Page 16

“You’re catching on quickly.” Mr Page smirks, a pale imitation of the one he showed us earlier. Then he turns around, grabs his bathrobe from the back of the bathroom door and pulls it on. “If I’m not back before dinner, I’ll have someone bring you some food. And if you just want to sleep, feel free to do that too. You can do anything, as long as you don’t try to leave.”
And, with that, he walks out of the room.
Vera wraps the towel around her hair as she pads over to the bed and grabs one of the bathrobes, putting it on, before she takes the other over to me. “These are super soft. They make me feel like we’re in some luxurious hotel.” She grins as the mood shifts, getting easier.
I quickly dry myself off before accepting the bathrobe from her. “Only, you’re generally allowed to leave those.” I smile, giving her a quick kiss. “We should eat something.” We’ve not had anything to eat since last night’s dinner and I have no idea what time it is right now.
She softly shakes her head as she pushes me into a chair. “No, we’re first going to take care of your foot. I don’t think Mr Page appreciates you tracking blood all over his bedroom, even though it wouldn’t be that easy to see on this carpet.”
She picks up the medical kit and sits down on the floor next to me, resting my foot in her lap. She looks at the cut and opens the box, taking out something to clean it.
She’s pretty good at this, which isn’t too strange, with how often she’s had to patch me up. Either because we got hurt because of some people Hubert Russell sent after us or because something went wrong at a garage.
Since I can’t really work at garages that are fully on the up-and-up, with our need to be able to leave quickly and my lack of any recent places they can ask references from. I usually work in garages that have a habit of attracting people who prefer to solve their arguments with violence, or that don’t take worker safety very seriously. Usually both.
Vera cleans the wound, frowning, and I twitch every time she touches it, making her frown even more. “It would probably be better if you got stitches, but it looks clean and shouldn’t infect.” She sighs. “I’ll just wrap it up tightly and we’ll see again tomorrow morning.”
She expertly wraps my foot, her movements precise and steady. “How did it even happen?”
“Someone had pushed a glass from the counter during the struggle and I stepped in it. It was a careless mistake.” I softly tug on her shoulder, pulling her into my lap, making sure that my good leg takes most of her weight. “What happened in the shower? Why did you step between us? We could have hurt you.” The last words start a frustrated rumble in my chest.
I know she doesn’t want to talk about it, she was so relieved when Mr Page was called away and then quickly changed the topic.
She leans her head against my shoulder, taking slow breaths, sniffling quietly as she plays with the end of the belt of her bathrobe.
I reach up, taking her chin between my fingers as I look at her, turning her face to me. “What’s wrong?”
She pulls a face, her doll-like features distorting. “He was scared, terrified.”
“That was kind of what I was going for.” I try to smile but she shakes her head.
“Not that kind. If he cowered every time an Alpha tried to scare him off, he wouldn’t have lasted long in this business, right?”
“Right.”
“And he never responded to you like that before, even though you threw plenty of angry pheromones at him earlier.” She puts her hand over mine, leaning her cheek into the palm of my hand, taking a deep breath, like she’s steeling herself.
“In the shower, he reacted at the same time my instincts kicked in. We were in close quarters, you were trying to get him to back off, but he didn’t. We were trapped. I…” She closes her eyes, but not before I catch a glimpse of pain in them.
“You tried to appease us.” I lean closer to her, kissing her forehead, remembering the first time this happened to her, when her instinct was to submit, to appease the Alphas in the area so they would leave us alone.
We hadn’t been together for long, just a few months, and some of Hubert’s pack mates had tracked us down, cornered us in an alley.
My heart still races when I think of how she’d stumbled back, fallen over, her appeasing pheromones coming off her in waves. My brain seemed to disconnect for a moment as I took us both out of the situation, barrelling through Hubert’s pack mates and bringing her to safety.
That same disconnect happened this time too, only she stepped between us, no longer scared but actively trying to break me out of it.
“He did too.” Her voice is soft, quiet. “Mr Page tried to appease you too. At the exact same moment it happened to me.”
“I didn’t notice it. I would have backed down if I’d noticed it.” I hope I would. Attacking an Omega who tries to appease an Alpha with pheromones is very dangerous, it can lead to some really bad mental shit for Alphas. Because the only time an Omega goes into that state is when their Alpha is around.
It’s triggered when an Alpha reaches a certain state of ‘back off’ vibes, a frenzied state, when the Alpha knows there’s no way out but to go through, and can only be triggered when they’re around their fated Alpha.
When they’re around their fated Alpha…
I was the only Alpha around when it happened to Mr Page…
“Oh, no.” I close my eyes, leaning my head back, realisation setting in. “He’s ours.”