Page 144 of Knot So Social

She leans forward, offering me her hand. When she turns the wrist over, the faint dimples of a bond mark catch my gaze. I hold her arm and run my fingertips over them. The divots press into the skin, a sign of a bite mark, but the skin’s healed almost completely over. That doesn’t happen with an active bond.

“He . . . died?” I murmur, stroking her skin.

She shivers faintly under my caress. “No.”

“But it’s fading?”

She nods, one corner of her mouth tilting. “Weird, right? Guess I might as well tell you the rest.”

Even if she’s reluctant, a swell of gratitude rushes through me. “I want to know everything you’re willing to tell me,” I say, linking our fingers together. “But only if it’s not too painful for you. I never want to cause you harm, Willow.”

She nods and scratches her dog’s ears with her free hand while she sorts through her thoughts. “Well, the worst bit wasn’t the bond. It was after, when they kicked me out with nothing but the clothes on my back.”

My heart thumps heavily. Say what?

Willow continues. “I was homeless, sleeping in my car for nearly a year. The hardest part was that I’d dropped out of school and didn’t have any skills. Thought they’d always look after me, you know? But the actual worst thing was an active bond with the men who dropped me like a steaming pile of shit. The bond still linked us.” Her fingers tighten in mine. “Every time they laughed, or fucked someone, I felt it. And I knew that they carried on like I never existed.”

“Wait, hang on.” I hold up one hand, my head scrambling. “Are you telling me they abandoned you but didn’t reject the bond?”

She looks up, eyes shimmering. “They still felt the bond and knew I was suffering, but they didn’t give a damn. As in, it didn’t even affect them. That’s what their love was worth.”

Fury erupts in my chest, and a growl slips through my clenched teeth. What absolute fucking bastards.

Willow twitches, and she sucks in her bottom lip. “Wanna know how it ended?”

I know how I would’ve ended it, had I known Willow back then. I nod, unable to speak around the lump swelling in my throat.

She snorts, the huff filled with bitter amusement, and tugs her blanket up under her chin. “I got hit by lightning.”

I go rigid. Lightning? Holy fuck! The fear of storms makes sense, yeah, but more than that, I’m an electrician. I did my apprenticeship reading cautionary tales of what happens if you don’t disconnect the power before working on a building’s power source. Training included gruesome videos of third and fourth-degree burns, often resulting in death or partial paralysis.

Lightning carries 10,000 times the ampage.

Willow watches me process. “Crazy huh. Want to hear the kicker?”

No, I absolutely don’t want to hear that anything worse happened to her. My entire body tenses up.

She pushes Mr Shares off her lap and tugs down her pants, revealing swirling marks along her thigh.

“Just as I was recovering, I got struck a second time. By lightning.” She releases her waistband with a loud snap, lips pursing tightly. “And now it stalks me, and every time I hear the thunder, I fall apart.”

The fabric covers the scars, but I still see them in my mind’s eye, swirling like tribal markings, literally burned into her flesh.

What do you say to a woman who’s survived abandonment and being hit by lightning?

“How are you still alive?” I whisper.

And as the words tumble through me, I can’t help imagining that if it had killed her, I’d never have met my scent match, never have breathed in her Jasmine scent, or held her quivering body in my arms.

It’s too much to bear. I surge forward and pull her into my embrace, a desperate shudder running through me. I didn’t cry when my fiancé cheated on me, but the thought of this omega in my arms not existing breaks the dam.

Tears spill from my eyes.

All the uncertainty drains away. I’ll spend the rest of my life making sure this omega’s never miserable, never left to fend for herself. I swear it silently, my alpha spirit quivering with intensity.

But to know how best to help her, I need to know what she’s feeling.

And with a story like hers, can I ever ask to bond her?