Page 55 of Hide or Die

I shifted off him immediately, and he flopped back against the pillows, looking exhausted. He draped an arm across his eyes and let out a deep sigh. The lower half of his face was soaked with my slick.

He hadn’t climaxed.

With the alpha pheromones a fast-fading memory and my higher brain functions returning, the scene quickly lost its luster. We were both sticky and sweaty, stuffed with dildos that were now merely uncomfortable. And Kam hadn’t come.

I reached awkwardly between my legs and tugged the toy free, flinching as the fake knot stretched my entrance on its way out. It, too, was soaked with slick. I dropped it on the floor and turned to Kam with growing concern.

“Odama,” I began. “Kam? Are you okay?”

It was a ridiculous question. He huffed out a breath of rueful laughter and let his arm drop away from his face. “I’m fine, beloved. It felt... good. You’re right, we should have done it sooner.”

As I had done a moment ago, he reached back and awkwardly pulled the toy out of his body, grimacing as he tossed it onto the floor next to the other one. I lowered myself to lie next to him, and his arms went around me easily. My back felt cold and exposed, despite his embrace—missing the alpha who should be spooning me from behind. I wondered if he felt the same way. We clung to each other for several minutes, until the sticky unpleasantness became too distracting.

“Shower?” he asked.

“Shower,” I agreed.

* * *

It was after midnightwhen Kam finally left—kissing me on the cheek, reassuring me yet again that the sex had been fine, and promising not to close himself off from me in the future. We’d scrubbed ourselves clean, scrubbed the dildos clean, and returned the throw pillows to their native habitat of couches and chairs.

After he left, I slipped on a nightgown and went back to bed, knowing I needed sleep if I didn’t want to end up looking like a zombie during the news interview I was scheduled to give later today. Coverage of the new treaty and the laws that would soon result were gaining traction in the news cycle. Alphomic policy was becoming a topic of dinner table conversation in a way that it hadn’t been in recent years. I could only hope that was the first step to a real shift in public sentiment. If that happened, then perhaps our lack of progress on the extradition treaty would end up being worthwhile after all.

My mind circled restlessly, caught between worry about the wider world and concern for Kam. I’d enjoyed our flirtation with sex in the moment, but that enjoyment had soured immediately upon realizing Kam’s experiment with his own sexual nature had failed. Blind rage wasn’t really an omegan trait, but I thought if I ever found myself holding a weapon in the presence of the so-called doctors who’d wielded the scalpels and hooks on his body, I’d kill them.

Of course, that was a deeply unproductive line of thought. Kam would doubtless be the first to tell me so. I thought about what he’d said earlier, that he’d responded sexually during my heat in a way he never had before. It occurred to me that tonight’s research hadn’t taken all the variables into account. I was back on pheromone suppressors now. While I was in heat, I’d been pumping out omega pheromones by the bucket load. What if Kam’s body had been piggybacking off of that? Maybe it wasn’t just alpha pheromones that he needed.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t as though I could stop taking the suppressors again—not now that I was back in Montreal and back at work. At least, not without some very careful planning. A vacation to somewhere remote, maybe? It wouldn’t have to be during my heat. In fact, it would be much better if it wasn’t. There was always danger involved in taking time off at regular three-month intervals. People watched for things like that. But a random vacation? It might be doable, even though tongues would wag if Kam took off work at the same time to go with me.

But at least that kind of gossip—beta gossip—didn’t have the potential to be deadly. I fell asleep to half-formed plans for a brief lovers’ getaway, and awoke at three in the morning to the sound of my front door being kicked in.

TWENTY-ONE

Leona

IFLAILED UPRIGHT inmy bed, torn from that deep, middle-of-the-night morass of sleep by an abrupt adrenaline dump. The sound of heavy, rhythmic crashing against the door pierced straight to the ancient part of my hindbrain that governed survival instincts.

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