Page 11

Chapter 11

Ava

For a moment, in the aftermath of my orgasm, I feel nothing but pleasure and bliss.

That was amazing. I’ve never had an orgasm like that before. I tell myself it’s only because it’s been so long since I had sex or felt the touch of another person like that, but… the way that they smelled , the way they looked at me and touched me…

It’s unlike anything I’ve felt before. And while I try to deny it in my mind, my body knows the truth.

Almost better than the pleasure is the erasure of my pain. It was the worst cramping pain I’d ever been in, like fire in my belly, and now it’s abated. I can stretch my limbs out. I feel such relief.

But as that all fades, something else wells up in me instead: a sob.

Tears spring into my eyes and pour down my cheeks. I don’t even know entirely why. I just had an amazing orgasm, and my pain is gone. I should be relaxed and happy. Instead, I just feel so small and overwhelmed.

I sob hard and curl up into a ball. Ethan and Garrett exchange alarmed looks.

This is so embarrassing. No, worse than that, it’s humiliating. I can’t believe this is happening to me.

“S-sorry,” I choke out, stumbling to my feet and pulling my pants back up. “E-excuse me.”

I dash to the bathroom and slam the door behind me. My knees give out, and I slide to the floor, my back pressed to the now closed door. I hide my face in my knees.

My body is shaking, and each sob makes me heave. I don’t understand. I feel like I’m floating apart, like my body isn’t fully tied to the earth anymore.

“Ava?” Ethan calls. “Are you okay?”

Pounding starts on the door. “Ava.” Garrett’s voice is a low growl, but it doesn’t make me scared. He doesn’t sound angry, just concerned. “Ava, open up.”

I should stay hidden in here. When I get upset, I just want to be left alone. At least usually. But right now, I have this unending need for a hug. I want to be held. I haven’t been held in a long, long time.

“What’s wrong?” Ethan says. He sounds pleading. “Ava, please tell us what’s wrong.”

“Ava, open the door.”

Before I can even truly decide, I find myself standing and opening the door.

I’m crying even harder as arms pull me in. I recognize it’s Ethan by his scent, and I burrow into him as I inhale his warm, loving campfire smell.

He carries me to the bed and sits down on it, keeping me in his lap. He rocks back and forth a little, just a bit, and rubs my back.

“Did we hurt you?” Garrett asks. He sounds stricken.

I already suspected that Garrett’s not nearly as hard-hearted as he likes to act. He didn’t have to help me out just now with that orgasm and he wasn’t aggressive or possessive as he did it. He was truly helping me out. I worry most Alphas would’ve knotted me without a second thought, but Garrett made it all about me.

Now, I have confirmation of his soft heart. He’s looking at me like he’s going to tear his own hand off if I say that he hurt me.

I shake my head. “You did nothing wrong.” My words come out as hiccups, I’m crying so hard.

My stomach curls in shame. I’m good at hiding my emotions and dealing with things on my own at least most of the time, and now here I am, crying uncontrollably. I feel like a child.

“It’s okay,” Ethan soothes. “You’re okay. Just cry it out. We’re here for you.”

“What’s wrong?” Garrett asks again. I can tell he wants a solution. He wants to fix things and make it all better, and it comforts me. But there’s really nothing he can do in this situation. He can’t fix my heart.

“I’m…” I pause. Am I really about to tell this story?

Nobody knows about Marcus and what happened. I haven’t gotten close enough to anyone to think I could trust them with this. But now that I’m such an absolute mess, maybe it’s time for me to share this.

They deserve to know why I’m so scared, after all. Since it’s not really their fault.

“I’m…”

“Deep breaths,” Ethan gently reminds me.

I do as he tells me. His smell and presence are grounding. “I didn’t present until I was already in college. I know that’s late for people. My parents are both Betas, so I thought I was a Beta too.”

Garrett nods. He crouches down in front of us so that we’re eye to eye, his gaze on me intense but kind.

I take another deep breath and continue. “Before I knew I was an Omega, I had a boyfriend. Named Marcus.

“In movies they always… you know. Show abusive people as so loud and violent. You think, how could someone possibly date that person? Don’t they know this person is bad news? It’s obvious that the guy is a jerk.”

“You were abused?” Ethan asks.

Garrett’s already growling low in the back of his throat.

“Not physically. Or… I worry it might have gotten to that point, honestly. I wouldn’t put it past him.”

Garrett’s growling grows louder.

I’ve never had an Alpha growl over me in a protective way. Marcus would growl, but it was at me. It was to put me in my place. Garrett looks like he’s going to track Marcus down and rip his throat out.

“He started out so nice.” I want them to understand. I need them to understand. “He was so charming .”

My head falls to Ethan’s shoulder and I stare down at my hands as I talk, unable to meet their gazes anymore. Ethan tightens his hold on me slightly and keeps rocking me.

“He was so popular. I never understood why he was interested in me. I suppose maybe that was part of it. I wasn’t popular. I was quiet. I kept to myself. He saw someone he could manipulate easily that way.”

Garrett snorts, not at me, but like he thinks that’s bullshit. I try to smile, but it doesn’t quite fit on my face.

“And I thought I was a Beta, so I had my expectations… tempered, I guess you could say. I knew he’d probably want to find an Omega someday, so I was all right if it wasn’t too serious. But he would do all these romantic gestures for me, so I started to think that maybe it could be something more.”

My face burns with embarrassment. Marcus drew me in with his charm, and it still stings to think about it, especially considering how bad things got once he showed his true colors.

“But then he started… commenting on things,” I whisper. “How I ate. What I ate. How much I ate. How I did my hair. What clothes I wore. And I was young and hadn’t ever had anyone paying attention to me like that before, so I would follow his suggestions because I wanted to make him happy. I thought it was a sign that he cared about me, that he would talk about these things.”

As I talk, it’s almost as if I’m back there. I can remember his scent in the back of my mind, and I can see his face when he would get angry. I can hear his voice when he would snarl and growl at me, and the horrible things he’d tell me.

“The compliments stopped coming. He would talk down to me all the time. And he would say things like ‘ I know you can do so much better. Why are you being like this?’ As if all of the insults he lobbed at me were actually my fault, and not his. I was a failure. I wasn’t being a good enough girlfriend.”

Ethan keeps rubbing my back. I close my eyes and let the tears slide down my face.

“It was terrifying. I had always thought of myself as independent.” And now I’m sharing even more.

“My parents weren’t very close to me. They never really showed me affection. I thought that meant I knew how to be on my own but I guess it made me more vulnerable than I thought because I just lapped up his charisma.”

“Hey, I get it,” Ethan says softly. “I lost my parents young. It doesn’t make you weak.”

I laugh bitterly. “I loved his Alpha nature, how strong and confident he was. But then when I was dependent on his love, he used it against me.”

Garrett growls again. I keep plowing forward. If I don’t get it all out now, I don’t know if I ever will.”

“It kept getting worse. He would tell me when I could and couldn’t go out with friends. He wouldn’t let me leave the apartment. He would pick me up and carry me places like it was nothing. The next thing I knew, he controlled every aspect of my life.”

I wipe at my eyes. “And I know that it wasn’t all at once. It was gradual. But it felt like it was all at once. One moment I was independent and free and had friends. The next moment, I blink, and I’m… I have no friends, and I’m alone, and my grades are slipping, and I can’t even leave the house without this man’s permission.”

Ethan strokes my hair. And then, tentative, like he’s not sure if he should do it, I feel Garrett’s hand on my knee.

Usually, if a man put his hand on my knee, I expect him to be flirting with me. But Garrett’s touch is soothing. Grounding. Like he wants to hold me but isn’t sure if he can.

“I’ve never been so scared in my life. I knew I had to get out. After class one day, I didn’t go home. I was able to get away and get help. I had to transfer to another college in the end.”

I sigh, remembering the entire life I had to leave behind. “I’m still not sure that my old friends know what happened. I’ve never contacted them. I’ve been too scared.”

That’s something I regret. But I also know I couldn’t have done it any differently.

“A bit after I left him, I presented as an Omega. I had just finished my degree, and was in a transition period in my life, so it was easy for me to hide the truth. I just knew that if I’d presented as an Omega when I was dating this guy that he never would’ve let me go. I would’ve been trapped with him forever.”

I’m sure that Ethan and Garrett can smell my fear on me. I can still remember that day like it’s just happened. The sensations sweeping through me, and then the horror. The fear.

It’s a fear that I’ve lived with ever since, if I’m being honest with myself. To the point where I don’t remember what it’s like to live without it.

“I never want to be trapped like that again. Not ever. I’m never going to let someone control me and my life that way. So I found someone who knew someone, and I went on suppressants and blockers, and I never told anybody the truth.”

Someone passes me a tissue to blow my nose. I look up.

Dante and Caleb now stand behind Garrett. Caleb’s the one with the tissues. All three of them look concerned.

“I guess you two heard all of that?” I whisper.

On the one hand, I’m glad. It means I don’t have to explain anything all over again. On the other hand, it means four people now know the truth about me and my pain.

Now that it’s out in the open, it feels even more real than before. This really happened to me. And now I’m outed as an Omega, at least to some people, and I have to uproot my life and change everything all over again.

Dante nods. Caleb helps me throw away the tissues. “Do you want us to track him down?” he asks. “Because we can do that. I have some tech…”

“We can rip his throat out,” Garrett growls.

I find myself laughing through my tears as I wipe my eyes. It’s just so sweet of them. “No, it’s okay.”

“Hey, you know that you should be proud of yourself, right?” Ethan murmurs. “It’s not easy to get out of a situation like that. You’re a very strong woman, Ava.”

“I don’t feel very strong right now,” I admit in a murmur. “I’m crying over everything.”

“This is something worth crying about,” Caleb points out. “Have you ever talked about this before?”

I shake my head. “Not with anyone. I considered a therapist, but I worried that my Omega status would come up so I didn’t want to take the chance.”

“You’ve been alone this whole time,” Dante says, his voice rich and low. “You haven’t ever talked about this out loud before. That’s a lot. Of course you’re going to have emotions about it. We're not judging you.”

"Fuck anyone who does," Garrett adds vehemently.

I smile. They really are sweet men. “Thank you.”

“You know that… we won’t ever do that, right?” Caleb asks. He sounds heartbroken that I might think otherwise. “Your life is yours. We would never, ever control you like that.”

Garrett growls. “Fuckers like that are the kind of Alphas who give all of us a bad name. They should be…”

Dante gives him a firm look, probably sensing I don’t want to have a lot of anger around me right now.

“I know you’re not our Omega,” Dante says. “But that doesn’t matter. You’re still a person. We’ll protect you, bonded or not. We’re going to figure this out. As long as you’re with us, we’ll take care of you.”

“You don’t owe us anything,” Ethan adds, as if he can sense my lingering concerns. “This isn’t a transaction. You deserve, all Omegas deserve, to be taken care of like this and to make their own choices in life.”

“Just because you’re bonded or in a relationship with someone doesn’t mean that you should give up your freedom or be controlled,” Caleb adds.

I nod. “That’s why I never registered. I didn’t want to end up with an Alpha like him. I wanted to keep myself safe and stay in control of my life.”

“You deserve that,” Dante tells me seriously.

The other three nod in agreement.

It warms my heart. With most other Alphas, I’m not sure I would trust it. I would be wary and wondering if they were just saying these things to placate me and lure me into a false sense of security. Marcus really messed with my head, and I’m only now realizing just how deep my trust issues run.

But I don’t feel that way with these four men. I feel like they’re telling me the truth. I feel safe. They look at me with their eyes alight with earnestness, like they really would go to the ends of the earth to help me feel okay.

I told my story. I told the truth about Marcus. And the world didn’t fall down. It’s kind of amazing, and mostly a relief.

“Thank you,” I tell them, and I mean it.