Page 115 of Knot All that Glitters: Part 1

Or would they just cut their losses?

The thought shoves a sharp stab of pain through my heart. One that makes me stumble over my own feet with how much it actually hurts.

“Fuck,” I hiss, slowing to a stop, bracing my hands on my knees. Sweat drips down my forehead to drop to the ground. I take a deep breath in through my nose and out through my mouth, but it emerges as a sob. A full on sob that wracks my body, makes my shoulders heave.

I’d thought I’d cried all my tears in the rain, kneeling on the Calloway’s grass, but obviously that is not the case. “Fucking assholes,” I gasp at the ground before clenching my fists and straightening to scream at the sky, “Fucking assholes!”

My emotions swing wildly from heartbreak to all-consuming rage, from longing to inadequacy, from small back to sad, and then back to angry. I can’t get a grip on them.

Fuck. Is this what having a fever is like? I know some people hallucinate if it gets too high, but I’ve never heard about such dramatic mood swings.

Focus, baby girl. Focus. Get help. You need help,Creed’s voice says inside my head.

“Shut up!” I snarl at him out loud.

Call us,Jude wheedles.Call us and we’ll take care of you, button.

“I said shut up!” My palm slams against the side of my head, trying to shake their voices loose. It’s not real. It’s just my mind, my longing for them. I want it to be true. I want them to rush to me, to tell me there was some kind of misunderstanding, that what I thought I saw wasn’t the truth.

But it couldn’t possibly be anything else.

There is no explaining that away.

I need help, but it won’t be coming from them.

Fisting my hands at my slides, feeling so fucking off balance, I hurry down the street, looking for an open business where I can beg to use a phone to call Ren. But it’s the middle of the night and nothing is open. Not even a convenience store.

But then I spot it, midway down the block, like some kind of shining beacon of hope.

A pay phone.

An honest to god payphone.

I’m not sure I’ve ever actually seen one in real life before, only in movies.

Still, I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth—is that the saying?—so I scramble toward it, hand already reaching past BunBun to dig into the change I took from Creed.

She answers on the second ring, almost like she’d been waiting for my call. Like she’d expected it.

“Haven?”

“Ren?”

“Holy shit, Haven! Where the fuck are you?” She sounds really fucking worried, and her concern has tears streaming down my face.

“I don’t know!” I wail into the receiver. “I don’t know. But I had to get away. I had-” I hiccup. “It's a game, Ren. Everything’s been a game. They were playing me.”

“Who was babe? The Calloways? I’ll fucking kill them.”

The name makes my body clench and my thighs rub together. My tears stop and I moan instead. On the other end of the line, Ren stops her tirade and says softer, “Haven, babe. Are… are you feeling okay?”

I shake my head and press my cheek against the cool metal of the payphone. “No, Ren. I don’t know what’s wrong. I’m so fucking angry and sad and my emotions feel all out of whack, too strong and I’m horny as fuck and, god I want an alpha to just come along and rail me.”

“Haven!”

Tears start up again. “But not just any alpha, Ren. I want my pack. Why can’t I have a pack?” I whimper. “Why didn’t they want me?”

“Haven,” Ren says softly, slowly. “I need you to listen to me, okay? I think… babe, I think you’re going into heat.”

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