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SIX
UMBRA
I’d dream about Shatter all fucking night. I just knew it.
She was an addiction, I could tell already, and I didn’t care. I hadn’t even caught her scent, but I’d seen what Dusk had. She was different. That fact was as absolute as it was impossible to explain.
She’d also been completely serious about not sleeping in either of our beds, which was a pity, but I was a patient man—unlike Dusk.
Right now, she was still in the bathroom. She wasn’t alone in there, either: I’d watched her haul her suitcase in, shooting me dirty looks as I grinned at her struggle.
Things had changed in a blink of an eye. One moment, the need to choose an omega—to bring someone foreign into our home—had been an axe at our necks. Rookwood Academy rules: pick an omega or leave. Kind of stupid, but I thought the Academy were worried that, without an omega, too many alphas co-existing in a small space would cause issues. I mean… were they wrong? I don’t know, but there were some pricks at the ball. I’d have happily started a brawl if Dusk wouldn’t wring my neck for it.
Did Shatter make me more likely or less likely to do that?
It felt like…morelikely.
But what if she was banging you? Or like… cuddling you and purring and shit and making you all balanced?
Hmm.
That would keep me busy.
Maybe they had a point.
Before yesterday, I wouldn’t have been able to picture Dusk losing his mind, and putting an omega’s nest together in a frenzy, even if it had been odd, the way he’d done it with all the tilted squares and shit. He’d spenthoursshopping this morning (I’d felt the occasional baby-rage fits through the bond). ‘Too many fucking choices’, he’d told me after, dragging a dozen Nesting Needs boxes in. Then he’d carried in armfuls of hair products, more than I thought it possible to own—though, that was before I really understood how much hair Shatter had. The photo didn’t do it justice.
Still, I was glad, because I wouldn’t claim to be an expert on things like nests.
Ransom… Well, perhaps he would—My mood slammed into freefall at the thought of Ransom, eyes darting to the balcony that overlooked the living room. Up there were two doors. My room and… the other, quiet room.
Silent for now.
Silent was good.
Ithoughtit was.
Dusk’s low whistle broke that eerie quiet that settled over my mind beyond the static from the room up there. It splintered the surface tension, holding everything else at bay; a low, serene, and innocent noise.
My switchblade dug into the fist I squeezed it with. My sleeve was up, the blade pressed against the skin of my forearm.
I couldn’t stop, not now. But at least I knew what was happening. That was the gift Dusk would give me.
He wouldn’t tell me to stop.
Nevertell me to stop.
How many?
One.
The blade cut a line. A count. Blood oozed, and I held it deep enough to scar, deep enough to slice, the pain like warm air rising up my lungs, the only time I could breathe with ease.
Two.
I cut again.
Three.
