I breathed heavily and took my foot off the gas, driving more carefully after that scare. Even my rage seemed to have been shocked out of me, though all that did was emphasize the embarrassment and loneliness surging through me. Tears welled in my eyes, and I brushed them away impatiently with the back of my right hand.
“Stupid,” I murmured, but I wasn’t quite sure what I was talking about. My alpha? My driving? My temper tantrum?
All of it?
All of it.
By the time I got to the ramshackle cottage that was exactly as the beta I’d talked to described, my anger had been replaced by a melancholy which seemed to have seeped into my bones. I felt flat and sad. Drained. Maybe even a little heartbroken.
Some part of me knew that it was kind of silly to feel that way. Deep down, I knew that Sergio wanted to come back, and that hewouldcome back. I just felt a little like I wasn’t his priority, much like I had never been Dexter’s priority, either. Was it so wrong of me to want someone to put my feelings first?
But…that was a little bit selfish, wasn’t it? I mean, when I was comparing my yearning for my alpha to the ongoing disparate conditions for omegas all over the world, it felt like I might have possibly overreacted. Maybe. A little. And if The Magic had told Serge to help those people…
Ugh.
I owed my mate an apology.
How did I keep ending up in that particular position? Honestly, between myself and Dex, I would have put money on Dexter being the irrational, bitchy one.
And maybethatwas unfair of me, too.
I was on a roll of being a jerk, even if it was mostly only to myself.
Still, I didn’t think it was wrong of me to want to have my feelings taken into consideration. To feel like I was important to my mates.
I should have talked it through instead of storming off,I berated myself as I moved to climb out of the Jeep. With a sigh, I scrubbed a hand over my face and resolved,I’ll apologize when I get back.
Nodding decisively, I made my way up the rotting boards of the front stairs, trying not to feel even more morose at the sheer grimness of the little shack. The wood was all gray and brittle, and some part of me worried that the whole thing might fall down on top of me with a strong enough breeze. The window beside the door had also seen better days, grimy as it was, and cracked across one pane. On the inside of the glass, one gauzy curtain fluttered with movement.
Before I could even knock on the front door, it swung open to reveal an occupant who didn’t seem to be in any better shape than the house itself. His clothes were smeared with dirt, baggy and torn in patches around the knees and around the collar of the loose green t-shirt. The skin around his neck was graying in a circle just above the shirt collar, reminding me of the ring you’d find around the surface of a bathtub which hadn’t been properly cleaned in some time. His eyes were a dull brown and his hair mottled. And his scent…
I gagged a little.
I couldn’t even tell what kind of shifter he was beneath the unwashed, unclean smell; an issue made worse by the pungent musk of stale pot wafting out from the inside of the house.
“What do you want?” the shifter in front of me demanded, squinting at me and scenting the air. “I don’t have any business with dragon omegas.”
Swallowing back the persistent urge to throw up in the face of unpleasant sensory overload, and already having been upset, it was easy to appear pitiful. “I’m looking for blockers,” I replied, making a show of looking over my shoulders as if I was paranoid. Lowering my voice, I added, “You’ve heard of the Unlockingparties a few towns over, right? Well, they don’t let omegas in, and—”
“Aren’t you one of ’em? The dragons that started that whole pack?”
“Nope. I’m just a dragon who heard about the Unlocking parties and…well, I’ll try anything to try and find an alpha, y’know?” I shuffled my feet, digging my hands into my pockets and looking at the weak timber beams beneath my feet. I wasn’t lying when I added, “We’re going extinct and I’m desperate.”
After a beat of silence, the guy nodded then stepped back, waving me into the house. The squalid condition of the interior was somehow worse than the outside. My mouth watered as he shut the door and sealed us from any remaining hints of fresh air. The tiny space reeked of decay and that intense, skunky pot smell.
I was going to hurl.
“Wanna toke?” my begrudging host asked, pulling a baggie of joints out from I didn’t even want to know where and rustling it in my direction.
I shook my head, afraid that if I opened my mouth to speak, I’d lose my lunch. And my breakfast. And maybe even last night’s dinner.
Huffing derisively, he tossed the bag towards me and I reflexively caught it. “Wait here,” he demanded. “I’ll get your blockers.”
We hadn’t even discussed a price yet and…okay, I hadn’t really planned what to do from there. Not wanting to spook the guy, though, I figured I would have to buy the blockers and then go back to Shifters Sanctuary with the evidence in hand and tell Beck and Eric where to find their supplier.
He scurried from the room, through a door on the opposite side of the room to the one I had entered through. I tried to breathe through my mouth, feeling woozy with the overwhelming nausea. That was probably why I lost focus and didn’t pay any attention to what he was doing, or how much time was passing.
But I certainly paid attention when the front door burst open to shouts of “Police! Put your hands in the air!”
