpers and tries to pull away.
I clamp my hand down on his nape—I know I’m hurting him and I need to breathe. I need to get it the fuck together. In for five, out for five. Red haze, so much red, all I can see is the red haze of fury.
“Leo,” he gasps. His scent is smog, bodies pressed too close, overflowing sewers and rank air. And mine mingles with it—the stench of The Great Pacific Garbage Patch polluting us both.
I loosen my hold, resume my caress of his back with a shaking hand, and will my anger down, focusing on my favourite memories to bring me back.
Flying an F-22 Raptor fighter jet has not been without moments of sheer fucking terror—to calm myself, I think of Addie.
His smile that time we went ice-skating after going to the Christmas markets in the city.
He’d raced ahead of me, spun, and skated backwards—the skyline lit up with the skyscrapers behind him, twinkling Christmas lights around the rink, and his smile had been like a lazy sunrise, his eyes locked on mine.
I see him in my mind’s eye and my heart rate slows, my smell calms to the ocean wilderness, to those rare stretches of miles without human activity.
Addie relaxes as I come back to myself.
“Sorry,” I croak. Tears threaten. My eyelashes are already wet with them. “Fuck, Addie, I’m so sorry.”
“No,” he says firmly and burrows closer. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I wish you’d never …”
I suck in a sharp breath. Does he wish I’d never come here? Never found him?
“I wish you’d never had to know that,” he finishes.
“It’s fine,” I say shortly. It’s clearly not fucking fine, but it’s not going to happen again.
Or it is, but I’ve got a plan formulating.
I’m terrified of the answer to my next question.
But if it’s more than thirty-four days away, I’ll just take out a loan.
Get another credit card. Hell, I’ll rob a fucking bank.
“When—” I clear my throat and try again. “When is the next one … scheduled?”
Addie’s scent drops out again—dread, putrid and awful in his scent.
“Soon,” he says, and he tightens his hands around my waist as if he wants me to stay here, to stop it. He doesn’t get that I absolutely will be stopping it. Or at least, stopping another alpha from buying it. “Next week, week after, probably.”
I exhale with relief. Two more weeks at most and then I’ll get my Addie out of here.
“Okay,” I say and rub his back with a surer hand.
He lifts his head and looks at me curiously. His eyes widen at the tears tracking down my cheeks.
“Leo, no.” He reaches up to wipe them away.
But I smile and tell him, with the certainty and hope I’m beginning to feel, “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”
He doesn’t look any less shocked, and he smells so fucking sad I can barely stand it, but I promised I’d get him out of here. And he might not believe that, but he doesn’t need to. Because I don’t just believe it, I fucking know it.