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11 Kapitel

The Only Reason

ArielleLife has never been easy or good to me.That's not me feeling sorry for myself. That's just the truth. Some people are born into warmth—into mothers who smell like vanilla and fathers who lift them onto their shoulders and houses where the floors don't creak and the windows let in sunlight. I was born into a world that wanted me dead before I took my first breath.My mother died when I was eighteen months old. Heat complication. That's what the shelter records say. What they don't say is that she couldn't afford the safe suppressants. What they don't say is that the cheap ones she bought from some guy in an alley were cut with something that made her heart stop. What they don't say is that my father didn't cry at her funeral. He was already calculating. Already planning. Already looking at his infant daughter and wondering what she might be worth someday.I never met her. My mother. I don't have a single memory of her face, her voice, her scent. All I have is a photograph—crea

Collateral

I turn the corner onto our street, and that's when I see them.Huge men in suits. Three of them. Standing outside my apartment door like they own the place. Their shoulders fill the narrow hallway, blocking the light from the bare bulb overhead. One of them is an Alpha—I can tell by the way the other two angle toward him, the deference in their silence, the way the air itself seems to bend around his presence.My heart stops.Not metaphorically. It actually stops. A full second of nothing, of silence in my chest, and then it starts again too fast, hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.I approach slowly. My bag is clutched against my chest like a shield. My mouth is dry. My palms are sweating."Excuse me?" My voice comes out steadier than I feel. "Can I help you?"The Alpha turns. His eyes are pale gray, cold as January ice. He looks at me the way a butcher looks at a cut of meat—assessing, calculating, pricing."You live here?" His voice is gravel. Low. Unfriendly."I live he

The Rusty Nail

I wait.The hours crawl past. Mrs. Delgado brings Emery home. I tell her I'm tired from work. I make dinner—macaroni and cheese, the powder clumping because I forgot to stir it. Emery eats hers with enthusiasm. I push mine around the bowl and pretend to take bites when she looks at me."Riri?" She tilts her head, her dark eyes curious. "How come you're not eating?""I'm not very hungry, baby.""Are you sick?""No. Just tired."She accepts this the way children accept things—without question, without suspicion. She tells me about her day. About the game Mrs. Delgado taught her. About the bird she saw on the windowsill. Her voice is bright and bubbly, and I let it wash over me like water, like medicine.When she's finished eating, I carry her to the mattress on the floor and tuck the blankets around her small body. She clutches her stuffed rabbit against her chest. The missing ear flops against her cheek."Riri?" Her voice is sleepy now, her eyes already half-closed."Yeah, baby?""I lo

The Hallway

The room was spinning.Not the slow, gentle spin of a few drinks. This was the kind of spin that told me I'd made a mistake three glasses ago and kept going anyway. My back pressed against something solid—a wall? A door? I couldn't tell. Everything was warm and blurry and wrong.But then I smelled him.That's the thing about being an Omega. You don't get to ignore what your body wants. And right now, my body was screaming.He found me in the hallway outside the party. I don't even remember leaving. One minute I was trying to find the bathroom, the next my legs stopped working and I was sliding down the wall like someone had cut my strings.Then his shadow fell over me."You shouldn't be out here alone."His voice was rough. Deep. The kind of voice that went straight to my spine and made it melt.I looked up. Blurry face. Strong jaw. Eyes that were watching me like I was something he wanted to eat."Who're you?" My words slurred together. I couldn't make my mouth work right.He crouche

The Kiss

I remember the door opening. I remember lights. A bed. Then his mouth was on mine and nothing else mattered.He kissed like he was trying to crawl inside me.There was no softness. No asking. His tongue pushed past my lips and he swallowed my moan like he owned it. His hands were everywhere—in my hair, on my throat, ripping at my dress like the fabric personally offended him."Look at you," he snarled against my mouth. "Soaking through your panties just from a fucking kiss. I can smell you. You're dripping for me and you don't even know my name."He was right. I didn't. I didn't care either.My back hit the mattress. He was on top of me before I could blink, heavy and hard and perfect. His hips pressed between my thighs and I felt him through his pants—thick, long, the kind of size that should have scared me.It didn't.It made me whine. Made me lift my hips, chasing the pressure, grinding against him like a bitch in heat.Because that's what I was. The alcohol had stripped away every

The Mark

Pain and pleasure exploded through me at the same time. His teeth sank into my skin and I came—hard, screaming, clenching around him so tight I felt him shudder. He growled against my neck as he bit deeper, sealing the claim, and I felt something hot flood inside me.His knot locked us together.I'd never felt anything like it. The way he swelled inside me, trapping himself there, pumping rope after rope of come into my body. I was so full I thought I'd burst. But I didn't want it to stop. I wanted more. I wanted everything.He lifted his head. Looked at me. There was blood on his mouth. My blood."Mine," he said."Yours," I agreed.And then I passed out.I woke up to a terrible headache.It took me a second to remember where I was. Another second to realize I was naked. Another after that to feel the soreness between my legs.Then I smelled him.Still there. Still wrapped around me. His knot had gone down sometime while I slept but he was still inside me, soft now, holding me like he

The Alley

The door slams behind me, and I am running before I know my legs are moving.Not running. Fleeing. There is a difference. Running is what you do when you are late for work. Fleeing is what you do when you have just let a stranger put his mouth on your neck and his hands on your body and his mark in your skin, and you did not fight, you did not scream, you let him.The hallway blurs past me. The stairwell swallows me. My shoes slap against concrete, and the sound echoes, and I do not stop until I burst through the building's side exit into an alley that smells of garbage and rain and the sharp, metallic tang of my own self-hatred.I bend over, hands on my knees, and try to breathe. The air is cold. It stings my lungs. Good. I want it to sting. I want something to hurt that is not the ache between my legs or the bruise forming on my neck where his teeth sank in.What did I do?The question circles my brain like a trapped bird, beating its wings against the inside of my skull. What did I

The Reminder

The rest of the walk home is a blur of self-hatred and exhaustion. I replay the night in fragments—the bar, the drink, his eyes finding me across the dim room, the weight of his body on mine, the sharp pain of the bite, the strange, terrifying pleasure that came after it. Each memory is a fresh wound. I prod at them like a tongue prodding a sore tooth, unable to stop.By the time I reach my building, the sky is beginning to lighten at the edges. Gray pre-dawn light seeps through the clouds, turning the world into a watercolor of exhaustion. My feet ache. My neck throbs. My eyes feel like they have been scrubbed with sandpaper.And then I see them.The men in suits are back.They are standing outside my apartment door—the same three from before, their broad shoulders filling the narrow hallway like monuments to my failures. The Alpha is leaning against the wall, arms crossed, his pale gray eyes fixed on the door like he can see through it. The other two flank him, silent and patient an

What She Heard

I do not know how long I lie there. Minutes. Maybe longer. The pain is a dull roar, a constant hum that makes it hard to think. Eventually, I push myself up onto my hands and knees. Every movement sends fresh agony through my ribs. My lip is still bleeding. I taste salt and copper.I crawl to the door. I reach up, fumbling for the handle. It takes three tries, but I get it open and drag myself inside.The apartment is dark. Quiet. I close the door behind me and lean against it, breathing through the pain. I need to clean myself up. I need to think. I need to figure out what to do."Riri?"The voice is small. Scared. It comes from the corner of the room, from the shadows near the mattress.My heart stops.Emery is awake.She is sitting on her mattress, her knees pulled up to her chest, her dark eyes wide and wet. She has been crying. She has been crying for a while."Riri, what happened?" Her voice trembles. "There were men at the door again. I heard them talking. They were saying mean

The River

The walk to the river takes an hour.I carry Emery on my back for most of it. She is not heavy—she is six years old and small for her age—but my bruised ribs ache with every step. I do not complain. I do not stop. The sun is rising now, painting the sky in shades of pink and gold, but I barely notice. My eyes are fixed on the water ahead.The riverbank is deserted at this hour. It is a forgotten stretch of shoreline, far from the manicured parks and the pedestrian bridges, where the city's waste collects in the reeds and the water moves slow and dark toward the sea. A rusted chain-link fence marks the boundary between land and water, but someone cut a hole in it years ago, and no one ever bothered to fix it. I duck through the gap, Emery still on my back, and step onto the muddy bank.The sound of the river fills my ears like a lullaby. It would be so easy. So peaceful. Just walk in, and keep walking, and let the water do the rest.I set Emery down on the grass near the edge. She look

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