Page 37 of Knot Just A Fan

“I’m not going anywhere. Unless you want me to,” she says to me.

“No, please stay. I need a witness,” I say without malice.

Ash even chuckles. “Understood. Okay, well, these are for you, because, well?—”

“I notice they’re not heat suppressants or a contract for her job reinstated, so what else have you come to disappoint us with?” Cami says. But she takes the flowers and finds a vase for them while Ash sits, back straight in our recliner.

“Don’t recline unless you want to show us a good headstand,” I say. “The handle’s broken.”

He looks down at the sides of the chair then nods. “Noted. Okay, so here’s where we’re at.” He clears his throat then realizes his rucksack’s still over one shoulder. He places this on the floor and Cami comes to reclaim her seat and her coffee.

“I don’t want the band to fall apart.”

“Is that an option?” Cami says, raising an arched brow and smiling wickedly.

“No! But it is a possibility. So I’m desperate, and desperation can make you realize your wrong turns.” He looks at me intently hands on his knees. “Briella, I want to apologize for sometimes being a prick. I never really got to know you, as Grayson did all the negotiating, and all the training and explaining, and basically everything. We had meetings with you present, but I never treated you like a colleague. And for that, I’m sorry.”

He’s so sincere, at least, from the look in his eyes and the lack of a muscle twitching in his cheeks. He actually looks like he might be sweating. So I pay even more attention.

“I can’t offer you what the Guild won’t allow. If I’m found out to be providing suppressants or the money to purchase them, I’ll lose my Guild access license.” He shrugs. “That’s a shitty excuse, but the bureaucracy is out of my hands.”

I definitely didn’t expect him to even think twice about it, so I’m a little bit hopeful he has something even more positive to say.

“My question to you is, if the lads didn’t scent you before, why did they scent you yesterday? Which, by the way,incrediblyinconvenient fucking timing. And I know it’s not your fault! But they were fucking useless at practice yesterday! All of them thinking with their dicks even more than usual,” he adds with a grumble.

Cami snorts at this and slaps her thigh. “Serves them right. Better get used to it, boyo.” She clucks her tongue but Ash ignores this, though I take some pleasure in sensing he feels overwhelmed with both of us here to rebut anything he says.

Then I remember he’s asked me a question. One I don’t have an answer to.

“I wish I knew,” I start. “I suppose my only theory is that the meds I’ve taken all these years stopped working—from overuse, I suppose. Most Omegas are off them by their early thirties. Or if they’re not?—”

“—they’re taking the fanciest, most side-effect-riddled but most powerful version available. Like moi.” Cami flutters a hand toward her chest.

“Why weren’t you?” says Ash, turning back to me.

“Excuse me, but that doesn’t seem likeanyof your?—”

But I cut Cami off. “It’s okay. To show you that none of this was some grand scheme planned by me, I’ll tell you. Becausemy mother, before I was born, got herself some home-brewed suppressants bought off a dealer in Camden. She didn’t grow up with much, and her family had no experience with Omegas. She couldn’t get into a Guild, or get access. She got desperate. Took some bad stuff that messed up her body. Plus, they didn’t work, because she got pregnant with me. Whatever drugs she took, whatever they did to her, they were toxic. Over the years she got sicker and sicker. After she died I realized that those drugs likely had an effect on my body, too, through her.”

I shrug, trying my damndest to say all this with a neutral voice. “I might have the same issue that could kill me like it did her. So I’ve never wanted to speed that along by taking stronger drugs than the most basic level. And maybe that’s why they’ve worn off. Maybe something in my system from Mum’s back-alley shit has kept me from scenting the band, or them from scenting me. Until recently.”

Ash’s eyes have gone wide and he’s nodding, listening. I can feel Cami’s presence, like she’s ready to spring herself over at me and wrap me in a hug at a moment’s notice, but also her respect for my wish to tell this story and talk about my mother once without falling apart.

“Is that why you fainted? You suddenly scented Grayson—and maybe the others?”

I shrug and tilt my head. “Maybe? This is all new to me. I’ve tried to research it online, but there aren’t a lot of recorded cases of the exact drug my mother took. Her dealers were caught in a raid and the specific chemical rundown of whatever they sold her isn’t certain, though other similar cases have been discussed. But even the GP I saw in my early twenties had no idea what I could expect, in terms of how the drugs in her system might affect me.”

Cami sets her coffee mug on the table and sits cross-legged. “It would make sense. Your little body is used to your scentglands being numbed and your own senses, too. To have them sort of just drop all at once—I mean, it might’ve been gradual, but you hadn’t been around all three of them like that, or as close, I suspect, to Grayson as you were then.”

“True,” says Ash, leaning back, then turning quickly to check the back of the chair hasn’t collapsed. Cami snickers. “In any case. We’re off to Nice tomorrow. Then Nantes. Then down to Barcelona. I bring some news that I think you deserve to hear.” He bites his lip, looks at Cami, then focuses on me. “Willow is joining us for Nice and Nantes.”

“That bitch,” snarls Cami.

But she’s not. I don’t even know her. She’s never visited the pack down here in England since I’ve known them. Though maybe she flew out to the States or South America in the eight years since then. All I’ve ever known is she was part of Grayson’s life for a long time, and spoken of reverently, like the answer to a prayer they still had to wait for.

“They may decide to bond while she’s with them. It’s been in the pipeline a long, long time.” Ash tugs at his collar. “All I know is the guys aren’t going to be truly happy now, with her, at least, not at first. Not knowing what they do about you. And it’s clear Willow saw something on social media, and realized that her long leash on Grayson might be cut if she doesn’t make a move.”

Cami unfolds her legs and sits on the edge of the sofa, leaning toward Ash like a snake toward a rodent. “Oh my God. Are you telling me that this woman who’s shown no interest in joining her supposed pack after all these years is finally pushed into action by Briella’s existence? And Grayson’s invitation to stick her tongue down his throat? Are you here totryto make Briella feel worse?”

---