Epilogue
Evie
The dress comes off before the front door is fully closed behind me.
I take a little more care with it than I usually would, stepping out of the gold fabric and lifting it over the back of a chair instead of letting it fall to the floor.
I liked this dress. I liked wearing it tonight.
My heels come off next, abandoned beside the already excessive collection by the wall, and then the small gold hoops that I wear almost every day, which I slip into my jewelry box before I can lose one.
I leave the lights off.
There is enough of the city coming through the windows to see by, blue-white reflections stretching across the floor and catching on the edges of furniture I could navigate blindfolded by now.
Four years in this apartment have taught me every corner of it, and I’ve grown used to the silence that fills it.
I like coming home and knowing everything will be exactly where I left it. I like the quiet. I like that there is no one waiting for me, no one asking where I’ve been or when I’ll be back.
I stop in the middle of the living room, still in my underwear, and think about Sophie.
She looked beautiful tonight. Not only because of the green dress or the dark hair loose around her shoulders, but because of those striking green eyes that I’ve only just seen for the first time.
Brown contacts, all this time. I don’t know why she wore them, but then again, people have their reasons for not wanting to show the world who they really are. I understand that more than most.
But it wasn’t just that. What stayed with me was her standing there while every person in the room turned to look at her, and the expression on her face when they did—happy, yes, but it was more than that. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.
And apparently Max Cavill is capable of romance.
That may have been the second greatest revelation of the evening.
Until tonight, I’d have said he was mostly expensive tailoring and intimidating silences.
But I was wrong. Because when he looked at Sophie tonight—when he and Finn and Ethan looked at her—there was so much tenderness in their faces. There was no hiding how completely gone they were for her.
Fine. Good for them. I hugged her after they made the announcement and told her that I was so happy for them. And I meant every bit of it. Sophie is my friend, and seeing her happy made me happy, even if I didn’t necessarily agree with her choices.
I can be happy for her and still want absolutely none of it for myself.
I walk to the bathroom. The tile is cold under my bare feet. I pull the pins from my hair, shake it loose, and let it fall past my shoulders. Then I lean toward the mirror and darken my eyeshadow, smudging it out until my eyes look smoky and heavy-lidded, saying exactly what I want them to say.
Then I press my fingers to my throat.
The glands beneath my jaw are tender, swollen to the size of small grapes under the skin. When I press them, the ache travels down my neck and across my collarbone before curling tight in my belly.
My heat is coming soon.
Perfect.
I stopped taking my suppressants on Tuesday, after I decided I was ready.
It’s close now. By the time I get there, it will be unbearable. My skin will burn, every nerve ending drawn tight with need, demanding something I’m finally allowing myself to have.
But right now, it’s only a hum. A slow, spreading pressure beneath my skin, waiting to become something more.
Alphas are good for one thing and one thing only, baby. Don’t you ever forget it.
My mama’s voice comes back to me clear as a bell, so vivid I could almost believe she were standing behind me, speaking the words straight into my ear.
I never forgot.
I don’t shower.
That’s deliberate. Everything that happens tonight depends on what comes off my skin, and I’ve spent days letting my scent build.
I can smell myself now, faint beneath the remnants of tonight’s perfume, my natural scent beginning to push through, warm and rich.
By the time I get there, it will be pouring off me.
They’ll scent me before they see me.
I strip off the underwear I wore to the gala and leave it on the bathroom floor. The black set goes on instead, lace cutting into my hips and pulling my waist into a shape that tends to make men forget what they were saying. The bra does the rest, lifting everything exactly where I want it.
Then the negligee.
Dark green silk, almost black in this light, skimming my body before stopping halfway down my thighs and making no real attempt at modesty. The fabric slips over my overheated skin like cool water, and I close my eyes for a moment because it feels good.
And feeling good is the whole point of tonight.
I check my reflection. The woman in the mirror has red hair falling down her back, smoky eyes, a dark-painted mouth, hips and breasts she has made no effort to hide.
She looks exactly like what she is. An omega off suppressants, her heat rising, her scent building, without a single shred of apology anywhere on her body.
I pull a dress on over everything, black and simple, the zipper running straight down the back, then grab my phone and some cash and slip them into my bag. The card goes in last. Nothing on it but an address and a time, given to me by a woman I trust.
I’ve been doing this for six years.
Although this place is new, which probably explains the restless beat of my pulse.
But the arrangement is the same as it always is.
Alphas pay for access. The omega sets the terms beforehand, in writing.
How many. How long. What is allowed. What isn’t.
And exactly what happens to the man who decides those rules don’t apply to him.
My body is going to do this regardless. I can either let it dictate what happens to me, or I can decide what happens with it.
I made that decision a long time ago.
I’ve never regretted it.
This is the part people wouldn’t understand. They’d look at me and see desperation. Addiction. A woman out of control, throwing herself at strangers because her body is screaming for something she refuses to give it any other way.
They’d be wrong.
I’m not out of control. I have never, not once in my life, been out of control.
This is the most controlled thing I do.
I choose the room, the night, the terms. I decide how many, how long, how far. I decide exactly how much of myself they get, and the answer has always been the same.
My body.
Nothing else.
They come, they do what we agreed, they leave. No names that matter. No scents lingering on my sheets after the morning wash. No bond taking root somewhere in the dark, winding itself around my ribs until belonging to someone starts to feel the same as needing their permission to breathe.
Nobody stays until morning.
Nobody puts their mouth on my neck. That is the first rule on every form I’ve ever signed, underlined twice, and the good places make very sure the alphas understand exactly what it means before they enter the room.
And nobody calls me sweetheart. That one isn’t written down, but it doesn’t need to be. Anyone who has tried it has learned very quickly not to do it again.
My mama taught me that the moment you let an alpha mean something to you, you’ve already lost. My father taught her that lesson when he walked out the door and never came back. She learned it once, and she made sure I’d never have to learn it for myself.
They’ll tell you you’re special, baby. They’ll tell you they love you. And then one day they’ll say it to someone else.
I can still see her saying it, hands wrapped around a coffee mug, eyes fixed on the door he’d walked through years before. I was too young to understand the details and old enough to understand the lesson.
Love is temporary. She was right about that much.
So I learned not to believe in any of it.
I don’t ache for what Sophie has. I don’t lie awake wondering what it would feel like to have Max, Finn, and Ethan look at me the way they look at her, with that dark, consuming certainty, like she’s the fixed point everything else orbits around.
I don’t wonder what it would feel like to have someone’s teeth against my throat and feel safe instead of trapped.
I don’t wonder about any of it. Because I know it never lasts.
I pick up my bag and my keys and open the front door. The hallway is painfully bright after the darkness of my apartment, and my scent spills out ahead of me, sweet and heavy and unmistakably in heat.
I step through.
Behind me, the door swings shut with the sound of something coming unhinged.