Page 19 of Knot My Omega

About lunchtime, my stomach growled, reminding me I hadn’t eaten at all today. I dropped the last of the weeds into the compost pile and went to my apartment to clean up and make food.

But as I got to the door, I saw a truck pulling up to the house. And not just any truck. In this one sat an alpha, one of the three from the market. I didn’t know his name…any of theirs. If they told me, it had gone right by me as I focused on getting rid of them. And now, one of them was here.

I moved quicker than I ever had, getting inside my apartment and shutting the door with the hopes I managed to be unseen. And then I did something I hadn’t done since my early days here; I locked it.

He pulled up to the main house and headed for their door, not mine.

My heart raced. Rumor and the guys wouldn’t send him my way, would they? Not that they would need to for him to find me. If he wanted to, he could easily follow my scent. I’d be so easy to track, too.

I didn’t bother with the blockers when I was home. Why should I? I was safe here. This was my pack.

He shouldn’t even freaking be here. And yet he was.

I squatted behind the door, holding my legs to my chest, trying to disappear, so that if he came and looked in any window, he wouldn’t be able to see me.

Moving as little as possible, I listened for his footsteps, voice, or beast. Instead, I heard something better, the rumble of his truck driving away.

It took time, but when my heartbeat slowed and I could breathe again, I peeked out the window to make sure he was really gone. It looked like he was, but I didn’t trust that he was gone, gone, and I crawled around the apartment so I was lower than the windows and pulled the curtains shut.

I didn’t leave the house again, scared that if I did, he wouldn’t be far enough away and he’d see me.

Instead, I climbed into bed, pulling my covers over my head like I was a five-year-old scared of a storm.

Hours passed, and I must have slept in there somewhere, because it felt like I lost segments of time. My body was so in hide mode that it was difficult to know what had happened over those hours. But it worked. No one found me.

If they were even looking.

I finally risked going outside, knowing that I had to, at the very least, put the chickens away for the evening.

Rumor was walking around, Bernie on her back in a carrier, almost asleep but fighting it hard.

“What are you doing?” she asked me.

“Checking on the chickens.”

“No, I meant hiding. That’s where you were, right? Hiding.” She knew me so well. We’d been through a lot together, so it was no surprise, but still…it was embarrassing.

“Maybe.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Fine. I was. But I saw the alpha pull in and…” And what? I freaked out and hid under the blankets?

“And they left you a hat. A sun hat.”

Why was she smiling?

“They didn’t even ask to see you. Just said that they saw that you needed this before the next market day. And then he left.”

“He just left.” That didn’t make sense. Weren’t alphas all possessive and controlling? “He didn’t try to see me?”

“Listen,” she said, “they’re trying to give respect you and accept your rejection. But they also feel this need to protect and take care of you. And I’m not saying it’s easy for you. I can see from the bags under your eyes and the tension in your shoulders to know it’s absolutely not, but it needed to be said.”

From anyone else, I’d have second-guessed every part of her assessment. But this was Rumor. She’d never be dishonest with me, and she would protect me with her life—she already had.

“I know you won’t believe this, just like I didn’t believe it about my alphas at first, but these alphas aren’t like most of them. They aren’t like what we knew before. I don’t think they’d ever hurt you. I don’t think they could. Let me go grab the hat.”

She went away without letting me respond, or maybe so I couldn’t respond—to give me time to think about what she’d said, before she came back with the beautiful sun hat.

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