Page 12 of Omega on the Rocks
I turned then, just enough to catch the confusion in his eyes. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t possessive. He was just… hurt. Like he’d offered me everything, and I was walking out with a polite thank you and nothing more.
“It’s complicated,” I said, tone tight. “But I have a schedule to keep.”
Kieran rose from the bed, pulling on a pair of joggers, running a hand through his dark hair. “Look, I get it. You’ve got your life. So do I. But…” he stepped closer, his voice lower now, careful. “Last night meant something. To me. And Ithinkit meant something to you too.”
I inhaled sharply, eyes burning.
“It did,” I said, and that was the truth. “That’s the problem.”
His brow furrowed. “Then why are you walking out the door like it didn’t happen?”
“Because if I stay…” I swallowed hard, pressing a hand to my chest like I could hold myself together, “I won’t leave at all. And I can’t afford that.”
He came closer, slow and deliberate, until we were standing nearly chest to chest. His hand reached out, brushing against mine. “You don’t have to tell me everything,” he said, voice low and sincere. “But please… don’t lie to me. Don’t pretend this is just some hookup you regret.”
I looked up at him then, really looked. Into eyes that had seen straight through me from the moment we met. And gods, it would have beenso easyto fold. To fall.
“I’m not pretending,” I whispered, voice thick with emotion. “I just have to choose between what Iwantand what I’vebuilt. And right now, I don’t know if those two things can survive in the same world.”
Kieran exhaled through his nose, jaw working like he was chewing down the words hewantedto say.
After a long moment, he asked quietly, “Will I see you again?”
I hesitated, fingers tightening on the edge of the worn wooden door.
I didn’t want to lie. But I couldn’t give him a promise I wasn’t sure I could keep.
“I don’t know,” I said, and that uncertainty gutted me. “But I’ll think about you.”
His shoulders tensed. His mouth parted slightly, like he wanted to say something else—but didn’t. Instead, he nodded once, the movement clipped and heavy with unspoken things.
I stepped out onto the porch.
The air was crisp. Pine-heavy. The sky streaked with soft pinks and golds like the morning had no idea what kind of hell it was breaking open inside me.
I didn’t look back.
Because if I did, I knew I’d drop everything, rip the shirt from my chest, crawl back into that bed and beg him to claim me the way my body was still screaming for.
But I was an actor. And I knew how to leave without showing the wreckage. So I did. I left behind my scent, my slick, my vulnerability. And the alpha who would’ve given meeverything, if I’d only stayed long enough to ask.
Chapter Seven
The camera flash popped, and I didn’t flinch.
Didn’t smile either.
I stood exactly where they told me to—spine tall, chin angled, arms relaxed, like some flawless automaton in a suit that probably cost more than what my parents made in a year. The kind of suit people would kill for. Bleed for. And I wore it like a cage.
The lights hit my jaw, the director muttered "perfect," and I forced the curve of my mouth into that familiar half-smirk the tabloids fawned over. Malachi Grant: the heartthrob, the box office messiah.
They ate it up. The world always did. But none of it felt real. Around me, the set buzzed—shouting assistants, powder brushes grazing foreheads, gaffers tweaking shadows—but I was still. Cold. A mannequin dressed in someone else’s life. Every layer of fabric strangled me tighter than the last. Starched, pressed lies sealed over my skin until I could barely remember what it felt like to breathe.
The world wanted this version of me: poised. Straight. Clean. Safe. God, what a joke.
I blinked through the lights, fighting to focus. My lines. My mark. My timing. The mask. But under all that polish, all that hollow gloss, I wasn’t anyone they knew. I was just a wolf with no pack. An omega without a tether.
A body going through the motions while something inside me howled to be touched. To be seen. To beknown. To be his again. Kieran.
