Page 2 of Knot Forever

“Nova,” she snaps behind me. “Sit down. We’re not finished.”

“Yes, we are,” I shoot behind me. I just want to hole up in my room, finish an ungodly amount of minty creamy goodness, and then cry myself to sleep.

I make it to the door before her low voice stops me.

“You’re not twenty-five yet, Nova.”

I stop, swallowing down my retort. I’m all too aware that with a year to go until I reach my majority, and despite my very freaking loud protestations to the contrary, I have precisely zero say over my own life.

My parents have full control over my omega status. My suppression tablets, my mating… everything. But in twelve months’ time, my life will be my own.

“I’m aware of that,” I say quietly, and my mother sighs.

“We are omegas, Nova,” she says. “We don’t always have the luxury of choices. And I cannot sit here any longer and watch you waste your life away. You need a pack. No more suppression tablets.”

Panic is a hot flare in my chest as I spin. “No,” I say croakily, trying to suppress the spike of fear that stabs into my stomach. “I need those tablets.”

She shakes her head, looking so patronizingly sad for me that I could choke on it.

“I’ve entered you into the auctions.”

I stop, my mind blanking.

She wouldn’t.

Oh, who am I kidding?

She absolutelywould.

“You can’t!” The ice cream starts to drip in my hands, and I shove it onto the kitchen counter before I turn back to face her.

“You can’t put me into the auctions.” It’s a one-way route directly to the Williams pack.

If they win me in the auctions, I have to spend thirty days with Adam’s pack, behind closed doors. They won’t fuck around this time. Without my suppressants, I’ll be bitten and bred by the end of the month, and those thirty days will turn into a lifetime imprisonment.

My mother purses her lips. “I’ve made up my mind. Your father agrees.”

“Does he?” I shoot back. “Because I can’t remember the last time I saw him.”

Pointing out my father’s everlasting absence from our lives is absolutely the wrong way to approach this and a sure-fire way to piss my mother off, but I can’t stop myself.

She stands from the table, brushing off an imaginary piece of fluff. “The decision is final, Nova. You’ll thank us for it eventually.”

I can’t speak. I can’t even look at her, so I turn on my heel and make my way to my room, leaving silence behind me.

My room looks the same as it always has. Extravagant, gilded décor, like a bird in a cage. Pinkeverywhere. But tonight, it feels especially stifling.

I sink down onto the edge of my bed, my fingers gripping the coverlet.

I can’t go into the auctions.

There’s no way in hell that Adam will sit back and watch another pack bid for me. If any pack even would, thanks to his pack making my name trash all over the city. No other pack will come near me. No pack buthis.

The gaudy, gold mirror opposite me blurs in my vision.

Hands on my neck. Gripping, tightening, bruising.

My whimper echoes into the room, and I scrunch my eyes shut.

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