Chapter 3
1051 Words
Chloe’s pov
I didn't remember leaving Cody's study. One second the dread was pooling low in my stomach with his threat still hanging in the air, and the next the cold night was already biting at my arms, my bare feet slapping down the porch steps and into the dark.
I crossed the training yard without seeing it and didn't stop moving until Lisa's door stood in front of me, warm light glowing behind the curtain the way it always did this late.
I stood outside the door with my hand raised and never knocked.
Lisa was the only person in this pack who'd ever treated me like I mattered. Growing up as Cody's bastard, I'd learned early that most wolves in Twilight looked at me like a stray tracked in on someone's boot.
My own sisters barely spoke to me at family dinners, if I was even invited to sit at the table at all. Lisa was the one who cleaned the cuts those injuries left, who taught me to plant my feet and swing back instead of curling into a ball on the ground, who told me being good mattered more than being wanted. She never once made me feel like a burden, not on the nights I showed up at her door bruised and starving, not on the mornings she braided my hair before school like she had all the time in the world for it. She was past sixty now, her hands slower than they used to be, and if Cody threw me out of this pack tonight, I didn't even know where I'd end up, let alone how I'd protect her from two territories away.
If I told her about the Red Moon Alpha, she'd march straight into my father's study and beg him to change his mind. Cody didn't forgive begging. He'd take it out on her instead, and I'd already cost her enough.
I lowered my hand and walked away from her door.
The woods past the training yard swallowed the last of the pack house lights within a few hundred yards, and I didn't stop moving until I reached the stream that cut through the eastern edge of our territory, the water black and quick over the stones. I sat on the bank and let myself finally fall apart, my knees pulled to my chest, my throat raw from swallowing every sound I wanted to make since I'd walked into Hudson's room hours ago. Nineteen years old, and every person who was supposed to love me had already decided how much of me they could spend.
"Wandering pretty far from your pack, little Omega." A voice sneered.
I froze when four wolves stepped out from the tree line, and I recognized none of them from Twilight. One of them grinned at me like I was already his, and my whole body went cold, my pulse slamming hard enough to hurt.
I scrambled backward, my hand closing on a rock the size of my fist, and I threw it hard enough to split the lip of the one who'd spoken. He barely flinched.
Two of them grabbed my arms before I could get my feet under me, and I fought, biting and clawing and screaming until my throat gave out, my heels dragging useless furrows through the mud. Four against one wasn't a fight I was built to win, and I knew it even as I kept swinging. One of them ripped at the collar of my dress, and panic closed around my throat so tight I couldn't get air past it.
A snarl made them stop shut as it cut through their night.
The wolf who'd torn my dress went flying sideways into a tree, and then there was a man standing over me, broad-shouldered and shaking with a fury I could feel in the air around him. He tore through the other three like they were nothing until they scattered back into the dark they'd come from. I sat there in the dirt, shaking too hard to stand, and watched him turn toward me.
My pulse recognized him before my mind caught up. I didn't know his name yet, but every nerve in my body did.
"Are you hurt?" He asked calmly, his voice was gently and strained in a way that didn't match how easily he'd just thrown four grown wolves off me.
"I don't think so." My own voice barely worked.
He crouched in front of me, and up close I could see what the fight hadn't let me notice, the muscle working along his jaw, the way his eyes dragged over me like he was fighting his own instincts down. Heat rolled off him in waves I could feel against my skin from a foot away.
"That’s good." He said it like an afterthought.
"You're in heat," I said, before I could stop myself.
"So are you." He said it low, almost like an apology. "I can smell it on you."
I hadn't even realized. Between Hudson and Cody and the wolves who'd nearly torn my dress off, my body had been keeping a secret from me all night. Now that he'd said it out loud, I felt it everywhere at once, a pull low in my stomach that had nothing to do with fear I felt earlier.
His hand came up slow, giving me every chance to pull away, and rested against my jaw, his thumb tracing the curve of my cheekbone like he was memorizing it. I didn't pull away. When he leaned in, I met him halfway, and the second his mouth found mine, a current ran straight through my spine and out the soles of my feet.
He kissed like he'd been starving for this and hadn't known it until now, one hand sliding into my hair, the other flattening warm against my back to pull me into him. I felt his teeth graze my lower lip, felt the low sound he made against my mouth, and every rational thought I owned went quiet.
Hudson had marked another woman tonight without a second thought for what it cost me.
If he got to do that, I didn't see why I couldn't do the same.
I curled my fingers into Nash's shirt and didn't pull away.
- Writer
