Page 91 of Run Wild Omega

We go.

Tess

Fourteen days.

That's how long I've been a claimed Omega.

Not really, obviously. But that's how long it's been since Wyatt put a blade to my neck and sealed the cut with his mouth, and fourteen days is apparently long enough to start forgetting that none of it is real.

The scent doesn't help. There's always a faint residue, a ghost of woodsmoke and pine and sagebrush that clings to my skin like a memory. But the unmistakable overlay that says claimed to anyone who gets within three feet? That fades in about thirty-six hours. Sometimes less if I shower, which I do, because I'm not an animal.

Which means they have to keep coming back.

Every day. Sometimes twice. One of them—or two, or all three—appears at whatever location I’m occupying, slides into my personal space with a practiced efficiency that would be impressive if it weren’t so infuriating, and refreshes the mark. Neck, wrists, the curve of my throat. Breath on skin, lips on pulse points, fingers pressing just firmly enough to hold me still while they work.

It takes about five minutes. They’ve gotten good at it.

I’ve gotten good at pretending it doesn’t affect me.

My life, for the past two weeks, has narrowed to a geography of three locations. My parents’ house, where I sleep and eat and try not to feel like a twenty-seven-year-old regression. The café where I sit in the corner booth with my crutches propped against the wall and pretend I’m helping Mom with inventory instead of just watching her work. And the Lodge, where Mrs. Lacey has taken me under her wing with a brusque tenderness that makes my throat tight.

“You’re not useless,” she told me on day three, pressing a clipboard of linen inventory into my hands and pointing me at the supply closet. “You’re recuperating. There’s a difference. Now count the pillowcases.”

I counted the pillowcases. Then the towels. Then the napkins. Then the table runners. By the end of the first week, I’d audited every linen closet, storage room, and supply shelf in the Lodge. Mrs. Lacey had me move on to scheduling—cross-referencing staff availability with the booking calendar, identifying coverage gaps, flagging conflicts.

It was administrative work, desk work, nothing like the physical job I’m used to. But it was something. It was useful.

It was also the only place I could go that wasn’t my parents’ house.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my parents. I love the house I grew up in, the creaky floorboards and the smell of Dad’s coffee and the way Mom hums when she’s cooking. But I haven’t lived here since I was seventeen, and the adjustment has been brutal.

The walls are close. The ceilings are low. My childhood bedroom—which I haven’t slept in for ten years—has been reconfigured around my injury, with a bedside table crowded with pill bottles and a wedge pillow that elevates my leg at the prescribed angle.

Every time I roll over and see those bottles, I’m reminded that I’m not an adult living an independent life. I’m a patient recovering in her childhood home, surrounded by the artifacts of who she used to be.

The trophies on the shelf. The posters on the wall. The photo of seventeen-year-old me and Wyatt at prom, frozen in a moment that feels like it belongs to someone else entirely.

Dad catches me staring at it one morning. He doesn’t say anything, just squeezes my shoulder on his way past and leaves the room.

Later that day, the photo is turned face-down on the shelf.

I didn’t ask him to do it. But I don’t ask him to turn it back.

The crutches I’ve adjusted to. Mostly. I’ve developed a rhythm—a hop-crutch-hop that gets me from point A to point B without too much wincing. My arms are stronger than they’ve ever been, and my shoulders have a permanent ache from the constant strain. But I can navigate the house, the café, the Lodge. I can get to the bathroom by myself. I can make a cup of coffee one-handed while balancing on one crutch.

Small victories.

The thing I haven’t adjusted to is the lack of space. Not physical space—though the house does feel smaller with me in it, my cast and crutches taking up room in every doorway and hallway. I mean emotional space. Mental space. The invisible boundary that separates you from the people around you, the distance you need to process your own thoughts without someone else’s presence bleeding into them.

There is no distance in this house. Mom checks on me every forty-five minutes. Dad hovers in doorways. Daniel calls three times a day. Mara texts constantly—updates, questions, articles she thinks I should see, little check-ins that are sweet but relentless.

And then there are the men.

They come in shifts, like a rotation that no one explicitly organized but everyone implicitly follows. Dylan in the early morning, before the café opens. Wyatt midday, between calls. Miles late in the afternoon, his tablet in hand, already reviewing whatever data he’s collected that day.

They don’t just scent me and leave. They sit. They talk. They bring things—coffee from the station, a book from the library, a container of Mrs. Lacey’s soup that she definitely didn’t make for them but definitely expected them to deliver.

They’ve formed a routine around my recovery that feels so natural it’s disorienting. Wyatt refills my water glass without being asked. Dylan picks up my crutches when I set them down and puts them where I’ll need them next. Miles notices when my pain medication is due before I do and quietly sets the pills on the table beside me.