Page 83 of Knot Your Pawn

But in ‘other’ circles, people are focused on totally different things, mostly his looks.

There’s a group of people out there who are talking crap about him, that he’s ‘too muscular’ and ‘too big’ for an Omega, that he’s ‘ugly’ because he’s so tall.

While there’s another group —luckily much louder— who are drooling all over him because of those exact same features.

It’s interesting to watch, but it also gives me uncomfortable feelings.

Because that’s my Omega they’re talking about.

That’s my Omega they’re ogling.

He’s mine!

I’m reading all the reactions to try and distract myself from the constant feeling of doom, from waiting for the Hearts to do something. From waiting for the Hearts to reveal who he was before he was Mathew Page, when he was still ‘Michael, King of Hearts’.

Many people won’t care that he was underage, that he was forced into the work, that he didn’t have a choice. They’ll only see that he worked at a brothel and see that as enough reason to hate him, to reject him.

All the while, for the people who run the brothel and those who frequent it, there are no repercussions at all, while they’re the ones at fault.

But the Hearts have been quiet so far. Maybe Mathew’s threat to them still works.

Because if they reveal his past, his story will show people that they can break away from the Hearts, and the Hearts don’t want that. It will show that the Hearts aren’t as all-powerful as they like to pretend they are. It will hurt Mathew, but could hurt the Hearts even worse.

Our intentions to take down the brothel haven’t changed, but we might need to adapt the plans now this is all over the internet.

We’ve carefully been working with some smaller organisations and groups of people, to try and build a network that can help the kids when they’ve been taken from the Hearts. To provide places to sleep, places to heal, new identities. Anything to get them a new start in life.

Most of those people haven’t responded negatively, many have actually responded really positively. Though, that might be because Vera and Luca have taken most of that on. So, they’ve been dealing with a headstrong Omega and a soft Beta the whole time.

But we’ll have to be careful for a while. Until we can be sure that nobody is going to rat us out to the Hearts. Until we can be sure that we’re not going to be betrayed.

And that is if all this attention doesn’t spook the Hearts and makes them nervous enough to change the security or potentially close down the brothel entirely.

They won’t want to close it, because it makes them a lot of money and it will also spook too many of their ‘customers’. But if this makes them feel nervous enough, they might still do it.

That would mean that the kids who are there right now will be spread over all the other brothels, and they might even end up in places we have no idea about.

It means they’ll get hidden even deeper in the system and makes it much harder to get them out.

Right now, we can only wait. Wait to see what the Hearts will do, wait for things to die down and wait for more information so that we can slowly build our plans to take the brothel down.

I’m not that good with waiting.

‘You want company?’ Vera’s message lights up my phone.

‘Sure.’ I’m in my room, in the closet, hoping that the quiet and calm will help my mind to stay on task and not spin all over the place.

It hasn’t worked, not entirely.

Instead of reading horrible articles and people being mean, I’ve been scrolling social media to read all the comments where people are drooling all over my pack mates. More positive, but just as bad for my brain.

I agree with every compliment they give them, but also hate that anyone is talking about my pack mates in that way at all. It’s... complicated.

The door to my room opens, and a few moments later, Vera slowly opens the door to my closet. She looks at me, her eyes unreadable, before she slides right under the blankets, curling up against me closely, letting her sweet honey pheromones out.

“Is everyone doing okay?” I’ve been up here for a while, but when I left the office, everyone was working hard and we didn’t know much yet.

“Not much has changed. It appears that the photographer shared the pics with some close people first, many of them started sharing them around, before she started selling the pics. At this point, we just presume everyone has seen them, makes things simpler.” She lets out a long breath as she nuzzles against my side more.