Page 18 of Torment Me Knot
I search for the exits anyway. Stairwells left and right, elevator ahead, too slow, too obvious, skip it. Windows that tilt open but not enough. I count staff as we pass, note who looks up and who doesn't, file which corridors branch where.
A cat is asleep in a patch of sunlight by the nurses' station. Orange, white-pawed. It opens one eye as we pass, registers us as insufficient cause for alarm, and goes back to sleep.
We reach the common room. Wide open. Windows that fill an entire wall, and through them: grass. Trees. An actual sky that goes all the way to the horizon instead of stopping at a ceiling.
Other omegas are scattered through the room. Reading, talking in quiet pairs, or sitting alone. Easy. Carefree. Relaxed.
Then I seehim.
Ash-blond. Too pale. Curled tight in the corner of a chair, rocking, a small steady rhythm. His lips move in words that don't make sound. His wrists rest on his knees and even from here I see the scarring, thin white lines encircling both of them, too deliberate and too complete to be accidental.
I know that posture. I've been in that posture. Shoulders drawn in over the chest, knees up, body making itself as small as possible so there's less surface area for whatever's coming to hit.
Three burly alphas frame him, not crowding, not close, but clearly oriented toward him. The dark-haired one has the hollowed look of someone who hasn't slept in longer than one night, the skin beneath his eyes bruised deep. The tall one with glasses has a book open in his hands and is reading softly. The blond one sinks forward, driving his fingers through his hair.
A scent hits me.
Oakwood. Dry whiskey. Bitter chocolate.
The air goes out of my lungs.
Alpha. Mine.
“Espie.” Sera's voice cuts through, sharp with alarm. Basil goes razor-edged in her scent. “What —”
A second scent breaks over me. Earl Grey tea and bergamot and sandalwood, warm and layered and underneath it all something carefully, deliberately restrained.
My whole body pitches toward it. My omega shoves at my ribs from the inside.
Third scent. Fresh linen. Clean. Like something that has never been contaminated.
The room blurs at the edges, colors losing their borders, and all I can do is hold the handles of the chair and try to find air past the biological riot happening in my chest. My belly clenches. My skin is too tight. Every part of me is screaming a direction —
Yours. Mine.The words pile over each other.Pack. Home. Pack.Not a list. A collision.
The dark-haired alpha pushes to his feet, attention fixed on me. His hazel eyes have blown wide and his scent is rolling off him, oakwood and whiskey thick enough that my eyes are watering. He wants to cross the room. His whole body is angled toward me, weight forward, and the only thing stopping him is whatever is happening behind those eyes.
The tall one with glasses hasn't moved from the chair but his book is on the floor, and his hands are shaking where they grip the armrest. The bergamot in his scent has gone sharp and hungry.
The blond one is still. Just staring at me. His scent threads between the other two like something braided, fresh linen threaded with salt, as if he's holding the three of them together through the single act of staying still.
Behind me, Sera makes a sound. Raw. Winded. And then her scent explodes: cedar and basil and blood orange all spiking at once, and underneath the shock, joy. Disbelieving, overwhelmed, barely-contained joy.
I can't breathe. Can't think past the scents flooding my system, past the part of me that wants to bare my throat and cross the room and press myself against whoever is closest and call it home —
Through all of it, through the wall of alpha scent and my own biological betrayal, another thread.
Different.
Omega.
The pull that comes with the alphas, the one that saysbare your throat, go down, let them have you, isn't there. This is something else. This sits in a different part of my chest. Something that saysreachandprotectandI know you.
The small ash-blond man stops rocking. His head turns toward me with the terrible slowness of someone fighting their way up through layers of sediment: through trauma, throughsilence, through wherever he's been living inside himself. His nostrils flare. He's scenting me. Something changes in his face: the blank distance cracking, the surface of him breaking open from the inside.
His eyes focus. Hazel-green with gold flecks. Looking at me. Seeing me. A sound comes out of him: a high, broken, desperate omega whine.
He lifts his hand toward me. The tremor in it is bad.
