Page 27 of Knot for Sale

Grasping at the things I could control, I started box breathing.Inhale for a count of four, hold for a count of four, exhale for a count of four, hold for a count of four. A throbbing pain had taken up residence in my head, courtesy of stress or absinthe or both.

A knock sounded at the cabin door, nearly making me jump out of my skin.

Elijah startled as well, his head whipping to look over his shoulder. “Crap. That must be Gabriel wondering what’s taking so long. I’ll go stall him.”

I managed a wordless nod, still fully involved in trying to keep my world from spinning completely off its axis.

Elijah hurried to the cabin door. I heard the lock click, and the faint creak as it opened.

“Sorry,” Elijah’s voice filtered back to me, full of contrition. “We brought a truly obscene amount of luggage. It’s a model thing.”

“Unfortunately, it appears you’ve also underestimated how acute alpha hearing can be.” Gabriel’s tone was no-nonsense. My heart skittered, stuttering for a beat as the breath left my lungs explosively. “Let me in, I’m not having this conversation in the corridor.”

He’d heard us. He was an alpha, and he’d heard everything. Gabriel Rosencranz knew I was an omega, and that I was going into heat unless I could find my blockers in the next seventy-twohours. My knees wavered, and I barely managed to stumble two steps and collapse onto the closed lid of the toilet.

“I don’t think that’s a good—” Elijah sounded weak and frightened. Of course he did. He hadn’t signed up to block the door against an alpha with more power and money than god.

“You can tell me what an entitled arsehole I am inside, with the door locked,” Gabriel said. Footsteps entered, brushing past Elijah and striding through the bedroom toward my bathroom bolt hole. “Preferably, at a lower volume, so no one else passing by ends up getting an earful.”

Abruptly, I wanted a warm, safe nest more than I’d ever wanted anything in my entire life. A cozy den that no one would dare enter unless I invited them, where I could burrow under a huge pile of blankets, and scream and cry until I felt in control again.

The bathroom door was wide open. Gabriel stopped at the threshold, staring in at me with his pale brows furrowed in concern.

“May I come in?” he asked.

“No,” I quavered, huddling in on myself.

He nodded acknowledgement, though his striking blue eyes were hard. “At least this saves me having to interrogate you about what other secrets you’ve been keeping.”

“G-go to hell!” I snapped, which might have been more impressive if I hadn’t been hunched on a toilet, shaking like a leaf in the wind.

Elijah elbowed his way past the alpha blocking the door, and Gabriel let himself be moved. My omega roommate crouched in front of me, a hand on my knee as he looked up at me, trying to catch my eye.

“Hey.Hey, don’t panic, okay? We can report this to the captain of the ship, or whoever’s in charge of security. Demand they search your cousin’s belongings for your pills.”

Gabriel let out a skeptical grunt. “Anyone with half a brain will have thrown the pills overboard. And while crediting Cade Huntwell with half a brain might be generous, the same can’t be said of his father. Tommy almost certainly gave the orders to search your rooms.”

My heart sank.

“Well...” Elijah sounded mulish. “Maybe there’s an omega on the ship’s crew. We could see if anyone else has what she needs.”

I kicked gently at his shin to remind him that I was sitting right here, and even in my current state I didn’t appreciate being spoken about in the third person.

“If someone else on the yacht has heat blockers, it’s b-because they need them,” I muttered.

Gabriel shifted in the doorway. “This isn’t a productive discussion. When would you have taken the heat blocker?”

“In three days,” I said, defeated.

“And you’re already overdue for a pheromone suppressor,” he said. “I assume I would have been smelling absinthe and blackcurrant whether or not you’d had that drink earlier.”

“Not overdue,” I shot back, as though I needed to somehow convince this alpha stranger that I was capable of managing my own omega symptoms. “My stress levels just overwhelmed it.”

It wouldn’t be accurate to say he softened, exactly, but his businesslike intensity ratcheted down a notch. “Understandable. So, a blocker in three days means you’re due in five to seven days.”

I gave a miserable nod.

“That’s going to be tight,” he said, possibly to himself. He lifted his chin, addressing both of us. “Come on. Pack up the rest of your things—all of it. There’s no time to waste.”

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