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Somehow, I knew the answer before it came, by the way Thistle’s eyes lit up.
“Ace came in one night.”
“And you scent matched him?”
Fuck me. I tried to picture the bloodbath that must have followed the day Ace Maverick walked in to find bottom feeding criminals with their claim all over his scent match…
“Well, yeh I guess, though I didn’t know at the time.”
“You didn’t know?”
“I thought he was really amazing, but I didn’t think he could be my… mine.”
I considered that. Odd thing for an Omega to be unsure of, but then, it was so clear she didn’t see her own beauty. “You said your dad gave you to them. How old were you?”
“Uh…” I think it was the first time I saw the light truly die from her eyes as she contemplated that. She shrugged, frowning as she peered at her sketch.
“You don’t have to talk about it.” I tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear, my touch lingering on her cheek. “I just…” I cleared my throat. “Want to know about you.”
We sat in silence for a long time. I could almost feel her scent unwinding and spiking again, like she wasn’t sure what to make of me. She worked on a tree on the page, and adjusted Bunny two or three times. There were parts of the drawing that were amateur and unrefined—perspective and placement that were a bit too literal—which made sense if she hadn’t drawn much. But she’d also started with shadow and shapes, corrected small details and built out the lighting in a way that suggested she had a discerning eye.
The looks she was shooting me ranged from unsure, to suspicious, and I took another piece of apple, wondering what conversation she was having with him in her head.
Finally, she peered up at me from beneath thick eyelashes. “I was like… uh, seventeen. But it wasn’t so bad. I always had Bunny, wasn’t alone like some of the others.”
Seventeen?
How old was she now?
Twenty-two?
“But the others got packs, or Alphas to love them,” she muttered. Then she looked up at me. “I was really stupid back then, and I think it was worse ‘cause Dan said he shouldn’t have to waste his time teaching an Omega like me my place,but I didn’t know before… I barely knew what it meant to be an Omega at all. Just had my dad and brothers and they didn’t care.” She pressed the head of the mechanical pencil so aggressively one of the slips of lead tumbled out. She didn’t notice, empty tip of the pencil tracing uselessly over her drawing. “I even went into heat when I arrived. He said I was too young—meant I was a whore.”
I frowned, processing that. It wasn’t abnormal, going into heat that early. Depending on when an Omega presented, they could go into heat before they were adults, but heats before maturity were dulled, and easily suppressed with over-the-counter pills.
“And after,” Thistle went on, before I could collect my thoughts. “He said I’m the worst he’s seen because my heats came so often.”
“They came often?”
She wrinkled her nose, her voice turning mocking, but the pencil had slipped from her fingers, and she was tense.“You always know an Omega slut, because they can’t stop going into heat when they disobey Alphas.”
I stared at her, mind scrambling, a vile sickness in my stomach. “You went into heat irregularly?”
And… when she’d done something wrong?
That didn’t sound right at all.
“Kinda.” She shrugged. She was tense, an incomprehensible whisper slipping from her lips as she picked up Bunny.
I shifted closer, and she jumped violently as my fingers curled around her arm, but she didn’t look up. I drew her onto her knees and then into my arms, following my instincts as her whispers to Bunny became incomprehensible.
I wanted to just hold her, but something about the story wasn’t right.
“Did they give you medications?” I asked, weaving my fingers through her hair and holding her tight.
“Um… yeh. Nasty injections to manage my instincts when I was really bad. ‘They’re haywire’—he’d always sayhaywire. Stupid word for a stupid Alpha.”
She was shaking violently.
