I backed away from her until my back hit the stone of the building.
I realised we were in the car park.
Smokers lingered on the other side, eyes looking in our direction.
Cole was so close; her breath smelled like the beer she had been drinking.
“I’m calling a taxi,” she said angrily and stepped back from me, retrieving her phone from her pocket and typing away.
I hadn’t had a phone in the past three years. I used to be glued to it. Social media all day long. Constant communication with my so-called friends. I was so obsessed that I was haunted by phantom notifications and vibrations for months after I presented as an omega. The last message I ever sent was arranging to meet up for breakfast the morning after the full moon with all my friends. I left my phone at home. I never saw it or my friends again.
“I don’t even miss them,” I said.
Cole turned to me, her breath steaming in the glow of the Heaven’s Bar sign and the faint orange glow of the few lampposts dotted around the car park.
“What?” she asked.
“My phone,” I told her. “I was glued to it before…” I trailed off.
Cole’s face softened a little.
“You’re drunk,” she said.
“So are you,” I told her.
“I’ve had a few drinks. I’m not falling-over drunk, about to go home with a complete stranger,” she said, shaking her head as if in disbelief. “Do you know how dangerous that was?” she asked.
As I was thinking of a response, a silver car pulled up and rolled down the passenger window.
“For Cole?” the human man asked. He looked at me. “If she’s sick, it’s a two-hundred-dollar fee,” he warned.
Cole gripped my arm and moved me forward towards the car, opening the door, getting me seated, and buckling me in. I tried to resist. I could put on my own seatbelt, but she waved my hands away with her superior coordination.
The drive back was fast at that time of night; just when I felt like I had warmed up, Cole opened the door and pulled me out of the car into the cold.
She guided me up the stairs and inside.
Chapter nine
Drunken Confrontations
“Sit down,” she demanded, pushing my shoulders down, and I fell onto the entranceway stool.
She took off her own coat and boots, and I began to kick off my shoes, and that’s when I realised I had lost the jacket.
“Don’t worry about it; it’s only a coat,” Cole said, recognising the cause of my distress.
“I didn’t mean to—” I began, guiltily.
“I’m sure there’s a lot you didn’t mean to do tonight,” she answered. “It’s bedtime,” she said, like I was some child.
“Don’t speak to me like that,” I defended myself.
Cole turned her glare to me.
“I’ll speak to you however I like,” she growled low.
“I mean it. You think you can just tell me what to do. You think you can use your alpha pheromones against me like that and then basically fuck that blonde bitch in front of everyone. I’m not your plaything,” I told her.
