Page 37 of Cost of Courting

It goes on and on. Everywhere I turn, there they are. Smiling, laughing, talking, but always watching me. Not far behind, lurking and invading every inch of my life until I feel like screaming.

Until the temptation to yield is a constant battle.

Bailey comes over a couple of times, returning some of Luna’s things, and once because Edric apparently kidnapped him.

He’s avoided me like I have the plague, but just seeing him is salt in the wounds of betrayal and the inferiority complex I have. I can still feel the thrumming attraction to him, but the humiliation and his words have cut deep. It’s not going away no matter how many times I tell myself that he’s a sleazy mongrel.

Luna has already found a new boyfriend. She brought him over and marched him into the kitchen, propping her breasts up with her folded arms and glared mutinously at me.

“Are you fucking this one, too?”

The poor guy looked so confused and appalled.

He’d looked at me and said with such complete bafflement, “but she’s so old!”

Luna had been mollified and stalked off with her new beau, with her nose in the air and all the haughty disdain shecould muster.

I’d sat at the table and gone through all the reasons I stay. Then I went over the list again.

Still, an hour later, Kingston charges in, dropping to one knee in front of me and takes my hand. I try to pull it free, but he just holds on, staring up at me in pity.

“You’re not old.”

I snarl, and it’s echoed by another, much deeper one. I hadn’t realised Bailey had followed Kingston into the house. But now that I can see him, I can’t look away.

His knuckles are bloody and his cheeks flushed. He’s got eyes only for me. Why? These are his alphas.

Kingston turns his head and frowns. “Bailey? What happened? Are you okay?”

He ignores him and stalks to me, pulling me up out of the chair as I stand up. I step back, but he steps into my space, looming over me, his scent choking me. There’s a thin line of blood running down his temple, and it doesn’t look like he’s shaved. He looks unkempt and completely, deliciously feral.

“What happened to you?” Kingston growls and follows him, so now I have two of them in my space.

I step back and keep going until I hit the kitchen counter, unable to take my eyes off him. I try to shift to the left, but his hand comes down heavily, blocking my way out. He steps towards me again, pushing me up against the kitchen counter.

Now we’re touching when we breathe. His air is my air. Our scents mingle and fill the kitchen. My eyes dip from his gaze to his lips, just wondering about that kiss that never happened, even though I know I shouldn’t, even though I know I can’t.

“Bailey-”

I barely get his name out before he ducks his head towards me and inhales deeply. He moves quickly, his whole body pressing hard against me, driving one thigh between my legs and pushing my shoulders until I’m leaning back over the counter, clinging to his bunched up shirt in my fists to keep me upright.

My perfume fills the air, rich, strong, and undeniable.

“Omega,” he murmurs darkly.

“Bailey, are you all right?” Kingston murmurs and strokes a hand down the alpha’s spine. And he is an alpha right now. Any sign or trace of the omega is absent.

He growls, low and vicious. The last part of sanity leaves me. Slick soaks my underwear, my perfume breaks free, the full intense version that I’ve only smelled twice in my life.

A chair crashes to the floor, and Bailey jumps back. I catch myself and stand up, warily watching the four alphas in my kitchen.

Their eyes are glazed, their scents out in force. Pack Dread look like what they are. Savage, unhinged, feral alphas who grew up dirt poor and belong to me.

“That’s the scent she was wearing,” Edric hisses. “Octavia was wearing that scent.”

“She took my clothes,” I say simply. “You didn’t listen to me. I tried to stop you. I believe the exact phrase was ‘stop sabotaging our happiness’.”

Kingston winces and steps back.

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