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Everleigh holds her breath as she waits for my response.
This will devastate her. And yet, she needs to know.Allomegas in the city need to know. “The same beta who’d let the alpha out opened the door. I pretended I knew the alpha. He laughed, told me there were no free omegas tonight as my friend had had his fill of the last and she was coming to the end of her heat. That I should come back next weekend.”
The silence is deafening.
Everleigh reaches a shaking hand to her forehead. “Surely they can’t be doing that. The omegas in the clinics would say something. They would remember, and they would—”
“Who would believe them?” Kylian asks, his face a frozen mask. But he ispissed. “If Lawrence’s friends are the ones doing the visiting, and the beta staff are the ones letting them in, I’ll bet they’d have covered their asses any way they could. And if the omega went public? Who’s going to believe an omega in heat when she says an alpha entered her suite and took advantage of her?”
“No one,” Everleigh whispers. “People would say she’d imagined it. Everyone knows an omega can’t look after herself when she’s in heat.”
It’s why the Omega Institute exists at all, to care for omegas who cannot look after themselves. An omega in heat only cares about one thing: an alpha’s knot inside her. If an unbonded omega feels their heat approaching and doesn’t want an alpha, they can find some relief in free heat clinics.
That’s it.
“It could be a one-off, just… just this one alpha.” Everleigh’s voice is tinged with desperate hope. “I mean, just because you saw what you saw, doesn’t mean other alphas are involved. Right?”
“It could be a one-off,” I say when I don’t believe it. What I saw had to be pre-arranged. And it was so smooth, it had the hallmarks of a far too familiar exchange.
“But you don’t think it is,” Everleigh says, her eyes searching mine.
After a moment, I shake my head. “It looked like something the alpha—and the beta staff—had done before. More than once.”
Everleigh nods.
“Everleigh…” I stretch a hand toward her, wanting to comfort her.
She leans away.
Hurt slices through me. I’m an alpha and I’ve just revealed alphas are taking advantage of omegas lost to their heat. I deserve her mistrust. That doesn’t appease the hurt, though. Yesterday we were dancing together. She was stretching up to kiss me, and I’d made her giggle.
But then, she surprises me with a tiny smile. “I’m sorry, Cian, I—”
“Don’t apologize,” I interrupt, her apology triggering a flare of rage at all alphas in the city. “I don’t deserve it.”
“What do we do?” Kylian face is a blank slate, but his voice is hard, like chips of ice.
“We could report it to the Omega Institute or even take it to Dexter Pieter at the Council,” Rune suggests, from his corner of the den, his eyes lingering on Everleigh. She’s taking this better than I thought she would. That she isn’t immediately sprinting from the room—and us—is more than I’d expected.
Have we won her trust?
Kylian snorts. “The Omega Institute who aren’t the least bit subtle about persuading young omegas to Haven Academy?” He shakes his head. “No, the Institute has always cared more that the powerful families got their omegas than about ensuring an omega was happy. They serve the families, not the omegas who go to them for help.”
“And Dexter Pieter is an alpha,” Everleigh says, frowning. “Just because he never went to Lawrence’s parties doesn’t mean I trust him. He has to have friends he would want to protect if this ever came out.”
“So we take it public.” Kylian shrugs. “Expose it that way.”
I shake my head. “We have no evidence. If I’d taken a picture, all it would show is an alpha standing at a back entrance with a beta. Easy enough for the alpha to say he was lost and needed directions. We need more proof than a picture.”
No one has a response.
“Do you think it’s happening in other free clinics?” Everleigh asks quietly.
At first, I don’t understand where she’s going with her question, but then I get it, and the question leaves me cold. Everleigh was talking about leaving. Maybe she’d have gone to that same free clinic during her heat. And if she’d chosen another one, who’s to say the same thing wasn’t happening there?
Everleigh could find herself going to a heat clinic and being preyed upon.
“I doubt it’s all of them,” I say, hoping to reassure her.
