Page 49 of Pack’s Pledge

“Britt,” I said on an exhale.

“Britt,” he said, nodding. “Okay?” he asked, and punched my shoulder lightly.

“Okay.”

CHAPTERTHIRTY-SIX

Britt

“Here’s your stout,”I said, placing the full pint glass on a cocktail napkin, “and here’s your amber. It’s hard to tell in the light,” I said, as the alpha looked between the two, brow furrowed.

“Yeah, and they both taste like piss,” he said. “This place fu–”

“Excuse me,” I said, and turned away, moving down the bar to the staff door. It wasn’t polite, to walk away from a customer, but I didn’t really care. I only had two more shifts before I was done with Ardor for good. They hadn’t fired me–not for fraternizing, not for leaving my panic beeper in the staff room–but I couldn’t stay.

I couldn’t be here, when I knew what it was like. To have to dance non-committally around the existance of the back rooms when I’d been there, in it, with Beau and Conall and Adrian, had slept in that bed, had come and cried and come again, had felt Beau’s skin go hot under my hands and his slick coat my thighs, had felt Adrian’s mouth against mine, hard and insistent.

Had felt Conall, filling me up in a way I’d never imagined, had felt his come dripping from my body as I showered off in the stark, white marble bathroom, washing three days of sweat from my skin.

I gripped the chipped sink in the staff bathroom, facing myself in the mirror.

I looked awful. I’d spent every night since the heat sleepless, unable to stop the shifting visions that replayed behind my eyelids every time I closed my eyes.

Beau, his face tight with pain and ecstacy as teeth sank into skin.

Adrian, his lips red with Beau’s blood as his eyes fluttered shut.

Conall, his knot too too big between my legs, his strong arms pinning me down.

And his teeth, so close to my own neck, my back arched, willing him forward, wanting him so badly that it hurt, the longing a physical pain in my chest.

The memory still made me shiver.

Because it hadn’t been fear that I had felt, pinned and helpless beneath a Conall I did not recognize.

It had only been desire.

And then the crushing clarity that came afterward, as I’d come down along with his knot:

The worst part–worse that the bruising between my legs, worse than the soreness that had lingered for days–was the knowledge that Conall hadn’t changed, not this time.

This time it was me.

I willed back the ever-ready tears.

“Two more shifts, Britt,” I said out loud. The sound echoed off the ceramic-tiled walls. Then I could leave Ardor forever, could get a regular job at a regular bar, and never think about alphas or omegas or packs again. Conall, or Adrian, or Beau.

I took a deep breath and straightened my shoulders as I walked back out to the bar.

I nearly turned right back around, but he’d seen me already. I forced myself forward.

“Adrian,” I said.

He leaned across the bar, grinning. We’d met just here, before everything else that followed. Before Beau. When Conall had just been my old crush.

The look on his face—the crooked smile, the glinting eyes—was so familiar, that despite everything, I couldn’t help but smile back. Just a little.

“So,” he said, “you aren’t dead after all.”

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