I snort. “No. That would be a complete waste of time.”It would be so much fun! Go play with the hot alpha.
“I don’t think any minute spent with you is a waste of time.”
He sidles closer, and before I can stop him, he reaches out and slides his fingers through my hair and steals my hair tie.
My gasp slips out before I can stop it, but he’s so close now, and I’m sitting on the rock, staring up at him, and I can’t think of a single appropriate thing to say.
I want you to knot me.
Chase me through the forest.
Be dark and dangerous but make me yours.
Ew, no. None of those thoughts.
His expression gets soft as he stares at my hair, and then he looks at my lips for the longest time, I think he might bend down and kiss me, but then he looks up, and he must see the warning rage that’s lingering because he steps back.
“I’m going to go collect the wood.”
I watch him until I can’t see him anymore, then let out the breath I’ve been holding.
I rub my chest where that ache has been since that night all those years ago. No amount of dating repaired what they broke, no heats with other alphas fixed the desperate longing. My dreams are full of them: nightmares, happy endings, fantasies where I stab them or fuck them, where they say they were wrong and kneel before me. In the day, I keep so busy I don’t think about them, but this new version of them is scary and interesting, fascinating, perplexing. I’m obsessing over them again.
Falling into old patterns.
Am I the kind of omega who would overlook my criminal alphas? I don’t even know if I can answer that with any honesty. It would depend.
Am I the kind of omega who can look past the way they brutally left me ruined ten years ago?
No, I can’t look past it. I can’t forgive them. They need to pay for what they did to me. But my anger is slipping away, and trying to hold it is like trying to hold water in my hand.
I rub my eyes, my head’s starting to ache with all the insane thoughts going through it, but there’s one thing that my calm, logical self is saying that I cling to- there is nothing I can do about it until I get back there.
I focus on the jobs, go through the motions. When they come near me, they are polite, and I’m polite, but I think they can sense something is wrong because they give me space.
And my thoughts roil.
We all go to bed early, but I lay there in the sleeping bag that Cyn donated, trying not to touch myself, long into the night, and before sleep takes me, I have a plan.
Apparently, I’m not the only one who had a plan. We’ve been up for barely thirty minutes and just started walking, and the audacity of these assholes, I cannot even believe it, but they tried again.
I don’t know how they got the boulder to come rolling down the steep side of the hill, but if I hadn’t been alert and waiting for them, Rojer’s head would have been an abstract painting on the dirt path.
I am seething.
“You ought to buy a lotto ticket,” I tell Rojer with a laugh.
He glowers up at me. “I’m going to sue you.” His words are clipped.
Yeah, I think you probably will.
“Sure, you can do that, but let’s get you out of here first.”
I help him to his feet, and I can see he’s a whole lot more shook than he wants to admit. He’s got scratches on the side of his face, but he won’t let me take a look.
He shoves me off him and stalks towards Nathan and Kevin.
“Are you all right?” Quincy asks.
