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“You have access to The Institute databases. There are packs in need of omegas for more than just children. Perhaps ones that are unbalanced?—”
“Balancing?” Uncle spluttered. “She’s more likely to destroy them.”
The tears finally brokethrough the dam keeping them in as I trembled beneath the desk.
“Then offer them more money than they can refuse. A lifetime’s worth. As if we don’t have enough.”
“The Institute is watching like a hawk?—”
“You give them updates every week. You hold enough sway that if you were to ask them, they might allow it.”
“I… I will ask. But I will make her no promises.”
I woke up to diamonds and nightmares, to lights of dancing bright white kaleidoscopes blistering my vision. Only, when I blinked my eyes open, I was in a dim, windowless room with wooden floorboards.
It didn’t matter how much my body ached as I shifted; comfort felt like a straightjacket, squeezing me tight, loosening my lungs instead of crushing them. It was freedom instead of a prison.
My nest.
Mine.
The first true nest I’d ever had.
Another first...
Reality clamped like an iron vice over my chest, turning warmth into terror. I tugged the blankets over my head, squeezing my eyes shut tightly, willing away reality into darkness.
Darkness, with no bites, no bright lights made of shards.
Instead, it was a nest…mynest, with soothing tilted photo frames across the walls—tilted squares in the blankets and bedsheets, even the bookshelves.
It was a nest I’d claimed—I’d fought for. One I hadn’t had the choice to destroy before it could come to life.
Yet, Dusk was in here, too.
In the darkness, midnight opium wove into the threads of the nightdress I’d been too afraid to take off. He lingered in my senses as he’d promised he would.
I couldn’t rid myself of him. Not of the way he’d held me last night, or of the way my body had reacted when he entered me. It had been, for a few moments, bliss. A storm of bliss that had haunted my sleep and every moment since.
He’d been everywhere, the warmth of his huge muscular frame engulfing my body, his silken praise spinning webs around my soul as he claimed me; promising I would never find my mates. Promising that he was all I would ever need.
My breaths came short and sharp, another rush of heat in my core at those promises. I clamped my hand over my mouth as I screamed into the darkness.
He’dclaimedme.
He’d claimed me, and I had come apart for him, and when he’d caught my scent at last, he hadn’t attacked me or run. The purr rising in his chest had been so strong I could still feel it tingling up my bones as I remembered. It was a gift I’d been told I would never have without them: he was, somehow, another impossible, like my mates were supposed to be.
It was all my firsts, and he’d tricked my brain into believing he was a comfort he could never be. Because he didn’t understand—and I could never tell him the truth, or it would seal my fate.
The lingering what if—the webs of possibility he was forcing me to consider—was nothing but a taunt, and I hated it more for that.
Ineededmy mates for more than just this curse of a scent. It wasn’t as simple as Aunty Lauren had hoped that day I’d heard the arguing in Uncle’s office.
There was no other option like he swore there was. And even if there was, I couldn’t trust what he said.
I took a few deep breaths, and surfaced, daring to examine the room, determined to make changes so that I could blame him forsomething, but I found nothing wrong.
Tilted squares wereeverywhere.
