AllFreeNovel
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And stupid me. I forgot to pack my shiv.
***
Two
LILAH
Since I’m already screwed, I stay and dance until the end of the day when Evgenia kicks me out so she can go home and watch her K-dramas.
The campus is quiet.
Everyone’s at dinner, sharing fake smiles, playing fake friends, and gossiping over the hottest alphas and the dreamiest packs.
If I walk in now, Rachel and her minions will have the perfect chance to lock onto me. Instead of gift-wrapping myself for the bitch squad, I head to the pool building where the bite of chlorine burns my throat like chicken soup for my battered omega soul. I’ve spent enough nights in the water to memorize the schedule, and no one will be here until tomorrow morning’s swim classes.
I change into my suit and plunge into the heated water, setting a grueling freestyle pace. When my heart’s pumping, I dive deep underwater, folding my knees in lotus position at the bottom of the pool.
The water’s heavy, pressure pushing at my eardrums like the threat of my future, but it’s comfortable down here, hidden away with only my beating heart to keep me company. Sometimes, I think I have espresso for blood, the way I’m constantly jittering, always on high alert, ducking threat after threat.
The water is my cocoon. It’s the only place I feel safe.
When the world quiets to nothing, I start counting heartbeats.
I’m past 150 when my vision starts to go spotty. My throat burns and the familiar we-need-oxygen-idiot panic punches me in the lungs.
But I keep holding.
Holding.
Holding.
Everything black.
Now.
Desperate, I kick to the surface just in time to take a gasping, spluttering breath.
I suck in cold air, treading water as my vision slowly comes back. When I can more or less breathe, I start grinding out another round of laps. Then I dip below the surface again.
And again and again.
I repeat the same batshit circuit until I’m barely kicking up in time, my body so used-up, so exhausted, I have to hang against the wall for a few minutes before I can haul myself out of the water.
I lay gasping on the side of the pool like a fresh-gutted fish.
The burn is glorious.
I was thirteen when I figured out this trick.
My pre-awakening came early. Even then, I kicked my own ass to relieve stress. When I caught the first baby whiff of my omega perfume, I panicked, just ran and kept running, knowing that as soon as I started to mature, I’d be on the auction block.
A toy for alphas who’ll never see me as a real girl.
I ran so hard, so long, and so fast that the pheromones went away.
When my perfume came back, a track workout sent that shit packing.
The next day, I danced for eight hours and my hormones heard the message. We’re not doing this awakening thing.
