Page 4 of Hangman's Knot
It feels like there are shards of glass packed into every orifice she has, but she will not show weakness. Her face goes carefully blank. She should be laying in a nest safe with her mates to tend to her. But a place like this does not allow such comfort.
Until the moment she is shoved from that room, her eyes do not leave them, imprinting the sight of them into her memory.
The guards leer and grope and goad her as they escort her out the visitor's entrance until she is blinking in the harsh light of day. After days in that dark windowless room, it is blinding.
She has not been given a shower or a towel, no way to clean herself off or change. She is expected to get home as she is, crusted in semen, slick, blood, and grime from the floor of that room with tattered rags for a dress.
Her car key was checked in with her phone at the front desk of the visitor's lobby. The beta attendant pales and averts his eyes when he sees the state of her, quickly handing over her personal items without a word.
She stumbles into her car and finally allows herself to cry from the pain, overwhelmed with the desolation of beingaloneagain. She tries to shove a balled-up cardigan from the passenger seatbeneath her in some makeshift semblance of a doughnut pillow, trying to keep the pressure off her sore and bruised centre.
Her knees feel like they are going to crack open, like the skin might shred at the slightest movement. It feels like they've been rubbed raw to the bone, the joints protesting every movement. She tries to take a drink of stale water from the bottle she had left in her centre console, but it feels like swallowing knives.
She drives herself back to her apartment in a daze. Nothing feels real. The colours are too bright, the shapes of the buildings and cars and road stretching and contorting so everything looks like she's viewing it in a funhouse mirror. There is a strange shimmering on the edge of her vision, threatening to pull her into unconsciousness. She thinks she may pass out from the pain or from her need for her mates or her exhaustion and dehydration.
She's not sure which would win over, but she knows she's not going to be conscious for long. The only thing that keeps her upright is their scents that are embedded in her skin and in the fabric of her now ruined dress.
She doesn't know how she gets home safely. She parks her old beater of a car into a space in the tiny gravel pit they pass off as a parking lot in the rundown old building she used to call home, before she knew what a home was supposed to be.
She pulls herself up the stairs to her unit in a daze, her footsteps echoing in the stairway strangely loudly. The staccato sound is painful to her ears. She reaches her unit after what feels like an impossible feat, her pain having gone strangely numb, her limbs beginning to feel like they're weighed down by cinderblocks.
She closes and locks the door behind her, sliding the deadbolt into place and wedging a chair beneath the door handle in case anyone tries to break in. She's boarded up her windows as much as she can so it's as safe as she can make it. But nothing will evertruly feel safe again without them.
She collapses into her nest in an exhausted heap and falls asleep crying, alone, used.
She calls in sick to work for a week as the raw flesh between her legs slowly heals. The first time she touches herself cautiously in the bathroom while trying to clean herself, she nearly vomits at the feeling. An image of tenderized organ meats flashes through her mind and she shudders. Her vagina is still gaping open softly, and the rest of the flesh around her vulva and anus feels puffy and swollen beyond recognition.
She cannot swallow much more than honeyed tea for days. Mostly she just lays in her nest, needing their presence, but they are not there.
She's alone. All alone. The lead ball blooms in her stomach, growing until it feels as if it will strangle her heart.
She's alone, just like she's always been.
Chapter One
Eden
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Eden had never known anything except her own solitary life. She was the only person who had ever looked out for herself and the only person she had ever been able to rely on. It wasn't a fairytale life, and she didn't expect one either. It might not be pretty and glamorous like the omegas she read about in romance novels and streamed on her favourite K-dramas, but it wasn't a bad life. It wasn't ugly.
She knew how ugly it could get. She had seen omegas stolen off the streets in broad daylight. Had read about omegas sold in grey market auction houses in the news. She knew she was one alpha's bite away from a nightmare herself, which is why she was careful. She never went out after dark. She locked her doors and boarded up her windows from the inside. She didn't look men in the eye.
It's how she kept her lifehers.Her apartment always had stacks of kids' homework that needed marking, and there were always boxes of instant mac and cheese for dinner, but there were also always more good weeks than bad weeks.
Sure, there was stress. Who didn't have stress? Rent needed tobe paid and there were never enough hands to go around at the underfunded inner-city school she worked at as a teacher's assistant, but she made it work. She had built her life from the bottom up and it was predictable and manageable and fit her like her favourite old mustard yellow cardigan she'd gotten for $4 at a church yardsale.
Most mornings began before sunrise when her phone alarm shattered her sleep. She would drag herself out of her tiny nest tucked away in the corner of her studio apartment that she had painstakingly furnished with free furniture she'd found along the side of the road or on Marketplace. She'd scrubbed each piece meticulously to remove the scents and bugs and dust until they only smelled like her.
The old walnut bookshelf with scrollwork carved into the side that was filled with second-hand books, the big straight-backed tufted chair that she had reupholstered herself the year before after watching tutorials online, and a small white dining table with a single chair by the window made up the space. It washers–her home, her nest.
Plants sat on every surface, which she tended to like they were her own children. Finicky orchids and indestructible pothos', a few ficuses, and a hibiscus that bloomed with cherry red flowers in the summer.
She would've loved a garden, a place with grass and fresh air. Maybe she could even grow vegetables. But she didn't let herself get caught up in thoughts about what she didn't have. What she had was enough.
The old boiling radiator never worked, but that was fine. She could make do with a few extra blankets and sweaters in the winter. If she was lucky, she had some honey or jam to spread on her whole wheat toast before she changed and ran out the door to grab the 6AM bus.
It was a fine life, and even better because it was one she had built for herself. It wasn't easy as an unbonded omega and she was proud of what she'd accomplished.
