Chapter 29 I’m screwed

It’s hard to find your way through a city at night when you can’t stop crying. Seriously, the amount of tears coming out of me makes me wonder just how much moisture is left in me. I imagine I’ll wake up tomorrow looking like one of those corn husk dolls. Dried out and wrinkled.

I’m on foot because I don’t know how to drive. If my father wasn’t such an asshole, I would have stolen a car and used it to get me as far from them as I could. But then I would guess that they have trackers in all their cars. So it would have been pointless.

I left my phone along with all of my other stuff at their house. Well, the stuff I brought with me when I left my home for them. When I thought we were going to actually be together.

It wasn’t much. Some clothes. My laptop. My journals. Those I regret. They’re filled with my innermost thoughts, my secret yearnings, all the things I couldn’t say or do thanks to my father’s commands. I don’t feel great about leaving them behind where the Calloways can scour them for information, things to use against my father, against me.

I don’t care so much about my father, but I don’t want them to see those parts of me. It makes me far too vulnerable. Even more so than I already am.

But the bag they’re still stowed away in was too heavy when I tried to heft it over my shoulder. I have to hurry and I wouldn’t have been able to do that if I was carrying an extra fifty pounds of notebooks. So I left them.

BunBun, though. He’s with me, stuffed into the pocket of my jacket, ears flopping with every step.

I would never leave him behind.

I also swiped up the cash Creed has a habit of dropping on his dresser when he comes home at the end of the day and empties his pockets. It’s not much, but it’s something. Maybe enough that if I can find a taxi, I can have them take me to The Market, where I can beg Sadie Falcone for help.

Before I left the house, I called for a ride share, said I wanted to go to Ren’s. Then I called for a second in a different app and pointed to a hotel downtown. With any luck, they’ll head to those two places, hoping to find me. But I won’t be there.

Ren will have to forgive me for sending angry alphas to her, but I know she can handle them. That girl is pure fire. She’ll be fine. Besides, her mother is a beta with an iron will and her little sister is sure to be an alpha. The three of them will be just fine.

That just means I can’t call Florence and tell her where I am or what I’m doing. I don’t want them to bark at her for answers and for her to spill. She’d have no choice.

The rain has stopped, thankfully, but the air is chilly and damp. I’m bundled up as best as I can be, in clothes that belong to me. Nothing from the Calloway pack. Their scents still linger on my skin, calming me. Though they shouldn’t, not now that I know the truth. Now that I know I was nothing but a game to them.

I try to keep my pace at a jog, glancing behind me every so often. I’ve never been so glad about my father’s insistence that I keep a healthy exercise routine. Sure, I hated running, hated the long hours on the treadmill, or running that marathon two years ago to support lone alpha rights. But now the conditioning is serving me well.

I want to put as much space between me and them as quickly as I can, but I don’t want to burn myself out, either. I need to have energy for if they find me, so I can fight them. Or try to slip away from them again.

Who am I kidding? If they find me, I’m screwed. By now, they’ll have realized that I know what they’ve been up to. If they find me, the kid gloves will be off. They’ll bark at me to keep me under their control, a tool to be used.

Always an object, never a person.

My heart cracks a little more. Right now it’s being held together with little more than scotch tape. It’s a wonder that it’s still holding together at all. Though I suppose it shattered completely there on the grass of the Calloway’s backyard. I only managed to put it back together by sheer force of will and a refusal to let them win.

To let my father win.

Because the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that he had something to do with this.

Another of his lessons.

Another way to break me, keep me compliant and silent and the little mouse Hale calls me.

He probably worked it out with them well before they approached me to snuff out any lingering hope I had for a pack. Frederick Bell undoubtedly sniffed out my longing for one, and that just wouldn’t do.

What better way to turn me off on the idea than to give me to a pack, make me fall in love with them and then tell me it’s only ever been a game to them?

Yeah, that ripped my heart right out of my chest and stomped all over it. Now I have no desire to find a pack at all. Maybe that will change in the future, but right now I just can’t fucking fathom it.

The longer I run, the hotter I get. Which makes sense only… this doesn’t feel normal. I don’t think. Sweat dots my brow even in the chilly early winter air. My body feels overheated, with a hell of a lot of that warmth pooling low in my belly, but I’m also wracked by chills, my body shuddering with them with every step I take.

I’m sick , I realize. I have a fever. Probably from spending hours in cold November rain. Or maybe it’s just heartbreak.

But either way, it’s not safe for me to be out here on the streets. It’ll only make it worse. I need to get somewhere safe. Which means I need to call for help. Because as I look around, I realize I have no clue where the fuck I am.

Unfortunately, there’s only one person whose number I know by heart, who I also trust. I just need to reach out to her, and hope and pray that she’s not currently battling the Calloway pack.

Hell, maybe they haven’t even noticed I’m gone yet. With any luck, they’ll just think I’m taking advantage of their heatless water tank and the never ending supply of hot water. Would they even come after me if they realized I was gone? If they realized I know what they’ve been doing?

Or would they just cut their losses?

The thought shoves a sharp stab of pain through my heart. One that makes me stumble over my own feet with how much it actually hurts.

“Fuck,” I hiss, slowing to a stop, bracing my hands on my knees. Sweat drips down my forehead to drop to the ground. I take a deep breath in through my nose and out through my mouth, but it emerges as a sob. A full on sob that wracks my body, makes my shoulders heave.

I’d thought I’d cried all my tears in the rain, kneeling on the Calloway’s grass, but obviously that is not the case. “Fucking assholes,” I gasp at the ground before clenching my fists and straightening to scream at the sky, “Fucking assholes!”

My emotions swing wildly from heartbreak to all-consuming rage, from longing to inadequacy, from small back to sad, and then back to angry. I can’t get a grip on them.

Fuck. Is this what having a fever is like? I know some people hallucinate if it gets too high, but I’ve never heard about such dramatic mood swings.

Focus, baby girl. Focus. Get help. You need help, Creed’s voice says inside my head.

“Shut up!” I snarl at him out loud.

Call us, Jude wheedles. Call us and we’ll take care of you, button.

“I said shut up!” My palm slams against the side of my head, trying to shake their voices loose. It’s not real. It’s just my mind, my longing for them. I want it to be true. I want them to rush to me, to tell me there was some kind of misunderstanding, that what I thought I saw wasn’t the truth.

But it couldn’t possibly be anything else.

There is no explaining that away.

I need help, but it won’t be coming from them.

Fisting my hands at my slides, feeling so fucking off balance, I hurry down the street, looking for an open business where I can beg to use a phone to call Ren. But it’s the middle of the night and nothing is open. Not even a convenience store.

But then I spot it, midway down the block, like some kind of shining beacon of hope.

A pay phone.

An honest to god payphone.

I’m not sure I’ve ever actually seen one in real life before, only in movies.

Still, I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth—is that the saying?—so I scramble toward it, hand already reaching past BunBun to dig into the change I took from Creed.

She answers on the second ring, almost like she’d been waiting for my call. Like she’d expected it.

“Haven?”

“Ren?”

“Holy shit, Haven! Where the fuck are you?” She sounds really fucking worried, and her concern has tears streaming down my face.

“I don’t know!” I wail into the receiver. “I don’t know. But I had to get away. I had-” I hiccup. “It's a game, Ren. Everything’s been a game. They were playing me.”

“Who was babe? The Calloways? I’ll fucking kill them.”

The name makes my body clench and my thighs rub together. My tears stop and I moan instead. On the other end of the line, Ren stops her tirade and says softer, “Haven, babe. Are… are you feeling okay?”

I shake my head and press my cheek against the cool metal of the payphone. “No, Ren. I don’t know what’s wrong. I’m so fucking angry and sad and my emotions feel all out of whack, too strong and I’m horny as fuck and, god I want an alpha to just come along and rail me.”

“Haven!”

Tears start up again. “But not just any alpha, Ren. I want my pack. Why can’t I have a pack?” I whimper. “Why didn’t they want me?”

“Haven,” Ren says softly, slowly. “I need you to listen to me, okay? I think… babe, I think you’re going into heat.”

“What? No!” I gasp out the denial immediately, but then I realize my thighs are rubbing together and the air is thick with my perfume and my running pants are soaked with my slick. Panic. It’s the only thing I can think to do. “Fuck. Fuck, Ren! What do I do? How did this happen?”

She keeps her voice that same level of calm, and it bothers me she’s not at the same level of anxiety that I am. The more logical part of me knows she’s only doing it to help me. “Moments of intense emotions can trigger a heat, Haven. We know this.”

“Yeah, but usually it’s happy emotions, safety, love-” A humorless laugh falls from my lips. “Fucking Jude told me he wanted to bond me. I thought he meant it.” So apparently did my body because it was all too happy to provide the optimal scenario for a lasting bond. A heat.

Ren puffs out a breath. “We’re going to talk about what they did later, but right now we need to get you somewhere safe, okay? Can you tell me where you are? I’ll come get you. We can go to one of the omega clinics.”

The idea of that, of going to a clinic where unknown alphas will help me through my heat, makes me whine. “I don’t want that. I want my pack, Ren.”

“I know,” she soothes. “We’ll figure it out. Okay? But you need to tell me where you are. Anything, a street name, a store. Give me something to go off of.”

I force my mind to focus and glance around. It’s at this point that I realize I’m in a really fucking shady part of the city. Everything looks run down and dilapidated. Most of the storefronts have for lease signs hanging in their windows. But across the street and two doors down is a business that still looks operational. “Sure Kleen Laundromat. Kleen spelled K-L-E-E-N.”

I hear her typing on the other side of the line, likely looking up. “Okay, I got it. Haven, I’m coming to you. But I need you to find somewhere safe to hide until I can get to you, okay? Don’t stay on the street.”

A painful cramp makes me groan, doubling over as a deluge of slick pours from inside me. “Fuck,” I gasp. “Oh, fuck.” This pain is worse than what my father did to me, making me stand in place motionless for a caning, doesn’t compare to heat cramps. How fucked up is that? “Florence,” I whimper. “It hurts.”

“I know,” she soothes. But she doesn’t. She’s never had a fucking heat. Same as me. “Haven, babe. I hate to tell you this, but you need to hang up. Find a secure place and flick your bean to take the edge off. You need to make yourself come to feel better, okay?”

I hear Ginny shout, “gross!” in the background and Ren hisses at her to shut up.

Panic at not having her voice in my ear, grounding me, has me clutching the receiver tighter. “Please, Ren. Don’t leave me. I don’t want to be alone.”

She mutters something about ripping off dicks and shoving it down throats before she comes back to me. “I’m not leaving you, babe. I’m coming to get you like your knight in shining armor. Or your knight in a rusted Ford Taurus. But right now, you need to save yourself. Okay. Safe space, hole up. Lots of orgasms. You can do this, Haven. I know you can.”

“Safe space. Hole up. Lots of orgasms,” I repeat, liking having clear directions. A path. Something to follow and accomplish.

“That’s right. Don’t go too far from the laundromat, though, okay?”

“Okay,” I agree in a whisper. “Ren?”

I hear her car rumble to life on the other side of the phone before she asks, “What, babe?”

“I’m scared.”

“I know,” she says quietly. “But you’re also really fucking brave. So you can do this.”

“I can do this,” I repeat as another lesser cramp hits.

“Fuck yeah, you can. Safe space. Hole up. Orgasms,” she reminds me.

I repeat them back to her before hanging up. Maybe in the future I’ll be embarrassed by the prospect of my friend finding me with my hands down my pants and making myself come, because that is undoubtedly going to happen. It’s not like I’ll be in any frame of mind to stop.

And beyond that… I might attack her when she gets here. Omegas are notoriously territorial during heats. Even if there are no alphas around, they’ve been known to go after each other viciously.

It’s why there are heat suites in the clinics, the hospitals, hell even at the omega academies. To keep them locked away and separate.

My scent hangs heavy in the air as I eye the surrounding area. Most of the storefronts are empty. A few windows boarded up. I leave the payphone and wander over to the nearest one, peering through a narrow gap.

The remains of a restaurant greet me, or at least, I think that’s what it was. Glancing over my shoulder, I hurry down the street and then into the alley that loops behind the block of buildings. I don’t know what I’m hoping to find, an unlocked door? A broken window?

My brain isn’t working, I’m not able to focus. My impending heat— doom , more like—is making my brain fuzzy. The only thing I can really focus on is the throbbing between my thighs and the growing ache in my low belly.

A cramp has me doubling over, my body assaulting me because I won’t give it what it needs. The Calloway pack. Their cocks and knots. Their empty promises and lies.

I whimper. Shit. I shouldn’t have thought about them.

Now that’s all I can think about. The way they felt inside me, the relief that would come if they would just give me what I need.

Why aren’t they here? Why aren’t they taking care of me?

Because they don’t really want you, Haven!

I snap the words to my own mind and force myself to straighten, to slide down the alley, leaning heavily against the dirty brick wall. Tears stream down my face as my nails dig into the spot on my stomach below my belly button. I just need this to stop, need to focus long enough to make it to a safe space, like Ren told me. Safe space. Hole up. Orgasms. Please , let me find a safe space. Please. Please. Please.

The gods must be listening, and they’ve also apparently decided that I’ve been through enough bullshit recently. Halfway down the alley, I find a boarded-up window. It looks like someone’s already pried it halfway off, or maybe all the way off, and then haphazardly put it back on.

Some part of me knows that means there might be someone already in the building, that there might be a squatter who’s already claimed this shut down building as their own. But the other part of me, the part that is focused on Ren’s directions, doesn’t give a fuck.

Besides, maybe they’ll be an alpha and they can fuck-

I cut off the thought before it can take root, but that doesn’t stop my vagina from clenching, sending a wave of slick to soak through my yoga pants. My teeth clench around a cry of pain, trying to keep it inside, but it still comes out too loud. God fucking dammit. This is the worst. So fucking bad.

I’ve never had a heat before, and I’m inclined to hope that I never have one again.

As soon as I presented as an omega, my father put me on suppressants, even at the omega academy. Everyone thought it was strange that I didn’t have a full perfume, or that I never had a heat in the three years I was there. But god, I’m glad I didn’t.

I can’t imagine being eighteen and dealing with this at the academy.

Nevermind that the school was fully equipped with all the drugs to knock an omega out. They also have contracts with heat helper packs, who can fuck an omega through their heat if they decide to go that route. But I’m not sure I would have been able to do that.

Thought maybe that’s just because I can’t imagine fucking anyone but the Calloway pack.

Give me ten minutes and that might change.

Focus, Haven.

Taking a deep breath, I curl my hands around the plywood blocking the window and pull. The wood bites into my palms and fingers, splinters digging under my skin as I heave with every ounce of strength in me.

“Just. Fucking. Move!” I grunt at it, tugging with every word. Blood wells from between my fingers, but the pain in my hand is nothing compared to the pain in my womb. Nothing.

I let out a relieved laugh when the wood gives way, stumbling back across the alley until I slam into the wall there. The plywood swings down and smacks my knees, making me gasp in pain again. But its temporary fading quickly under the unbearable agony of my heat.

“Safe space. Hole up. Orgasms. Safe space. Hole up. Orgasms,” I mutter to myself to keep me focused. “Safe space. Hole up. Orgasms.”

The wood falls to the ground with a clatter, and I move back toward the window. It’s broken, shards of glass hanging from the top, but someone’s taken the time to clear the glass from the frame at the bottom, obviously so they could climb through, just like I’m about to do.

I'm normally an excellent climber. I had to be in order to sneak out of my bedroom and over the fence for my nights out with Florence. But my muscles feel weak and languid at the moment. Like every second my heat goes unserviced, it drains me a little more.

Stupid fucking Calloway pack. Why did they do this to me?

If they weren’t such complete assholes, I could be with them right now, being fucked to within an inch of my life, getting knotted and licked and sucked. I wouldn’t be in this fucking pain.

But it would be a lie.

Everything on their side would be a lie.

Not the orgasms, but everything else.

Better to suffer alone.

I drag my body over the sill, hissing when tiny shards scrape over my stomach, then again when I overcorrect and hit the glass hanging from the top of the window, digging into my shoulders and back. Warmth spreads over my skin and I have the brief thought that I’m bleeding. But I can’t focus on that because as soon as I land on the other side of the window, in the relative safety of the building, another cramp hits.

I whimper and whine, curling my knees to my chest. “It hurts. It hurts. It hurts,” I mutter. “Please, make it stop. Please.”

Orgasms. Ren’s voice reminds me. You need orgasms.

Right.

“Safe space. Hole up. Orgasms,” I mutter again, dragging my body along the floor to get away from the window. I try not to think about how I’m undoubtedly leaving a trail of blood and slick along the floor of this shut down industrial kitchen. If anyone gets close to that window, they’ll smell me. Smell an omega in heat.

It’ll dissipate over time, but if I just stay here in the open, it’ll only get worse. I need to get into an enclosed space, something small and windowless and safe. I need a safe space, like Ren told me.

My omega agrees with this wholeheartedly, though she’d also like me to find a place with soft blankets and cushions and lots of alpha cocks. That will not happen.

But the small, enclosed space?

My eyes fall on a door with a heavy metal handle, and I know what’s on the other side is insulated, will keep my scent in, will be small and contained and I’ll feel safe enough there until Ren can find me.

With a grunt, I push myself to my hands and knees and crawl to the walk-in freezer.

Yes, I think as I tuck myself inside, shutting the door behind me.

Yes, this is good, I think, as complete and utter black falls.

This will keep me safe, I think as I press myself into the corner and slip my hand into my yoga pants, moaning at the barest brush of my fingers over my clit.

Fuck the Calloway pack, I think as the first of my orgasms rolls over me. Fuck them for doing this to me. Fuck them right to hell.