I can’t bear the thought of being alone.
“I can make you a sleeping draught if you’re having trouble sleeping?”
I shake my head. “Can I… can I have your sweater?”
Something crosses his face and in the warm, dim light, I could almost mistake it for pride. He grabs the worn Fisherman sweater from off the back of one of the chairs in the kitchenette and helps me into it. His scent weaves through every fiber of the soft wool and I let it envelop me.
“Would you read to me until I fall asleep?” I nod to the book held open to his current page on his lap.
He stares down at the worn cover of the paperback for a moment and I’m just about to take back my request, to make my apologies and scurry up to my nest, when he looks up, a smile shining with fondness on his handsome face.
“We can’t start from the middle of the series. Let me find the first book, all right?”
“Yes, please.” My voice is small in the darkness of our little cottage, the words, my heart bared, just for him, even if his can never be for me.
* * *
Marcus dipsout of the cottage only long enough to grab us breakfast the next morning and we stay close, never straying from our ends of the sofa as I stare, unfocused, at my History reading.
A sharp, brisk knock sounds at the door sometime in the early afternoon and when I go to stand, Marcus shoots me a reprimanding frown. I let him look through the peephole and when he cocks his head, I drift over.
“It’s Trinity. She’s alone.”
Trinity.
Saints, after Rad all but promised me he’d mate me, I hadn’t given her appearance in my strange vision any more thought, too lost in the storm of my own fear.
But what could Rad possibly want with her?
I nod and Marcus steps back enough for me to open the door.
Trinity takes me in just as I take her in, her eyes roving over the oversized cable-knit sweater I’m still wearing. She glances at Marcus and arches a dark brow, but her usual haughtiness isn’t in it. She stood on my doorstep like this just months ago, every inch the arrogant omega princess as she handed over my packet of course information. The months haven’t been kind to her. Where she was once willowy, she’s gaunt now, exhaustion plain on her pretty features. Dark bags smudge beneath her eyes and her hair lies limp and dull around her thin face.
“I need to talk to you,” she says, as haughty as ever. “At the omega lodge.”
“Out of the question,” Marcus snarls.
Trinity shrugs an elegant shoulder, but there’s an undercurrent of fear rippling off her. The shrug? It’s the action of a cornered omega trying not to show she’s afraid.
“Understandable, but non-negotiable. We’ll keep the door open. You’ll have eyes on Juniper the entire time. You know neither of us would let another omega into our private spaces, and I’m not having this conversation out in the cold.”
Marcus finally relents and I jam my feet into my rain boots and tug on a coat, following the junior out into the dreary afternoon.
The moment after she’s shucked off her immaculately white puffer coat, Trinity starts bustling around the kitchen, filling a kettle with water and digging around in the cupboards for a tin of tea.
“We need to talk about Jaime Brentwood.”
The back of my neck pricks. “The hell we do.”
She lets out an exasperated sigh and turns to stare me down. “He’s not who you think he is. All of this… it’s not what you think.”
“Now, I’mreallygetting sick of hearing that,” I mutter.
She tugs the collar of her oversized sweatshirt to the side, revealing the unmistakable silvery double-crescent scars of a mating bite.
“He’s my mate, Juniper.”
“I don’t give a shit whose mate he is. He helped Andrew Radcliffe try torapeme.”
