I’m folded up cross-legged on a purple mat in the second row. Around me, a dozen women breathe in slow, contented unison, eyes shut, faces soft. Every one of them has apparently made peace with the universe. Good for them. My breath, meanwhile, is stuck somewhere in the top half of my lungs, refusing to come down no matter how nicely I ask.
Every time I shut my eyes, I see it again. The harsh line of that jaw... his bulk...
It wasn’t him,I tell my Omega.We’ve been over this. You saw a big, hunky man in a hairnet and decided he was ours. But he is not Bram.
She doesn’t answer. She’s curled up somewhere behind my sternum, sulking, shivering, refusing to look at me.
The room tilts. Just a lazy half-turn, here and gone. I press my fingertips into my kneecaps and breathe through it. My hipsache. My nose won’t quit twitching. And under all of it there’s that low hum the guided breathing is doing nothing for.
Footsteps whisper across the floorboards.
“Beautiful,” the instructor murmurs, to no one and everyone. “Let the breath do the work.”
He’s been drifting around the room for ten minutes now, barefoot, in linen pants the color of oatmeal. He pauses at each mat, adjusting a shoulder here, a chin there, placing a palm flat against someone’s spine to press them down. Everyone goes boneless under his hands. He’s good at his job.
His footsteps slow behind my left shoulder.
“Drop the shoulders,” he murmurs, his voice a low, soothing hum. “You’re holding the whole day up here.”
He’s not wrong. I try to let them drop.
And then his hands are on me.
Warm palms, flat against my collarbones, pressing down and back to coax my shoulders out of my ears. It’s a standard adjustment. The woman on the mat beside me got the same one and sighed her entire spine loose.
For me, every muscle instantly turns to concrete.
Because these hands arewrong. The wrong weight. The wrong heat. The wrong everything.
Not those,my Omega whispers, shivering.Those aren’t ours.
I know, babe. I know.
His hands lift, and he moves on. I hear him murmur to the next mat, oblivious, off to soothe someone who has a chance of relaxing.
This is fine. This is wellness. I paid for this.
But my heart won’t settle. The low hum in my sinuses has turned into a sharp, vibrating buzz, and my hip bones ache like they’re being pulled apart.
Then, the soft footsteps circle back. They stop right behind my mat again.
“Lovely,” he whispers. “Now, relax the spine.”
His hands come down again, flat against my collarbones. They press down, heavy and cold. My shoulders clamp shut, every muscle in my back locking.
And then, his fingers slide upward. Toward the nape of my neck, brushing right over the raw, sensitive skin of my scent gland.
My eyes snap open in the dim.
Jesus.
I know I paid for this, but if the wrong person touches me one more time, I think my omega is going to put her foot up their ass.
23
Bram
I sneak a quick glance through the sneeze guard, right over the trays of food, and still, trying to become one with the buffet.
