Chapter 22
Luna
I slide my bamboo tray down the aluminum rails of the Serenity Ridge vegan cafeteria, my nose twitching in the smell of steamed kale and roasted chickpeas.
I rub the side of my nostril hard, but the phantom itch refuses to settle. It’s been happening since I got out of the tub last night, a low hum right at the back of my sinuses, paired with a dull ache in my hips.
Breathe Luna, breathe...
“I’m just saying, it’s criminal,” Jess from my yoga class says from behind me. She leans in, her blonde ponytail swinging over the shoulder of her athletic top. “They hide the hot ones inside the kitchen.”
“Wrong,” Tara, my other classmate says, says, bumping her tray against Jess’. “‘Cause I wouldn’t mind that hunk doing dirty things to me.”
I follow their gaze past the glass sneeze-guard, to the far end of the line.
There’s a man working the hot-grains station, behind a pyramid of avocados.
He’s massive. Unreasonably large for a kitchen line employee.
His shoulders stretch the fabric of the beige uniform shirt so tight I’m surprised the seams aren’t tearing.
He’s scooping quinoa into a shallow bowl, staring blankly—
Wait. Bram?
My fingers lock onto the edges of my tray. Heat flares at the base of my spine, dropping straight to my thighs.
Alpha, my omega snaps, clawing for control. Mine. Bram.
I stare at the sharp line of his jaw, the dark, stern slant of his brow. It’s him. Except... that alpha has blond hair, and he’s wearing a mesh hairnet. Bram’s hair is brown. There’s no way he’d dye it, and there’s definitely no way he’d wear a hairnet. Plus, why would he be here, serving quinoa?
I take a slow breath in, desperately searching for the leather and warm coffee that means him.
My nose finds nothing. Just the sterile, damp steam of the kitchen and the sharp sting of onions. My shoulders slump, and I’m half a breath from whining in the middle of the salad bar.
Are you losing your mind?
But his face... is there a fourth brother they never told me about?
I have to get a closer look.
I leave my tray on the rail and take a step toward the hot-grains station. But my hip clips a tower of ceramic salad bowls. They clatter against the metal rail, loud enough that half the dining room looks up. I grab the top bowl, steadying the pile before it can go over, and when I look back—
He’s gone.
The grain station is empty. There’s just a stack of bowls and a pyramid of avocados.
I stand there, my chest heaving, staring at the blank space behind the sneeze guard.
“Uh, Lu?” Tara asks gently. “You good?”
I blink, forcing my eyes to focus on the avocado pyramid, my stomach pitching, the itch in my nose getting worse.
You’re officially crazy, babe. If that was Bram, you’d be able to smell him.
I turn back to Jess and Tara.
“You know what,” I say, my voice tight. “I don’t think I’m super hungry right now. Must be the ginger in my morning detox juice not sitting right.”
“Oh, no,” Jess coos. “Do you need some matcha?”
“No, no. I’ll eat and drink later.” I take a step backward. “I think I’ll attend the lunch-time meditation class instead. Clear my head.”
***
The meditation studio is dim and smells like someone set a salad on fire. Sage, technically. The chalkboard by the door called the session a Mindful Reset, which I am completely down for.
I’m folded up cross-legged on a purple mat in the second row.
Around me, a dozen women breathe in slow, contented unison, eyes shut, faces soft.
Every one of them has apparently made peace with the universe.
Good for them. My breath, meanwhile, is stuck somewhere in the top half of my lungs, refusing to come down no matter how nicely I ask.
Every time I shut my eyes, I see it again. The harsh line of that jaw... his bulk...
It wasn’t him, I tell my Omega. We’ve been over this. You saw a big, hunky man in a hairnet and decided he was ours. But he is not Bram.
She doesn’t answer. She’s curled up somewhere behind my sternum, sulking, shivering, refusing to look at me.
The room tilts. Just a lazy half-turn, here and gone. I press my fingertips into my kneecaps and breathe through it. My hips ache. My nose won’t quit twitching. And under all of it there’s that low hum the guided breathing is doing nothing for.
Footsteps whisper across the floorboards.
“Beautiful,” the instructor murmurs, to no one and everyone. “Let the breath do the work.”
He’s been drifting around the room for ten minutes now, barefoot, in linen pants the color of oatmeal. He pauses at each mat, adjusting a shoulder here, a chin there, placing a palm flat against someone’s spine to press them down. Everyone goes boneless under his hands. He’s good at his job.
His footsteps slow behind my left shoulder.
“Drop the shoulders,” he murmurs, his voice a low, soothing hum. “You’re holding the whole day up here.”
He’s not wrong. I try to let them drop.
And then his hands are on me.
Warm palms, flat against my collarbones, pressing down and back to coax my shoulders out of my ears. It’s a standard adjustment. The woman on the mat beside me got the same one and sighed her entire spine loose.
For me, every muscle instantly turns to concrete.
Because these hands are wrong. The wrong weight. The wrong heat. The wrong everything.
Not those, my Omega whispers, shivering. Those aren’t ours.
I know, babe. I know.
His hands lift, and he moves on. I hear him murmur to the next mat, oblivious, off to soothe someone who has a chance of relaxing.
This is fine. This is wellness. I paid for this.
But my heart won’t settle. The low hum in my sinuses has turned into a sharp, vibrating buzz, and my hip bones ache like they’re being pulled apart.
Then, the soft footsteps circle back. They stop right behind my mat again.
“Lovely,” he whispers. “Now, relax the spine.”
His hands come down again, flat against my collarbones. They press down, heavy and cold. My shoulders clamp shut, every muscle in my back locking.
And then, his fingers slide upward. Toward the nape of my neck, brushing right over the raw, sensitive skin of my scent gland.
My eyes snap open in the dim.
Jesus.
I know I paid for this, but if the wrong person touches me one more time, I think my omega is going to put her foot up their ass.