My mind was racing, confused and terrified. Why had he stopped? What had he wanted? Why had I felt drawn to him even as every survival instinct screamed at me to run?
I didn't have an answer. Didn't want to think about it. I clutched my cup tighter, felt the coins shift inside, and forced myself to keep walking toward home.
Chapter Two
Jasmine
The encampment squatted at the edge of an abandoned lot where the city had given up pretending to care, a collection of tents and makeshift shelters pressed together like teeth in a crowded mouth. I could smell it before I saw it— the smoke from the barrel fires, human waste poorly buried, the sour-sweet smell of too many bodies living too close together.
I kept my head down as I navigated the narrow paths between shelters, stepping over extension cords that snaked from the one working outlet someone had jerry-rigged from a nearby utility pole. A few people sat around the fires, their faces orange in the flickering light, but nobody called out to me. We had an unspoken rule here—you didn't ask questions, didn't pry, didn't get involved in anyone else's business unless they invited you in.
My tent was near the back, deliberately positioned away from the main paths. It was a small dome tent, forest green and patched in three places with duct tape that was starting to peel. I'd found it in a dumpster behind a sporting goods store and had spent an afternoon figuring out how to set it up with the instructions I'd found crumpled inside.
I crouched and unzipped the flap, the sound too loud in the relative quiet, then crawled inside and zipped it closed behindme. The space was barely big enough for me to sit up without my head brushing the roof. It was dark too, and I didn't have a light; I didn't waste my money on batteries for a flashlight when I knew the paths well enough to navigate by feel.
The tent smelled of damp canvas and city grime, the smell of fabric that never fully dried, that held onto moisture and exhaust and all the other things that settled on it. My sleeping bag was bunched at the far end, an old mummy-style bag with a broken zipper. Next to it, a plastic storage bin that held three changes of clothes, a water bottle, a small first aid kit I'd assembled piece by piece, and a ziplock bag with my ID and birth certificate in it.
I sat with my back against the tent wall, feeling the fabric give slightly under my weight. The ground underneath was hard, the cold seeping up through the thin floor material. The coffee cup was clutched against my chest. I looked down at it, forcing my fingers to relax their grip, coins rattling as I placed it down. My hands shook as I pulled off my gloves, and I couldn't tell if it was from the cold or the adrenaline still working through my system.
Slowly, carefully, I began counting the coins by touch in the darkness. My fingertips traced the ridges of quarters, the smaller smoothness of dimes, and the copper texture of pennies.
One quarter. Two. Three. Four. The metal was cold, the edges distinct under my fingers. Five quarters total. Three dimes. Seven pennies. I did the math in my head. A dollar sixty-two. Not great. Not terrible. Enough for part of tomorrow's meal at least.
I should have felt relief. Should have focused on the fact that I'd earned something, that I'd survived another night. But my mind kept circling back to him. To the Alpha in the car. To those eyes that had held mine with such intensity. To the scent of oak that still seemed to cling to my clothes, my hair, the inside of my nose.
My hand moved to my abdomen without conscious thought, pressing against the layers of fabric there. The gesture was automatic; a comfort reflex I'd developed over the last three years. Protecting what was no longer there to protect.
The memory came unbidden, sharp and visceral. The small weight in my arms, impossibly light, impossibly still. The baby, my baby, who had lived for six hours before the cold, my malnourishment, and the pack's refusal to get medical help had taken her. I could still feel the shape of her head against my palm, the way her tiny fingers had curled once, just once, before going slack.
They had blamed me. The pack, the one I'd been forced into when I'd turned eighteen and refused the mate my state had chosen for me. They'd said I hadn't tried hard enough, hadn't eaten the right things, hadn't prayed enough, hadn't submitted properly. When I'd argued, when I'd said they should have taken me to a hospital, they'd shown me what happened to Omegas who talked back.
My ribs ached with the phantom memory of kicks. My face remembered the sting of open-handed slaps, the deeper pain of closed fists. I'd learned to curl up small, to protect my head and stomach, to make myself into a tight ball that was harder to damage. I'd learned what sounds made them angrier and what sounds made them stop sooner.
I'd learned that nobody was coming to save me.
It had taken me weeks after losing the baby to find the courage to run. Weeks of planning, of hiding away small amounts of food, of memorizing bus schedules and maps. I'd waited until they'd sent me out for groceries alone. It was a rare privilege I'd earned by being quiet and obedient, everything they wanted me to be. Then I'd gotten on a bus and kept going until I hit a state that didn't have the same laws, that didn't force Omegas into packs, that let women like me exist in the margins.
I'd been eighteen years old and alone in a city I didn't know, with nothing but the clothes on my back and forty-seven dollars I'd stolen from the grocery money.
The hunger had been the worst part, those first few months. Not the dramatic starvation of missing one meal, but the constant, grinding emptiness that made my stomach cramp and my hands shake. I'd learned which restaurants threw away food that was still edible, which shelters served meals without asking too many questions, which soup kitchens were safe for Omegas and which ones had Alphas who watched too closely.
I'd learned how to make myself small in different ways here. Not to avoid violence, but to avoid notice. To slip between the cracks of a city that didn't want to see its homeless, its desperate, its failed Omegas who should have been home raising the next generation instead of singing on street corners for change.
I rocked slightly, a self-soothing motion I hadn't realized I was doing until I noticed the movement. The tent swayed with me, fabric rustling. My fingers traced patterns on my abdomen—circles, figure-eights, the kind of mindless motion that kept me grounded in my body instead of lost in memory.
There was a longing in me, had been for months now, that I didn't like to acknowledge. An aspiration to be more than this. More than just another survival story, another Omega who'd escaped a dangerous situation only to end up homeless and forgotten. I wanted someone to see me, really see me and not look away. Not with pity. Not with disgust. Just... recognition. Acknowledgment that I existed as more than a problem to be solved or ignored.
And for one moment tonight, under that flickering lamppost, someone had seen me. The Alpha in the car. His eyes had held mine, and I'd felt seen in a way that terrified me because I didn't know what he'd been seeing, what he'd been thinking, what he'd wanted.
A different scent memory surfaced, gentler than oak, sweeter. Apple pie. My scent. It was my mother's specialty, the thing she'd made on Sundays before everything had fallen apart. Before the new laws. Before she'd gotten sick. Before I'd been taken from her and placed in a pack and told it was for my own good.
I could almost smell it— cinnamon, butter, and apples cooked until they were soft and sweet. Could almost see her standing in our tiny kitchen, her hair pulled back, her hands dusted with flour. She'd been soft in ways the world didn't value, nurturing in ways that didn't translate to power. An Omega who'd loved being an Omega, who'd found joy in the things I'd learned to fear.
I started humming, barely more than a breath. The lullaby she used to sing. I didn't remember all the words. I'd been young when the state took me away, only eleven, but I remembered the melody. Simple. Repetitive. Soothing.
The humming filled the small space of the tent, vibrating in my chest. I pulled my sleeping bag closer, wrapping it around my shoulders like a cocoon. The fabric was slippery against my fingers, worn smooth from use.
My body was exhausted, hollowed out from fear, running, and three hours of singing in the cold. I could feel sleep pulling at me, dragging me down into its darkness. I didn't want to sleep, didn't want to dream about hazel-brown eyes or the scent of oak or the weight of a baby who was gone. But I didn't have the energy to fight it.
