Page 23 of Packed Up In Vegas

And Kai… some instinct urged me to touch him and I curled my fingers into a fist just to thwart it.

Mine.

The word echoed through me. Kai had a bond mark on his throat and I followed the compulsion to check my own, finding a tender spot. I climbed off the bed and slipped away into the washroom, staring in burgeoning horror at the mirror. I grabbed one of the folded towels and screamed into it.

There was a fucking bond mark on my throat. That was why Kai felt like mine. Except he wasn’t. None of this was right. None of this was my life.

I braced my hands on the sink, not daring to turn on the water in case it woke one of them. I leaned my cheek against the porcelain, just trying to breathe. As much as I wanted to tell myself it was fine, it really fucking wasn’t. I had done something colossally stupid during that heat.

I didn’t regret doing the heat. It would give me a new life, but I couldn’t just fall into the one they were all expecting. I might not have a fiancé anymore, but I still had a job, an apartment, and a life that had nothing to do with Sin City. Expectation threatened to swallow me whole.

They hadn’t told me they wanted me to stay, and I didn’t want to be around if they did.

How the fuck was I supposed to ever introduce a mate to my family? Just show up at their door and be like oh, hey, so my fiancé dumped me in Vegas and I decided it would be a good idea to fuck these alphas in front of a live audience and now I’m mated to one of them. That wasn’t the sort of meet cute any family would accept.

My fingertips turned to ice, the sensation slowly crawling up my arms, my chest going tight and my breath like shards of glass in my throat.

I couldn’t do this.

The world warped, everything turning floaty, flickers of light dancing at the edges of my vision. Reality slipped away beneath my feet, everything from the dream rearing up even though I was awake.

I shivered, searching for something to use to dress myself. I wasn’t even sure where my purse was. I tiptoed around the room on wobbly legs, seeing a wallet on the coffee table in front of Miles. Urgency clawed at me and I grabbed it, yanking on a robe I found in the closet before I rushed out of the suite, panic so thick in my chest I could hardly stand it. I didn’t understand the sensation, why I felt like there was a predator chasing me, but my rational mind said to run even while my instincts screamed at me to find someplace safe to hide.

Kai stirred. Could he feel my panic? I couldn’t risk him waking and seeing me.

Home.

I need to go home.

I had a nest waiting for me and if I could just get to it, maybe everything would be okay. If I didn’t get my fucking disaster of a life back on track, I would never be able to face my family again.

I swallowed hard, bringing a hand to my spinning head. Everything was so warm. The robe was soft but it itched against my skin and the fabric of the hotel carpet felt prickly against my bare feet. Colors melted like wax around me, the world losing its cohesiveness.

Keep going.

Keep running.

Yes. Running was good. Away from all of my mistakes. Maybe if I ran far enough, I could leave them behind.

A sob worked its way free when I leapt onto the elevator. No one was on it, thank god. I didn’t want to see anyone. I would use Miles’s card to get a bus ticket, and mail it all back to him when I got home.

When the elevator opened again, I was assaulted by a wave of noise and flashing lights. A casino. Of course it was a fucking casino. I felt a thousand eyes on me as I fled. It got harder to breathe with every step, and when I wrenched open the door to the outside, it was like crashing into a wall of heat.

Run.

I was trying. The concrete was like stepping into a frying pan but I couldn’t stop. The screaming inside my head made me dizzy, one voice yelling at me to continue and the other ordering me to return to Kai.

Not mine.

Never mine.

I only knew how to be miserable. That was all I deserved.

Iwoke sharply at the click of the door and sat up, disoriented. Callie was no longer on the bed and the air was filled with burnt sugar, a sure sign she was in some sort of distress. Kai was still asleep, his brow pinched, his eyes moving rapidly beneath his lids like he was having a nightmare.

Climbing out of bed, I poked my head into the hall just in time to see a robed Callie jump onto the elevator.

Absolutely fucking not. I retreated just long enough to grab a pair of lounge pants before taking off after her. She was still in the middle of her heat and I was not going to let her go traipsing around Vegas in that condition. It didn’t matter whether I wanted a mate or not because she was here and she needed me.

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