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“We’ll deliver it to Dragnovic Manor along with your suit,” Pri calls, practically running to catch up to Echo.
“I don’t get to see it?” I wanted to see it. “Can’t picture you in a dress.”
Echo blushes hard. Fuck, I love how she blushes. Her skin is such a soft brown and the pink that illuminates it is so fuckin’ cute. Makes her look so healthy, too. Makes me feel safe…like we’re out of Paradise Hole and we’re never goin’ back.
Because we’re never goin’ back.You lied to her.
“It’s nice. Pri did a…uhh…good job. It’s fine. I mean, it’s good. I like it. You’ll like it. Can we just go?”
I feel a corner of my mouth cock and I run my fingers back through my hair. Hardly feels like my own, it’s been so many weeks that my hair was just as fuckin’ tangled as Echo’s was out in the mud and the bleak dark. Uncertainty shimmers through me.She’s not gonna like it when I tell her I’m not goin’ with her out there at all because she’s not goin’, either.I wonder if maybe, things have changed since I bonded her. Maybe, she doesn’t want to go anymore… Yeah. Right. Because that sounds like the stubborn Omega I’m bound to and determined to one day marry.
“Yeah, we can go. Ready to grab that coffee?”
“In Prayersville, you get coffee from the cantina. Tastes like piss. I only drank it once. Are you telling me that you go proactively to a place to get coffee? It’s like a thing people do in the city?”
I laugh and gesture her down the street and we make our way down the sidewalk. As we walk, I keep my hand on her lower back, wanting to tuck her against me completely and struggling to fight the urge.
The sky’s grey — typical — but it doesn’t feel as dark as it usually does. Maybe, it’s her hair, red as fire, glittering against the black backdrop of her coat. Maybe, it’s the pink still dusting the tops of her cheeks and the tip of her nose. Maybe, it’s… “What are you staring at, weirdo?”
“My wife.”
She just shines brighter. I pull her into me, switching sides with her and placing her closer to the buildings. “What are you doing?”
“Makin’ sure if somebody crazy swerves off the road, I get hit first.”
She snorts, “You wouldn’t get hit. You’re a Berserker. You could stop any car.”
“And I’d have to. Not gonna see you get hurt again. Ever.” Gonna keep you out of Paradise Hole, to start.
She elbows me in the side. “Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“Trying to make me like you.”
My turn to snort, now. “Don’t have to try, Echo. You already do.” I pull her to the left and underneath the awning of the coffee shop. It spreads across the sidewalk, a deep burgundy, beneath which round tables and plastic wicker chairs stand mostly full of happy customers. We enter through the front door just as an Alpha couple walks out. They’ve got a small Beta child between them. Their own. Something about that fact doesn’t sit right with me, but I can’t pinpoint it, least of all when Echo comes to a complete stop and distracts me.
“What?”
“Those are all different kinds of coffee?” She points up at the old-school blackboard hung above modern bronze machines and appliances. Calligraphy scrawled in chalk marks dozens of different types of coffee and flavor combinations.
I smile as I push her up to the front counter, not missing the stares and whispers at all, but happy she’s distracted enough she doesn’t seem to notice them. “Oh! Berserker Dragnovic. Hello. Welcome. Is this…this is…is this the…your…” The barista swallows so hard she starts to choke. Though there are six other baristas behind the bar counter, none of them come to her rescue, so Echo and I wait until she’s downed half a glass of water and can speak clearly enough to be understood.
“I’m so sorry…”
“Not necessary. I’ll take one of everything for your Dark City Omega.”
Echo’s laughter clacks through the greyness of the day, slaughtering it mercilessly in ways I never managed to as a Beta or an Alpha or a Berserker, no matter how I willed it.
Drunk on coffee a half hour later, she stumbles out onto the sidewalk and runs straight into a passing Alpha. He’s on the phone and quick to utter an apology, without giving her a second glance or recognizing me beside her. She apologizes back just as dismissively before turning to me.
“That’s so stupid. A whole shop just for that stuff? And it was full! And what is pumpkin spice? Pumpkins don’t taste anything like that.”
“You’ve never had a pumpkin,” I mutter, following her wherever she wants to go.
She opens her mouth, ever quick with a retort, then punches me playfully in the arm.Playfully. Fuckin’ hell. I’m done for. “You neither.” She sticks her tongue out at me and I nod in agreement.
“True. But that’s how I know it might taste just like that pumpkin spice shit.”
