Page 64 of Knot Their Opening Act

“No. I caught a cold from some bastard,” he says, slicing a look around at all of us. “My fucking ears are blocked.”

“Get that steam in ya. You sound like a piece of shit.” Nico necks the last of his protein shake and pulls an apple from a bowl on the tabletop.

“Steam yourself, prick,” Kai grumbles, but it’s Holden’s fist slammed onto the booth table between he and Nico that unsettles me.

“You guys arenotgoing to dance around this topic for one more day. Pull your thumbs out because we need to talk about it!” His voice is a hiss but more for the need to stay quiet, I reckon, than out of true anger. Holden is never angry.

Though his faceison the red side. He slams his other fist down so they’re sitting side-by-side on the table. Nico raises a brow and widens his eyes but keeps them on the apple he’s turning over and over in his hands. Kai lets out a sigh like an old-fashioned train whistle. And I just nod. We all know what he means.

“Look, mate,” starts Kai, tone full of empathy. “I should’ve sat us down last night before we left the venue to have this chat. It’s on me.”

Everyone sits up a bit taller, and Kai leans forward on the tiny kitchenette island. He shoots a glance to her door, but she’s still asleep.

“Let’s get everything out on the table. Are we in agreement that that Omega in there is our scent match? Each one of you has scented her, even through your suppressants. Is that right?”

We all nod, then Kai does too. “And are we all in agreement that with her being in heat—and each one of you helping her through it in the past few days—she is likely aware that we’re a match?”

Nico and I look at each other. Holden’s face, if anything, goes redder.

Kai clears his throat, his voice huskier than usual, so he lowers it. “I take that as a unanimous yes. The problem is, clearly, me.”

I blink at him. “But you said you and she called a truce at that radio interview?”

Kai covers his mouth with his steepled hands. The bags under his eyes are dark. He really needs more sleep before tonight’s gig. London’s a biggie, of course. “I have a confession.” He takes the slowest inhale known to humanity before speaking again.

“DuringTen to One, Ash forwarded a message to me that I never shared with you.” Kai looks down at his hands now clasped in front of him, and we’re all gaping. “It came from a guy named Tristan, who was, and is, her ex. An Omega, supposedly, not in a pack. He’s a DJ in Bristol. He told me about her claustrophobia, and her general anxiety, and warned me that she would not be a good choice for the show because that condition was a liability that was going to come back to haunt her, should she start to find greater success as an artist. He didn’t want her to embarrass herself.”

Oh, shit.

“Now, at the time,” he raises a hand as though to stop an expected onslaught of abuse that doesn’t come. “I didn’t know anything about her, and he sounded quite genuine and concerned. He said despite their relationship ending, he cared deeply for her and didn’t want to see her hurt. He said it was up to us obviously what we decided, but he truly believed her advancing in the show could be catastrophic for her mental health.”

“And you thought it was better to crush her dreams before she got the chance?” Holden hisses. “Why the hell didn’t you tell us all this?” He raises from the bench and steps forward, mouth ajar as he stares at our pack leader.

All we knew was that an outside source had informed the show runners that Jesamine Jacobs struggled with anxiety in crowded or small spaces, and the word was the producers didn’t want to risk “a situation.” Really they were probably looking out for themselves and a potential lawsuit, since she had not disclosed her condition. But I thought we’d all received this information at the same time…

“So, what, you leaked this info to the producers who then sat all the judges down to say she was being removed from the show?” I say.

Kai doesn’t look up. “Yeah, mate. That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

Nico shakes his head. “Shit. Well, you know who you owe this confession to?”

“There’s more, isn’t there?” I say. I knew nothing about Kai receiving this information from an email Ash passed to him, that Ash probably didn’t even read at the time, thinking it was personal. But I’ve known something else for a long time. One drunken night, me and Ash, on a train from Paris to Barcelona. A year afterTen to One.

Now Kai looks at me. Dead in the eye. “You remember that?”

“Fuck yes, I do. Are you gonna tell them?”

“You figured it out?” he asks. “When?”

“When she showed up in Ash’s office three months ago.”

Kai sighs. Holden scowls. “Out with it, Hartley.”

“I knew she was our match, back then. I knew she was our Omega when we first met her. OnTen to One. It was about six weeks before that I’d been told by the doctors that I was seriously allergic to rut suppressants. They’d been causing me debilitating migraines and hives and other shit. They said I choose between suppressants or my career. Because the migraines were blinding. I never wanted to admit either of those facts to you guys for fear of the band breaking apart just as we were getting going. And I sure as hell couldn’t bear telling you our match was an angelic singer-songwriter who could kill us twice as hard as Nyah, right after we’d sworn off any Omega in the business.”

Silence.

One night of heavy drinking after a cousin of mine had died—a cousin I’d grown up with, who’d gifted me my love of music in the first place—Kai took me to the on-board train bar and we ate pizza and drank whisky and by the end of the night, we’d made our greatest confessions.

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