Page 10 of Isla

I shrugged my pink trench coat over my dress, tying the belt tight around my waist. Threw my toiletries into my travel bag and popped everything on top of my suitcase.

Carmel pulled the suitcase out of my hands. I resisted hissing at her for thinking I was weak, but only because she was really kind.

“Take my bag,” she said, throwing in the last of her supplies. “We need to go now.”

I nodded, and she checked the corridor before she dashed to the stairwell door, dragging my suitcase behind her as though it weighed nothing at all.

I knew what was inside, and it was heavy. Which was clear now as the sound of my suitcase bounced down each step and was a little louder than I really wanted.

And halfway into my escape from the hotel, Wagner’s Bridal Chorus started playing in the background. Noah picked the music. Come to think of it, I chose nothing at all. Evidently, I only had to turn up on the day.

How true that was.

I was supposed to leave the room the moment the band started playing the music and now my heart was beating faster and my blood pounding louder than the tune.

At the bottom of the stairs, I pushed open the door and gasped, realising I was holding in my breath. “Where’s your car?”

“Follow me, it’s the blue Ford Focus on the right,” she said, trying not to raise her voice too much.

Then she reached the car and threw the suitcase on the backseat. This woman seriously worked out. “Get in, we need to go,” she said.

I placed her bag on the floor underneath my feet and inhaled deeply, soon I would be free. “Let’s get out of here,” I said.

My eye caught sight of her shiny gold scissors and I reached inside and took them out of the bag.

“What are you doing?” Carmel whisper-hissed.

“Getting rid of the bottom of this dress,” I told her.

“They’re my hairdressing scissors. They cost me a fortune. You can’t use them to cut material.”

“I’ll give you a hundred for them,” I said.

“They cost one fifty,” she said.

“For a pair of scissors?” I hissed and sighed. “I’ll give you another five hundred to take me to Heathrow and for the scissors.”

She grinned. “Deal.”

I wasn’t surprised it was a deal when Heathrow was less than thirty minutes away. Enough time for me to change my open ticket to a flight leaving in ninety minutes and book myself onto the flight on the online app.

I dragged my coat over my shoulders and placed it on the backseat. Then took the scissors and started to make this wedding dress look a little less obvious.

“I could have done that for you,” Carmel said. I spun to her, her hands tightly gripped the steering wheel. Her red hair had loosened from its ponytail, I expected from the amount of times she shoved her hand through it. “Leave the back and I’ll snip it at the airport.”

"Thank you for this.”

“Isla, you’re the reason I hide myself with suppressants. I don’t want that submissive life, that life where we have to do what the alphas want and be happy with it,” Carmel said.

“You’re an omega. Shit, your suppressants are good,” I whispered.

Carmel grinned. “They are and rumour has it they're developed by omegas, so I trust them implicitly.”

Tilly and her mum.

I smiled at that. I couldn’t tell her. Tilly and her mother marketed the suppressants under the Hanson Group, because it was still illegal for omegas to develop anything to do with their well-being.

Fucking alphas.

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