Page 37 of Omega Chattel
“I—I can’t. I don’t know!” His voice shot out stronger.
“You would have sold yourself.” It was a question. And not a question.
“It’s not a crime.” His tone went up.
“But more dangerous when the Alphas aren’t vetted.”
“I was very hungry.”
“Yes, I remember.”
Finally, he looked up, and his face had fallen, drawn and sad. “Are you trying to tell me I did wrong? You’ve slept with a corner boy before.”
That stung all the way to the pit of my stomach. I’d tried so hard to help Kee.
I bit down on the inside of my lower lip. I glanced away but not before I saw Alli’s mouth open and his eyebrows go up.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“The world isn’t black and white. Neither are people. But we say things and think things sometimes as if the world works that way.”
I sighed. I leaned back against the cold stone of the back of the bench. This boy—he was going to be my undoing. It wasn’t that I didn’t want him in return. But I couldn’t face that. Not yet.
And then there was the fact that when I gave him his wings, he’d fly. They all did. Kee flew before I’d even caught him. He’d been wanton and crazy.
But Kee never wanted to be like the others, to study or learn his own way in the world apart from what his body could do for Alphas, and his drugs could do for his mind.
He was lost before I’d found him.
Alli wasn’t lost. He was far more dangerous to me because of that.
My heart could not stand being broken. A voice in my head startled me.Whose can?
“I’m sorry,” Alli repeated. “I had no right to say those things to you. In your office. I’m sorry.”
The feeling in my chest was like grinding gristle and bone every time Kee didn’t answer his texts or messages. For the last year. Not just these six months he’d been gone.
Yet this boy before me exuded a scent like an elixir my body craved. I had been denying it for four days. Four short days. Not long enough to know him, or understand a thing about this feeling.
And yet, too long, it seemed. For every part of me craved him. And as I had that thought, Alli said in a voice that seemed to brighten the dark just a little.
“I always wondered about fated mates. Is it a real thing? I read it in books. All fiction. But the feelings were so strong, like if—if only it could be a real thing. A call and an answer. Nothing more complicated than that.”
“You don’t like complication?” I asked. My breaths were getting shallower. I had felt the fated call with Kee. Or so I’d thought. But I didn’t believe in that tripe.
“It’s how the world works, I know. Life is complicated. Shit, you must think I’m such a shallow kid.”
I let out a low laugh. Yeah. I did. But I wasn’t going to say it aloud. I only and always had the urge to make him feel better from the moment we met.
“Not always,” I said.
“But those books you gave me. The math, the science. Itiscomplicated. All that, trying to explain the world around us, when I can plant a seed and just watch it grow. That I understand.”
No. Not so shallow after all. Maybe just a starry-eyed boy.
“You need time.” I let out a sigh. “Time for everything. You just got started here.”
“I’m eighteen.” He said it like it was an honored title and claim.
