Page 32 of In Knots

Slowly, his face softens.

“Come on, baby,” he says, taking my hand. His is warm and calloused and his thumb slides along the soft side of mine.

The tall trees are dense here, the dead leaves that litter the ground brittle and the ground hard. After a moment, though, they thin and we reach a clearing, a fire flickering in the centre and around it people sitting on tree trunks. Buzz leads me around the fire, the heat warming my face, and stops before two men lazing in each other’s arms. I remember them from the day of the blowout.

“Baby, this is Bear and Cam.”

The two men peer up at me through the flickering light. “She alright?” the one who must be Bear, considering his size, asks.

My cheeks warm more and I mumble, “I’m fine,” feeling other curious pairs of eyes on me. “It’s nice to meet you.”

Bear grins at me. “Nice to meet you too, Omega,” he says in a formal way I suspect is making fun of me. “Come to have some fun?”

“I …”

“Ignore him,” Ryan says. I glance towards him and he tugs me down onto an empty log, Buzz coming to sit on my other side.

Buzz reaches down and picks up some cans resting beside Bear.

I peer around at the other faces; alphas and betas, no other omegas. Some are drinking cans of lager, and what I’m sure is a joint, passes between a group of friends perched together.

A situation such as this should have me nervous and twitchy. I don’t belong here. I stick out like a sore thumb in my prim and proper dress. But wedged between these two alphas I feel calm and relaxed. More so than I ever have. Especially when Ryan’s palm comes to rest on my thigh and Buzz’s on my lower back.

I rest my head against Ryan’s shoulder and stare into the dancing flames.

The earlier drama of the day drifts away and I could almost forget all about it out here under the trees, far from the incessant noise and heat of the city.

The fire crackles and Buzz’s fingers splay across my back, stroking my vertebrae. My eyes drift closed.

“Let’s play a game.”

My eyes spring open and find a beta woman spinning on her toes on the other side of the fire. She’s wearing shorts that hug her round hips and a cut-away t-shirt, flashing a strip of her toned stomach.

A few of her friends groan, but she kicks dirt in their direction, then bends down to take a long drag of the offered spliff. “Come on, it’ll be fun.” She spins our way, her gaze travelling over me briefly with curiosity. “Bear?”

He growls with what I think is consent.

“What’ll it be? Spin the bottle–”

“We’re not thirteen,” someone shouts.

“Truth or dare, I have never,” the girl continues.

“I have never,” another girl calls out, dragging the first down onto her log.

“How do you play?” I murmur.

“You never played it before?” Ryan says. I shake my head.

Buzz slides his hand away and cracks open one of the cans. “You have to drink every time you’ve done one of the things someone shouts out.”

He hands me a can. I hesitate, then accept it.

“Huh?”

“Say someone shouts out ‘swimming with sharks’ and you have, then you drink.”

“It’s not usually that clean,” Ryan mumbles.

---