My face is inches from her throat. Her scent gland. “There you go,” she murmurs, and the vibration of her voice hums against my cheek. “Breathe. Can you do that for me?”
I'm rigid in her arms. Every muscle locked. My hands are fisted at my sides, nails digging into my palms.
“You don't have to relax.” Quieter now, almost a murmur. “Your body is doing exactly what it's supposed to do when it's scared. That's not weakness. That's survival. You've been surviving for a long time, haven't you?”
Her hand comes up slowly, like it’s a snake waiting to strike, which is all kinds of stupid. I know it is but I can’t stop my trembling. Or the way I can’t take my eyes off her hand.
Immediate. Reassuring. “I'm going to rest my hand on your back.” Her palm lands between my shoulder blades. “There. That's all. My hand on your back, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart.The word shouldn't affect me the way it does. Shouldn't burrow under my ribs and find the space my mother's voice used to fill. She called me that. Before. When I was still someone worth calling sweet.
This close to the source, her scent is different. Concentrated. Flooding me with every breath. Crushed basil. Blood orange. Sun-warmed cedar. I turn toward the warmth, drawn toward her scent, toward the place where she's most herself. My nose brushes against her throat, against the slight swell of her scent gland, and the smell of her floods my system so completely that I forget how to think.
“That's it,” she breathes, and the vibration of her voice presses against my lips, my nose, my cheek. “That's it. You can scent me, can't you? Right at the source. Your body knows what that means.”
Clean. Pure.Real.No chemical edge. No synthetic burn. No Wallace. Her. Alpha.Mate.
The word surfaces from somewhere deep and I shove it down. Too late. My omega has already latched onto it, already purring it into my bones.
“I'm real, sweetheart. This is real. And I'm never going to let anyone hurt you again, myself included.”
Someone came for me.
Seven years. Seven years of knowing nobody comes for the ones left behind. Of forgetting what it means to be held by someone who doesn’t want to hurt me. Someone came.Shecame.
I press my face harder against her throat, drag in her scent and cry. Ugly, wailing sounds tear out of me, grief hemorrhaging from open wounds. I grab her shirt, clutching at her. I'm going under and she's the only thing keeping me above the surface. I shake so hard my teeth rattle.
“That's it,” she murmurs against my hair. “Let it out. Let it all out. I've got you. I'm not going anywhere.”
She starts to purr again. The vibration moves through her chest and into mine. Skin to skin. Bone to bone, and I go liquid against her. All that rigid terror melts into nothing. My spine curves into her body, my fists loosen in her shirt, my face presses harder into her throat where the purr is loudest. I can't hold myself together anymore. I don't want to. The sound unravels me thread by thread and I let it happen, let her take me apart, too tired and too broken to fight.
This is how they get you. This is how you disappear.
Her arms close around me, and her scent shifts as she holds me, the blood orange warming while the cedar deepens into honey.
She's calming down.
The thought surfaces through the fog. Her Alpha is getting what it wants. Holding me. Comforting me. Beingneeded. I'm feeding it by lying here and shaking. By letting her touch me.Is that all this is? Another kind of taking?Her arms don't constrict. Her hands don't wander. She holds.
“You're so strong. I know it doesn't feel that way right now, but you are. You survived things that would have broken anyone else. You're still here. You're still fighting.” Her hand strokes slow circles on my back. “And I'm going to take care of you now. That's my job. That's all I want.”
I cry harder. All of it. All at once. Everything I couldn't feel while I was living through it. Feeling would have killed me then. It might kill me now.
She doesn't shush me. Doesn't tell me it's okay. We both know it's not okay. Nothing has been okay for years and maybe nothing will ever be okay again, and she doesn't pretend otherwise.
“I've got you,” she says again and again, her cheek resting against the top of my head. “I've got you. You're safe. I've got you.”
I hate breaking in front of a stranger. For clinging to her shirt, face wet and snotty against her throat, making sounds I didn't know I still had in me.Weak. Pathetic.
My body reached for her when my mind was gone, and now she knows. And part of me, even while I'm falling apart in her arms, is tracking the exits. Filing away the information. Planning the route I'll take when my body finally obeys me instead of betraying me with needs I never asked for.
I’ll run and never look back.
This doesn't mean I stay. I don't belong to anyone. Not anymore. Not ever again.
Chapter Four
Espie
