Page 98 of Knot Happening

I snort at the message, a small smile tugging my lips up. He’s grown on me over the years, I suppose.

Easton: Why’s that?

Ghost: No back up. No protection.

Easton: I have been protecting myself just fine for the better part of the last twenty-six years. Asshat.

Ghost: That so? How's that worked out for you so far? Sure, you’re alive, but what do those skeletons you keep trapped in your closet like a booby trap hide for you? What secrets have you buried so deep, you can’t even remember them? Which scars are one slip away from tearing back open?

Easton: Who the fuck are you? My therapist?!

Ghost doesn’t reply for a long time, and I realize I’m panting. My chest heaves with every inhale, and I hate the way my hands shake as I stare at my phone screen. I reach a hand into my front pocket, caressing the handle of my favorite blade.

Ghost: Alright then, kid. Location.

Easton: You really are an annoying old bastard. Have your kids already picked out your nursing home? I have some suggestions…

I send him a link to the location on maps, and he responds with a thumbs up and a middle finger.

I stuff the phone back in my pocket and crack my neck, before rolling my shoulders.

I know what obsession looks like. What an Alpha looks like when he watches an Omega with a possessive glint in his eyes.

I thought this would be easy. I thought I’d get what I wanted and be done. But then those bright blue eyes changed my entire fucking world.

Which is why I’m picking the lock on the door to the roomMr. Ferrishas me locked in. Greasy old fucker. Slimy. Not literally. His…aura. His soul. Vibe. Whatever it is. He’s diseased inside. Not literally, but at the core of his existence, he just radiates…hairy ball sack. I imagine myself slicing those off of him… His screams. The symphony to my nightmares.

He’s planning evil tonight. I can taste it in the back of my throat like a cancer spreading through me.

An Omega once asked me why I saved her. I think she was especially confused, because like Stella, I’d drugged her and taken her to the buyer. I’d handed her over, taken the payout, and then just like with Jennings, I ended him. I don’t remember her name, only that she had long black hair and striking gray eyes that looked so goddamn tired.

She was young and pretty. Came from the streets, like so many before her, and so many after her. Or so I thought. Turned out she was a rich girl from the upper class, running from her past. She had the balls to break the cycle of her circumstances and was kidnapped for her troubles.

Obviously, I saved her. After, when I was waiting for Ghost’s support to retrieve her, she looked right in my eyes and just stared. I felt oddly exposed.

“You’re an Omega,” the dirty thing beside me finally said, after holding my gaze for an eternity. I couldn’t look awayfor whatever reason. I nodded, curious now that she’d spoken. “That's why, isn’t it? Why you saved me?”

I let the silence hang between us for a while, considering my answer. When I shook my head, her frown deepened. “No. I saved you because… Everyone deserves a choice.”

“You didn’t give Daris a choice. You just…” she trailed off, finally looking away from me.

“Killed him? I do believe he made his choice the moment he purchased you.”

That was the reason I let the transaction happen. Not because I thought it would make them easier to kill. Or fool them into thinking I was just a mover. The smartest thing to do would be to simply kill them on sight. But I wanted them to have a fucking choice. They could always change their minds. They never do.

The door clicks, and I step out. If we hadn’t shown up unexpectedly, I expect this Alpha would have been a little better prepared for having Tatum in his home.

Ferris reminds me of my uncle in some ways. Just lacking the same intelligence and power.

The first time my uncle contracted me to kill someone, I was scared. I was only sixteen. I wasn’t an Omega then. Well, I was, but I didn’t know I was. I’d been trained as if I’d be an Alpha.

But a kid nonetheless. So that day, standing in the middle of some stranger’s pool house, I lifted the gun I’d been given and pulled the trigger. And missed. Four times. Eventually, I’d hit my mark, and as his dead body floated in the pool, something in me sort of…cracked.

Then I saw the girl that had been hiding behind a potted plant. She was my age. She came out, and stared at the dead man floating in the pool, and said…“He raped me.”

I remember thinking I wish I had killed him slower. Then she turned to me and her face morphed from void of all emotion to a smile. Then she walked away.

Never saw her again. That moment stayed with me for my entire fucking life. And every time I was responsible for another piece of human garbage taking their last breath, I think of her words.

---