Page 14 of Running on Empty

“Omegas have alphas, fated mates,” I said, trying to snuggle down into the nest, but finding my old habits had resurfaced and I had to tuck my limbs up tight against my body before I could relax. “I don’t think I have any.”

“Why would you think that?”

His voice sounded choked off and strange, but I was too damn tired to examine it.

“Well, where the fuck are they?” My voice was thin, the question as plaintive as it was drowsy. “What the hell would stop them from finding me and claiming me?” I’d only just woken up from a nap, but there was no way I would have been able to sleep next to Ronan for much more than that. There was too much going on, too much stuff in the bed between us.

Something that would stop if I found my fated mates.

“You’re good at finding stuff,” I managed to get out through a gigantic yawn. “Find my alphas, Jax. Then no one will ever touch me again.”

Chapter9

"Hey.”

I woke up some time later, to find the sky dark and night approaching and, when I went out into my lounge room, there was a strange woman in my house. Well, not entirely strange. The red-headed woman who’d helped me out of the club was sitting on my couch, now wearing a very smart combination of a black pencil skirt, perilously high heels, a crisp white blouse and a tight black vest. She looked like she was ready to swish into Don Draper’s office inMad Men, to take ‘dictation’. She smiled when she saw me and then got to her feet.

“Jax and co sent me in here to keep watch over you. Well…actually, I insisted. They seemed to think they’d be the best ones for the job, but I thought a woman in your space might be easier to cope with.”

“Why?” I went over to the kitchen, filled up the kettle and put it on to boil. That question applied to so many things I didn’t bother to clarify which. “Want a cuppa?”

“Love one,” she said with a smile, but I caught the assessing way she looked me up and down. Perhaps due to my lack of attire. I was still wearing Ronan’s t-shirt as a dress. “Well, after—”

“You’re not going with the whole sexual assault thing too, are you?” Once I’d turned the kettle on, I turned around to face her, folding my arms. “Because that’s not what happened.”

“Right.” She nodded slowly. “Well, no, that’s not it. I mean, I probably see things a bit differently…” She paused as her eyes slid down to my wrist. I followed her gaze to where a small ring of bruises had formed there, from when they’d held me and— “It’s not my job to put a label on what you’ve been through. You’ll find your own way through it. But some men in your life didn’t behave as they should’ve—”

I made a rude noise at that.

“When do any of them? My boss makes me wear shit that has either my tits or my arse hanging out to sell more shitty beer, preferably both. I have dickheads ask me about my heat or whether I can fit my fist in my vagina, because they are drunk, stupid and just fucking arseholes. I watched my mother get knocked around more times than I can count. Right about now, I’m thinking this whole ‘nice guy’ thing is a fucking myth created by incels to explain why their passive aggressive arses can’t get laid. Men are pigs except towards the women they feel like they own. Their mothers, their daughters, their…” I paused on the word, my throat tightening. “Their sisters or their partners. My problem is I don’t have any guy who feels like I’m theirs to claim, and so blokes think they can do what they like.” I shrugged. “At least I got multiple orgasms out of the Spencer pack.”

My rant was interrupted by the sound of a phone vibrating. Looking around, I spotted mine plugged into a charger on the bench. I stepped closer, and warily flipped it over to see the incoming call was coming from an unknown number. I hesitated.

“Do you want me to get that?” Scarlett said.

“No…”

But I wasn’t so sure, was I? That irritated me beyond belief, so I picked it up and tapped the green icon to accept the call. And, as though I’d conjured him up by mentioning his pack, I heard his voice.

“Hello, little omega.” My gut twisted as, at the sound of Jack’s voice, his words, it all started to come back to me. My hand slapped down on my stomach as it began to gurgle. “You took off after we had such fun, and without saying a word. Tsk tsk… We’ll have to teach you better manners than that.”

I threw the phone away from me onto the bench. And as the kettle started to whistle, getting louder and louder, I lunged at the screen, trying to end the call. My fingers shook as I swiped and stabbed trying to block the number. Once I’d done that, I jumped into the Howlr app so that I could block them there as well. But when I opened it up, there was a message waiting for me, so I tapped on that first to open it, as Scarlett moved past me to turn the kettle off.

“Unh…! Unh…!”

A porn-worthy soundtrack played loudly in the now too-quiet kitchen and I realised with some horror that the pack had sent me a video file from the night before. There was Rock, grinning at the camera as he railed me hard, his pupils blown huge, his smile sloppy as he thrust. Next the screen showed Jack stepping forward to plug my open mouth with his cock. I stabbed my finger down on the file to close it so I could delete it.

“Don’t.” I spun around to see Scarlett standing behind me, wide-eyed. “I know you want to get rid of it, and I don’t fucking blame you, seriously, but… That’s evidence right there. You can use it…”

Her voice trailed away as I finished deleting the file, then blocked the pack on the app. Then I deleted the whole app for good measure. A hollow feeling rose up inside me. I swallowed hard, then clenched my jaw, breathing in and out through my nose for a second to collect myself. Then I grabbed cups and set them out on the bench to focus on the simple act of making coffee.

Because that’s what came of growing up in the environment I had. You learned to function, to just keep going no matter what, so that’s what I planned to keep doing. I passed Scarlett her coffee and took a sip of my own. The hot liquid splashed sourly in my empty stomach, but I didn’t dare try and eat anything.

“I’ll be fine,” I assured her, my voice steady, confident. “You can tell the boys that. Nothing keeps me down for long.”

“You know it wouldn’t matter if it did,” she said, fixing me with a steady gaze over the rim of her mug. “Everyone’s allowed to fall apart sometimes.”

“Only if there’s someone there to catch them,” I said. “Look, I’m gonna order some pizza and watch some shitty reality TV until my brain leaks out of my ears. I’m not gonna be much company, but do you want in?”

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