Page 26 of Trust No Alpha
But I knew I had to do this. Things with Father and Mathias had escalated far too rapidly. There was no safe future for me here. No future at all.
I had all my hair pulled up into my cap. I tugged the cap down tighter over my ears and set out.
Town was east, and many miles, but I was fit and strong. I figured I would find a cash motel for the night and sort things out in the morning. What I hadn’t planned on was how cold it was.
Even with my heavy coat, after about ten minutes of walking my muscles ached with cold. I couldn’t feel my toes. Through my gloves, my fingers were numb.
The cold came at me from all directions like swords slicing through the air. My cheeks stung. I had not checked the weather but apparently tonight was going to be a vicious freeze. I could not remember ever being this cold this fast. But then I’d been raised in heated rooms with over-sized hearths always blazing in the wintertime. I didn’t work outdoors. Father rarely let us out except in afternoons when studies were done, and then mostly only in the summer.
I had been one of those boys who went from building to car to building. I grew up in ornate rooms and plush leather car interiors.
The snow by the side of the road was packed high and glittering in the starlight. I had thought more of it would be melted from the day, but I’d been wrong.
My snow boots crunched on ice in the road. Everything looked shiny-sharp and dangerous. A frozen wasteland.
Already I had tripped on a patch of ice and slid for a few feet. I stomped around, huffing and puffing, but I barely felt it. When I did start to get some sensation from jumping and kicking my legs, it was pins and needles.
I’d never make it to town. I had not even come a quarter of a mile.
I’d been stupid to run away at night in the latest part of autumn.
What I needed was some temporary shelter. A shed or barn would do.
I glanced about. We had neighbors, but most were far away. Too far for me to consider in the moment as my breath turned the air white and my lungs ached.
This was a deep freeze. I could tell now. If I didn’t think quickly, it would send me back home to my prison. It was better than freezing to death, but I would be defeated.
Our closest neighbor was Hawthorne, the dangerous Alpha we’d told stories about when we were kids. The monster who’d killed his Omega mate.
I saw the peaks of his house up ahead. It sat down a long, snow-covered drive, and I dreaded the idea of walking by it. Yet, if he’d been the man I’d seen out walking some mornings, he didn’t seem like a monster. Or dangerous. But of course I couldn’t tell. I’d never met him.
I kept up my pace, stomping up the road until more of the top story of his house came closer into view. That was when I saw it. A little garden shed out front and off to the side of the house. It was perfect. I had my little paperclip lock pick. I could spend the night there until the freeze let up, then be out before anyone noticed me.
It was the only idea I had going for me, so when I got to Hawthorne’s driveway, I turned and trudged through thick snow, feeling on the verge of collapse.
I felt I was making far too much noise tromping through the snow, crunching layers of ice. But as I came up to the little shed, all the house lights stayed dark. The windows remained black.
My hands shook as I used my paperclip to open the padlock on the shed. I couldn’t get them to stay steady. It was maddening. But finally, after what seemed like hours, the lock clunked open.
Inside the shed was pitch dark. One small window shined black to my left, but the starlight did not make it through. I had forgotten my key-ring flashlight. I realized I had not given myself time to plan ahead for this journey, but I could not stay one more night in that house.
I moved into the shelter, kicking something as I went. It thumped against the wood wall. Something else moved in response, like a cascading sound of cloth from up high. I hoped it was only a tarp.
I was shivering so much I could barely get the door closed behind me. Feeling around in the dark, I located some shelves at head level, and what felt like a stack of boxes. I slung my backpack off and slowly slid down against the stack, pulling my pack to my chest. My head slumped forward, my cheek hitting the icy coldness of the hard material.
Being under shelter felt more secure for now, but I could not seem to get warm. I longed for my rooms, and my own soft bed. But there was nothing there for me anymore. Going out into the unknown, homeless and alone, still seemed the lesser of two evils.
I took off my gloves and blew on my hands. Slowly, they began to itch and warm up. But my feet were like solid blocks of cold nothingness. When I tried to stretch out and move them, my heels scraped and banged on the wood floor too loudly. I was terrified of discovery by the so-called Omega murderer Hawthorne, so I kept them still.
Every time I shifted my weight to get more comfortable, something in the shed shifted. The boxes behind me rustled. To distract myself, I wondered what was in them.
I fell into a stupor-doze, dreaming of home, and not in a good way.
Every time I entered R.E.M. sleep, I saw my father barging through the doors to my room, lunging at me and tearing off my clothes, running his hands through my long hair and using it as a handle to tug me ever closer to him. I jerked awake, only to float right back into the nightmare in a darker version. In the worst and final dream, Mathias stood watching Father attack me, naked and awaiting his turn to rape me.
My own voice, crying out, startled me awake.
I opened my eyes to a brilliant light, white as the outside snow, burning into my retinas. I scrambled backward, my feet drumming hard on the hollow flooring.
