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The berries turn in my stomach. The throb of the bond between us is enough to completely ruin any appetite I had. It feels like a physical thing, curling around my neck, pulling tight like a cord or a leash. The poisonous connection Grayson forged during my first heat will be written in silvery white flesh on my collar for the rest of my life. But the bond it carries is fading. The poison is dulled now. Muted. And it’s a small comfort to know that someday soon, I won’t have to feel him anymore.
When he forced me to accept his knot and sealed his claim with the tearing of teeth through flesh, I’d never felt more violated. More small and insignificant and helpless.
When I presented as an Omega, not long before my seventeenth birthday, I’d barely had time to think about what that would mean. How my life would change. Whether I could get into an Omega Academy. I never imagined myself with a Pack—I didn’t have the time to imagine what I wanted my life to be like.
I didn’t ask my stepbrother for his help. I didn’t want his help.
If he’d just knotted me, I might have been able to endure it. My body begged to be filled. The need was so strong. I used to feel his moods through the bond, like a thunderstorm that came on suddenly. Bringing me to my knees with the intensity of his feelings. The corruptive jealousy he felt when he didn’t get what he wanted. The repulsive joy I knew he felt when he forced himself on some poor Beta. And worst of all, the all-consuming rage he felt when he realized I’d escaped.
Even miles away, the rage shook my body, till I thought my ribs might break from the gasping breaths I took.
It wasn’t all Grayson, of course. It was my father, too.
The father I used to call Papa. Now, that nickname disgusts me.
Roger Castle could’ve stopped Grayson. My Omega status might have taken us by surprise, but he could have kept his son from going into a rut if he really wanted to. Called in a security team to protect me, or just driven me away by himself.
But he didn’t.
He just let Grayson do whatever he wanted to me. Like the years he spent raising me after he bonded to mom were nothing to him. Like I wasn’t even his child, just a sacrifice to throw to his beloved son.
“Stop it,” I whispered to myself. I refused to spend any more time thinking about them today. It was my birthday; it was a lucky day. I’d think about the good times.
I’d think about Momma.
Momma, who taught me what berries were safe to eat.
Momma, who showed me the constellations and the stars I could use to find my way.
Momma, who let me bandage my own injuries if I fell on a hike. “You should know how to keep yourself safe, Bee,” she’d tell me.
She and Daddy—my other Alpha father, my real father—used to take me to Olympic on the weekends. While Papa worked, they brought me here. When I was little, they’d each take one of my hands and swing me between them. When I got older, I loved how they talked to me like I was a grown-up. Sharing everything they knew about nature.
Little lessons that added up over the years.
I don’t think Papa ever realized how much I knew about surviving. He didn’t ask questions about my trips with Momma and Daddy. So he probably had no idea that I knew how to start a fire, to catch and clean fish, to create a basic shelter.
He never expected that I had anywhere to go. But thanks to Momma, I did.
She must have known that I might need to escape. She trained me to survive out here, just in case. Who knows what she suspected or maybe already knew about Papa’s true self? I wonder sometimes if he hurt her. It would have been hard to hide from me and Daddy, but not impossible.
I hope I’m wrong. I hope everything changed only after she died. That Papa turned into a cold monster suddenly. Because it’s so much worse to think he’d been a monster all along.
More negative thoughts. I pinch my arm, hard, and sniffle through the burn in my nose. I have to snap out of it. If I sit here contemplating every bad thing that ever happened to me, I could miss the scent of hikers coming.
“Good thoughts,” I whisper to myself. My voice sounds rusty to my ears; I barely use it.
When I bite on another sweet berry, I just think about Momma. I can picture her gap-toothed smile, which I wish I’d inherited. At least I got her eyes. One ice blue, one brown, turned down a little at the sides.
“We’re like huskies,” Momma used to joke. Then she’d bark at me, which made me giggle.
My body looks like hers now, too. I’ve always been small, but my body has filled out since I escaped. My arms and legs are thin, but strong, thanks to the work I do to build my shelter and forage for food. But I’ve got soft curves now, too.
I wish Mom could have seen the woman I’ve grown up to be.
I can still feel her ghost in the woods with me. I feel her when I find patches of foxglove flowers, or spot a sandpiper by the lake. Maybe Momma even guided me to that berry bush today, to make sure I had a birthday treat.
It’s hard to feel really alone with her spirit still so loud in the wind.
