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His concern sneaks under my skin, popping up goose bumps and panic.
“Already ate,” I shout back semi-hysterically. “Going to sleep.”
He says something else that I block with fingers in my ears. Thankfully, he doesn’t knock again.
He’s long gone when my heart finally stops pounding.
When I peek out of the nest, it’s deep darkness—the middle of the night with every light off in the basement.
I change into my swimsuit and hit the lake.
I notice the surveillance drone following me as I grind out laps, and I let myself drop in the water, hugging my knees to my chest so I sink like a boulder.
I don’t like that they’re watching me.
It’ll be too easy for the dads to hunt me down. To demand I pay them what I owe or spread my legs and start popping out their grandbabies.
Either way, I’ll end up miserable and/or hated.
I spend the next few days avoiding the pack.
My scent is more and more erratic, and it’s better not to be around the Wyverns.
Totally the reason. Not at all because I’m pining for the alphas I have to abandon, and the sweet, sunshiny omega who keeps coming to check on me.
I spot Orion sitting by the lakeshore when I clock my millionth lap. My arm bones are gelatin at this point, my stamina wrecked as pre-awakening hits me with the hormone hammer.
In jeans and a sweater, he holds a huge, fluffy towel folded in his lap, waiting for me to swim to shore. It’s the kind of towel you see in magazines, a sunshine-smelling cloud that covers your whole body, not like the ratty hand towels I’ve always used.
And Orion. Mr. perfect mate material.
Ignoring the pull to him, whatever star-crossed hormone thinks we could ever be together, I keep swimming until I’m on the far side of the island lake. I crawl to shore and hug my knees.
I can’t avoid them forever.
Knowing the drones are circling, that I’m always being watched, I casually sniff myself. Thanks to the lake water, there’s no scent.
For now.
Orion could make me perfume so fast, and in nothing but a bathing suit, there’s nowhere to hide.
I clamber across the island, hopping over pokey branches and rocks that scratch my thin-skinned feet. The bullet hole aches the most, but it’s not itchy anymore.
I’ll live.
The seconds pass in wind, silence, and shivers. When I peek through the trees, Orion is still there, still waiting.
I feel sick to my stomach.
It would be so much easier to walk away if he stopped being nice and went back to the way he snarled when we met. But even then, even that very first day when he had every reason to think I was his enemy, Orion still followed me to the lake, still gave me his scent-drenched hoodie that I haven’t dared let touch my skin a second time.
There’s a soft whir as the drone dips to watch me watching Orion. I’m so done with the surveillance. So done with alphas and packs and the constant need to protect myself, to never relax.
I glance around until I find a nice round rock that’s just the right weight. Cocking back my arm, I aim and throw.
It pings the drone’s silent blades and spins away, but the drone wobbles. I launch another rock.
This time, it hits something glassy with a sharp ching, and the drone spirals down, spinning and spinning until it lands in the lake.
