Page 61 of Captive Omega

My fingers instinctively curl around the knife I have resting in my lap as I work out who I might need to stab on my way to the door.

I’ve heard this all before. Notably, before the auction in club Asylum.

I’m not going through that again.

“We don’t have time to go shopping,” Garrison says as I struggle to breathe.

I’m doing all the right things, air in through my nose and out of my mouth, but I’m breathless, so I must not be doing it right.

Now they are all looking at me, and I’m trying not to react to being the center of attention the way I’d be back at the Asylum auction.

I’m in a silk slip, trapped in a glass room. Alphas are bidding on me and a voice is yelling prices as I shrink away from their hungry attention, nails scrabbling for a way out, and?—

“Resa?” Garrison’s voice is like falling backward into a cold lake.

I look at him.

Breathing in through my mouth and out of my nose, I release the tight grip I have on the sweaty knife hilt. I strangle my panic as I compose myself under his quiet scrutiny. “What?”

“Did you have a particular style?” he asks.

“Style?” I echo.

You have got to start paying more attention to your surroundings, Resa. What were you just saying about the importance of details?

He flips open the lid of the laptop in front of him and turns it to face me. “It’s not safe to take you to a store, but if you want to look through this shop’s website, we can send Lex to pick you up a dress. Maybe something simple like this, so the party’s attendants know you’re working and leave you alone.”

This store happens to be a designer boutique. My parents weren’t wealthy and seeing how many zeros at the end of such simple looking dresses is bringing me out in a sweat. Maybe even hives.

I keep forgetting they have money.

I look at those zeroes and I gulp. “That’s a lot of money for a dress.”

“We’re good at what we do and the people who pay us know it,” Garrison says.

He wants me to pick out a two thousand dollar dress that I’ll wear for one night—less, actually—five or six hours and likely never wear again, and he’s good with that?

“I don’t think I need a dress so…” I gesture with my left hand since my right is busy sweating on a knife. Expensive? Designer? “I’ll just be at the back so?—”

“The cost isn’t important. Choose something you like and it’s yours,” Garrison interrupts.

So he’s good with it. Totally fine with throwing money away on me for no good reason.

Vaughn swipes the laptop from Garrison and winces. “Yeesh, that’s ugly. She’s not wearing those maid outfits.”

I frown. “I don’t care what I wear.”

A few taps, a nod of approval, and Vaughn swivels the monitor to face me. “This one.”

If I thought two thousand dollar dresses was expensive, the dress Vaughn picks out, a beautiful confection of black lace, makes me relieved I’m sitting down.

A dress like that belongs on an omega who lives a dream life I would see on TV or in fashion magazines being wined and dined by handsome, wealthy alphas.

A dress like that, as beautiful as it is, does not belong on someone like me.

My smile is as brittle as I nudge the laptop away. “I appreciate the thought, but I don’t need an expensive dress. If I’m going to be at the back, then I can just wear this. Maybe something black, to not attract any attention.”

Garrison nods as he takes the laptop, closing it firmly on the most beautiful dress I’ve ever seen in my life. “Then Lex can pick up something black. Maybe jeans and a T-shirt?”

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