I stiffened. “Yeah, well you don’t have to live with him.”
“True.” Malin didn’t look angry. Instead, he moved off toward the bathroom while saying, “It really is like a prison, then?”
I nodded, a bit miffed at the question, though I wasn’t sure why.
By the time he came out, I had my shoes on and was standing by the game room door.
“Do I even have time to change?” he asked.
“It’s far away, isn’t it?”
Malin sighed. “I guess we’re getting coffee on the way.” He grabbed his jacket. His dark clothes still looked impeccable, not a wrinkle on them.
Me, on the other hand…. I looked down at my t-shirt. It was rumpled and a little stained where I’d spilled some onion dip from our snacks last night. My mouth tasted sour.
Malin moved past me to the hall, his scent reaching deep into my lungs. “Come.”
I jogged to catch up.
The garage door opened before I could get into the car. Brisk morning air caught my bare arms and neck, causing goosebumps. I slid onto the marshmallowy leather seat and immediately warmed up. The winged door closed.
Malin roared down the empty road. Countryside passed and, finally, a few houses on the outskirts of the small town we’d passed yesterday. In the town, we passed a bunch of tiny coffee houses. Malin pulled into one and ordered through the window. Immediately, I could tell they knew him. He didn’t ask me what I wanted. He ordered something fancy called a Café Latte with half and half. Two of them.
“What is it?”
“Try it. They’re decadently good.”
“I’m used to plain black coffee,” I said.
He made a tsking sound. “I can order you one of those, too, if you like.”
I shook my head, curling my fingers around the cardboard cup’s heat protector. The lid had a spout. I could tell from the steam that it was still too hot to drink. I blew into it. It smelled great. I was so focused on the drink, it surprised me when he pulled away, the motion jerking me back in my seat. A box sat on the console between us, open to reveal glazed donut holes. Malin was already popping one into his mouth and steered one-handed back on the highway.
He sped far past the speed limit. I worried we’d be stopped by cops and even more delayed. But nothing happened. No one came after us.
I blew and blew on my latte. Finally, I took a sip. It was amazing.
Malin turned to me and laughed. “Good, eh?”
“Yes.”
Back home, I’d avoided takeout and fancy stuff like this. I didn’t have my own money and no one in my pack would give a set omega a job. My parents kept me behind closed doors from about the age of sixteen. I was finally sold at twenty, defenseless and scared, but glad to leave. I’d grown to hate my pack. I’d been forced to take set classes online where they drummed it into us that our duty to the pack was to bring in money once it was decided where we’d be trafficked. Even though our culture taught that sets were to be banished, that they weakened the pack, I couldn’t believe people blindly let themselves believe it. In this day and age, survival in the pack was not about pecking orders and barbaric alpha challenges, but more about who made a higher salary, who had the biggest house. Sets didn’t affect that. But the old beliefs were like a religion. That religion left people like me out in the cold. An object to be sold for my only worthwhile function: breeding.
I pressed my thighs together as if reacting to that notion. I’d been bred but I couldn’t remember it. That was almost more horrible for me than facing my greatest fear. But a large part of me was glad for the foggy heats, images fading to blank memories like lost dreams on waking.
Next to me, Malin was in his own entitled world. He wouldn’t and couldn’t understand. But worse, something he’d said to me earlier stuck in my mind.
“Why did you ask me if the ranch was like a prison?”
“What?”
“Earlier. When we were talking about returning me on time.”
“I wondered.”
Something seethed inside me. “How could you not know?”
“Never thought about it. I only know about the auctions. Never been to one, though, or a ranch.”
