Page 32 of Dance Omega Dance

Their presence wrapped around me, solid and sure. I could feel it in the way Blake’s arm hovered just close enough to catch me if I faltered, in the way Anders kept rubbing my arm, his touch a reminder I was safe.

Something swelled in my chest, too big, too much. It caught in my throat, and burned behind my eyes.

This wasn’t instinct. It wasdevotion. The quiet kind. The kind you didn’t ask for but were given.

No matter how hard I fought it, they were mine. And I was theirs. No words needed.

Chapter Fifteen

Anders was the first to notice me standing there, small and fragile against the frame of the doorway, too quiet for three alpha males to notice. I didn't breathe; my heart couldn’t decide on which beat to take.

"You don’t understand!" Blake said, and my skin prickled at the thunder in his voice. Their words circled, suffocated.

"I understand just fine," Zach snapped. "You think you can control everything?" Flashbacks stung like bees... voices raised, my mother screaming, the smell of blood. The scent of them grew wild, animals scrapping in a cage. Without realizing it, my hand found the doorknob. Then I was gone, the door’s explosive crack behind me leaving a fresh silence in my place.

“Fuck, now you’ve scared her!” Zach yelled.

“Calm it down,” Anders said.

"No... he’s too bloody focused on protocol to even see what’s happening!" Zach yelled. I could hear his pacing, the urgent beat of his feet on hardwood floors. “There’s something she’s not telling us!”

Blake’s voice calmed. "I see exactly what’s happening. You’re the one ignoring reality."

Reality. I almost laughed, still listening in from the other side of the door.

"We should talk to her about this." Anders’s voice was calm. "We can’t make decisions for her."

“She needs protecting!” Blake said, voice straining against itself. If only he knew the half of it! "She’s an Omega, and you know what that means. She needs us—"

"—to leave her alone!" Anders’s words spilled out. "I don’t care about your rules. We can’t just swoop in and declare ourselves."

The air had a heartbeat, thick with tension and pheromones. My skin felt tight, too hot. I listened in from the corridor. Their words were louder, sharper, as if they needed to be cut into pieces.

My father’s face flared like a match. His last words licked my skin and fled, leaving scorch marks behind.

"Summer?"

The sound of my name in Blake’s voice was an anchor in a sea of chaos, a hook that caught me before I could sink completely into my memories. I wasn’t sixteen. Not anymore. Not again.

My breathing turned shallow, stuttering.

My heart was too big in my chest.

"Let her make up her own damn mind," Zach said, softer now. A different kind of plea.

The air crackled with animosity, a volatile energy that warped my perspective, fueled by their rage. The world contracted, dissolved around me, until nothing remained but the path I took before. Back on the night that changed everything.

My panicked footsteps on the hallway floor ricocheted through my skull.

Air rushed in, precious and raw, and with it the thin whistle of breath through my nose. I pushed against the stairwell door and stumbled downward, each flight more distant, more frantic than the last. The path blurred. I counted each floor, whispered the numbers as I passed them by: 8, 7, 6, 5.

A little over three years ago, I had moved to Shaker City to find the only thing that mattered... freedom. Freedom from thelaws that tried to make omegas into broodmares. Freedom from the pack that killed my parents, and now, now I needed freedom from the very alphas that promised to keep me safe. I needed the freedom to run.

4, 3, 2.

And now I was nineteen, hiding from the system that had tried to claim me. I didn’t need anyone to remind me what the world was like.

1.

---