Page 25 of The Omega’s Nest

A snarl rips out of me before I can stop it. Addie whimpers and tries to pull away.

I clamp my hand down on his nape—I know I’m hurting him and I need to breathe. I need to get it the fuck together. In for five, out for five. Red haze, so much red, all I can see is the red haze of fury.

“Leo,” he gasps. His scent is smog, bodies pressed too close, overflowing sewers and rank air. And mine mingles with it—the stench of The Great Pacific Garbage Patch polluting us both.

I loosen my hold, resume my caress of his back with a shaking hand, and will my anger down, focusing on my favourite memories to bring me back.

Flying an F-22 Raptor fighter jet has not been without moments of sheer fucking terror—to calm myself, I think of Addie. His smile that time we went ice-skating after going to the Christmas markets in the city. He’d raced ahead of me, spun, and skated backwards—the skyline lit up with the skyscrapers behind him, twinkling Christmas lights around the rink, and his smile had been like a lazy sunrise, his eyes locked on mine. I see him in my mind’s eye and my heart rate slows, my smell calms to the ocean wilderness, to those rare stretches of miles without human activity.

Addie relaxes as I come back to myself.

“Sorry,” I croak. Tears threaten. My eyelashes are already wet with them. “Fuck, Addie, I’m so sorry.”

“No,” he says firmly and burrows closer. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I wish you’d never …”

I suck in a sharp breath. Does he wish I’d never come here? Never found him?

“I wish you’d never had to know that,” he finishes.

“It’s fine,” I say shortly. It’s clearly not fucking fine, but it’s not going to happen again. Or it is, but I’ve got a plan formulating. I’m terrified of the answer to my next question. But if it’s more than thirty-four days away, I’ll just take out a loan. Get another credit card. Hell, I’ll rob a fucking bank.

“When—” I clear my throat and try again. “When is the next one … scheduled?”

Addie’s scent drops out again—dread, putrid and awful in his scent.

“Soon,” he says, and he tightens his hands around my waist as if he wants me to stay here, to stop it. He doesn’t get that I absolutely will be stopping it. Or at least, stopping another alpha from buying it. “Next week, week after, probably.”

I exhale with relief. Two more weeks at most and then I’ll get my Addie out of here.

“Okay,” I say and rub his back with a surer hand.

He lifts his head and looks at me curiously. His eyes widen at the tears tracking down my cheeks.

“Leo, no.” He reaches up to wipe them away.

But I smile and tell him, with the certainty and hope I’m beginning to feel, “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

He doesn’t look any less shocked, and he smells so fucking sad I can barely stand it, but I promised I’d get him out of here. And he might not believe that, but he doesn’t need to. Because I don’t just believe it, I fucking know it.

Chapter 9

Adrian

Iknow it’s serious when Erasmus strides into my room after Leo’s fourth night with me. At nineteen, Erasmus is one of the younger omegas here, but he’s been here since he was fifteen, and in that time he’s risen to take on the unofficial position of head omega. There are thirty-year-old omegas who scurry out of his way.

Tristan and Cammie come in behind him. Tristan smiles reassuringly, Cammie scowls. And now I know it’s really fucking serious.

“Four nights with the same alpha,” Erasmus says. I guess we’re skipping the pleasantries. I don’t think Erasmus does pleasantries, but he’s really getting right down to it now. He sits on the chair at my vanity, while Tristan and Cammie take the bed. I sink down on the little couch against the wall and prepare myself for it.

I absolutely reek of Leo—there’s no point arguing where this is going.

“I’ve held Benji off, put his nose somewhere else,” Erasmus says, voice and face neutral. I know what that means. He’s been letting Benji fuck him, seducing his attention away. We might get out of Erasmus’s way, but he’s unequivocally on our side. He just has the bedside manner of a blunt force trauma.

“Two nights is suspicious,” he continues, his hazel green eyes holding mine, telling me I am not allowed to look away, to shrink back from the blow he’s about to land. “Three nights is an offense. Four nights and you might as well advertise you intend to let him claim you, which I can only assume means you want him dead.”

“No!” Before I can jump to my feet, Erasmus holds up his hand, the velvet of his plush purple coat falling down his slender arm. Erasmus possesses the kind of beauty that makes you do a double take—brown skin that seems to glow, sharp cheekbones, full lips, and thick eyelashes with a natural curl. Alphas come from all over the country just to fuck him. He’s the face of The Omega’s Nest, plastered all over the website and branding for a damn good reason.

“Adrian,” Tristan says gently, and I know that tone. He’s going to talk to me like the idiot I am. He’s not patronising me, he’s telling me what I already know and don’t want to face. “He’s your mate, isn’t he? Not some friend from school.”