Page 33 of Unlikely Omega

“I’ll live,” I say drily, pleased they didn’t touch her. A touch on my arm startles me and I hiss, drawing back. “Ari?”

“It’s me. Our cells are side by side.” A pause. Then her hand brushes down my arm. “They beat you up.”

Everywhere, every time she touches me, it’s like a strike of lightning, sparks and heat washing over me.

“They surprised me,” I mutter. “I let my guard down. I didn’t expect it.”

“What did they take you in for? Talking to me?” Bitterness wells in her voice. “Am I contagious now?”

“They had their eye on you from the start,” I confess.

“But talking to me made you a target.” Another pause. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. None of this is your fault.”

“I should have stayed away from the unnamed god.”

“When he called for you? How would you have done that? He’s a god. And being an omega shouldn’t be seen as a crime.”

“So you heard.” Resignation and embarrassment lace her voice. “I don’t even know if it’s true. Have I really perfumed? Or did the Synod just want to send me away because they needed an outlet for their fear?”

“You smell… sweet,” I grind out and in spite of myself, I inhale, my whole body tensing with arousal—which annoys me because this isn’t what this is about. I was only trying to help an acolyte in trouble. “I’m not familiar with omegas. Besides, I’m not an alpha.”

Which makes sense if I have Fae blood running through my veins. The Fae are not fertile, not easy to arouse, so we’re taught.

“How do you know you’re not an alpha if you need an omega to awaken as one?” she asks and I shake my head, drawing another sharp breath when her hand trails down to my elbow. “Turn around. Let me see if I can loosen this knot.”

I shuffle around on my knees, pressing my bound hands against the bars. “I don’t have the physique, acolyte.”

“I like it better when you call me by my name,” she says quietly and I jolt again when she touches my bound hands. “And your physique is fine.”

She tugs on the ropes, working on the knot, and fire courses through me. I grind my teeth, unused to being so aroused around anyone. I haven’t had so many hard-ons within a week since I was an adolescent whose body only starts to mature.

“Ariadne,” I breathe.

Her fingers falter on the binds, then return, tugging and pulling. “Hold on, I think I got it. It’s a simple knot.”

I don’t know why but this only enrages me more. The moment she loosens the knot, I tear my hands free of the ropes and whirl around.

She gasps.

“Your turn,” I say gruffly and reach blindly for her hands.

She bumps them against mine and I jerk—what’s with this girl’s touch?—before I pat her slender fingers and smooth skin and find the rope tied around her wrists.

“We need to be alert when they come in with food for us,” I say with way more calm than I feel, patting the contours of the knot, deciding which bits to pull to unravel it. “You must tell me if they carry weapons of any sort and if there are more guards waiting outside the door.”

“What are you talking about?” she whispers as the knot unravels and the rope falls off her. “What do you want to do?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” I say. “The only thing left to do. Escape.”

“You’re crazy,” she says as I walk around my cell, taking stock of its dimensions, then running my hands over the bars, finding the door and its lock. “Escape where? How?”

“Away,” I say absently, counting the steps across the cell. My other senses are still dull but maybe it’s this place, this rock the fort was carved out of. Who knows? It’s not like I’ve ever spoken to anyone about this.

My life has always balanced on a precarious cliff edge as it is.

“Even if we can pull this off,” she says, and her light voice tugs on threads inside of me, teasing them apart, making me stop and turn to her, wishing I could just give in and press my face to her skin, listen to her breathing. “Even then, won’t the Temple and the Council come after us?”

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