All Chapters of Bite my Tongue: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

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 her

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

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 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

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