Page 76 of Slashed Bonds

I stare into those eyes for the catch, the joke, the string of doubt that I can pull on to unravel it. There’s nothing there. It’s flat, clear, and certain all the way down, like looking into a crevasse and seeing the bottom.

“You’ll regret that,” I say.

I pull away.

But I feel his eyes on my back as I turn to the stall, and the question comes a beat later, quiet.

“And why is that?”

I close the locker.

I gather my clothes off the hook. I’m standing there in a black bra and black underwear with sweat drying on my skin and every scar I own on display under the fluorescent light, and I’m aware of all of it, and I don’t cover anything.

Then I look over my shoulder.

He deserves my honest face for this. Not the wall. Not the smirk.

The one underneath that dares shows an essence of me that surely died off that balcony...

“Because someone as broken as me,” I say, loud and clear, so there’s no version of it he can pretend he didn’t hear, “with a bond that’s irreversibly damaged, is only ever going to set you up for failure.”

Our eyes lock.

“Omegas like me are destined for misery, Nikolai.” A breath. “And oddly enough, I don’t seek that ending for you.”

That’s all I say.

Then I walk out.

Out of the stall, down the row of lockers, toward the showers at the far end, and I leave him sitting there with a concoction I’m not sure he’ll let himself understand.

He might. He’s smart enough.

Or he’ll ignore it on purpose, for the sake of whatever plot is brewing between us, and I couldn’t tell you which of those I’m hoping for.

A plot of rejection and slashed bonds…

CHAPTER 9

My Wildcard

~NIKOLAI~

“Mine.”

I say it loud and clear, with my arm around the neck of the Omega I’m attempting, in front of witnesses, to claim.

It’s the only logical position.

That’s what nobody in this hallway understands. In the architecture of my mind, which is chaotic but load-tested, there’s no version of the next four months where my Mori boards with any pack in this shithole of a dorm other than ours. The math doesn’t work. The floor plan doesn’t work.

She goes where I go. That’s not possession.

That’s simply the gravitational pull she has on my ass.

Greenie is laughing.

He’s also recording, phone up, thumb on the button, because he’s decided this is content, and he’s right, and I’m going to break that phone later and buy him a new one.