Page 19 of Knot As It Seems

Calloway’s arms feel steady underneath me, his chest the safe harbor I’ve always dreamed of; I just wish I knew if I could trust it to stay.

“Omega,please, tell me what to do. What do you need? What hurts are you living right now?”

It’s so dumb, but if I cover myself up this early on in our knowing each other, it’s a bad precedent to set. “You reached for me in my sleep and it was nice until I wondered how many times you’d done it withher.I’m just her stand in. The one you get, not the one you really want, the one you had and lost. I can’t trust any of these instincts telling me to let myself want you in any capacity, because all I can picture is her having you first.”

A pained cry slips out of his throat, filling the space between us, and then he’s shaking right along with me. “Fable.Fuck. I don’t want you to hurt like this. Any information you need, just ask, okay? This is so incredibly confusing, and I don’t know if you’ll believe me, but my alphaknows the difference and he always did. Winslow was the omega we thought we had, but she was never ours. Not the way you already are.”

I turn, face hot and wet and swollen from sobbing against him, relishing in the cooler air against my skin. For ease of conversation, I throw a leg over him so I’m straddling him, and my omega wakes the fuck up; but we need answers more than we need to be knotted.

I think.

“I don’t know what that means.”

Gods damn it, his eyes are so perfect. So dark, so kind. It can’t be this easy.

He’s studying my face, then his hands carefully lift, cupping my cheeks so his thumbs can clear away the debris on my face. “You sure you want to hear it?”

I nod.

“With Winslow, we were always waiting for her to fully give herself to us. We gave her everything she asked for, tried our best to woo her, then were confused when she didn’t respond the way an omega being courted should react. She was never fazed by our scents, made up some lie about why, and was always closed off. We fought about as much as we didn’t. When it was good, it was really good, but it never felt true and those moments never lasted.

“She was always off chasing other things, and probably other alphas. She’d come back when she needed money or something and would be sweet talking us about a future she never really wanted with us, and I think we all knew she was only with us because she felt we were good for her, not because her heart was in it. That doesn’t makeany sense with the scent she carried, because it drove us fucking crazy. She knew we were stuck with her though because we were addicted to the wayyoumade her smell. Never addicted to Winslow herself.

“She didn’t like to be held, didn’t like to be soft unless there was something in it for her. When we found you in that house and I saw you in that room… I don’t think words can describe how hard my alpha latched onto you.”

Nice words, but there’s no way that’s right. They were all nasty yesterday at the house. “You were all so angry. I felt like I was being rejected all over again.”

He pulls me against his chest, wrapping me up so tight I can barely breathe. “I’m sorry,

Fable. I’m so damn sorry. If only I’d have gone to that house, even once, I’d have gotten you out of there and known you so much sooner.”

“Why didn’t you? You were supposed to come rescue me. You were supposed to be my alphas, and now I can only think of your hands on her and it makes me want to rage.”

“I can’t go back and change anything; I can only try to start a new future with you and look for ways to make it up to you for our unknowing betrayal. Wait— you didn’t think we knew about you, did you?”

“What else was I supposed to think? There I had Winslow telling me about all the ways my scent made you guys use her, forcing me to literally stitch her up from being knotted, slathering healing ointment on her intimate spaces because my scent matches wanted her so badly that they tore her apart…Calloway I don’t know if I can ever see you guys in that way now. There’s too much history that’s already ruined it.”

“I can’t compete with somebody your sister invented, love. I can only be the best alpha I can manage to be and interact with the omega that’s been put into my life, sitting right here in front of me. I do think though, if you throw away what we could be before we even try, that your sister wins. If we’re able to build something new, however, in spite of what she fought so desperately to prevent happening, then that’s a pretty big slap to the face, don’t you think?”

I drop my forehead to his shoulder and inhale him, letting the floral scents and the delicate white tea wash over me, thinking that over. It does make a kind of sense.

His arms tighten around me, his hair tickling my face from the back of his neck where it’s poking through. Disregarding what Winslow said or acted like or informed me of, how does this alpha I’m using as a bench make me feel?

If I give into the fact that he’s my scent match, there’s an overwhelming need to be fused to him, to touch every inch of his skin and play with his hands and his lips, to soak in his scent and maybe even claim him so no one else gets to.

“Thank you for my things. You must have been up all night, shopping for them. I should let you sleep…”

He snorts. “No, you should not. You should stay exactly where you are and let me hold you longer.”

“Why, because it will drive your packmates crazy, knowing you got close to me and they didn’t?”

“I’m not trying for an angle here, Fable. This is my life, not a game where we compete to see who gets more of your attention.”

I exhale roughly, giving myself some space to breathe. I cock my head to the side and study his gorgeous face, then I lift my hands to it to test his reaction. He stays calm, stays still, so I proceed.

I map out the high cheekbones and the angle of his jaw a few inches under his ear, trace the softness of his ear and the line of his neck where his tendons are standing out, then the stubble on his broad jaw and above his wide set lips, sweeping under both eyes with my thumbs and then across his eyebrows.

“You’re so godsdamn beautiful, you know that?”