I can’t breathe properly. A weight is crushing my chest. His gaze on me is heavy and knowing, seeing right through me.
“Will you girls be okay if I take her home?” he asks.
“I’m going with you,” June says.
“We’re all coming with,” Gigi says, a glint in her eye. “No offense, but we don’t really know you to trust you with Coco.”
“No offense taken,” Atticus says.
It feels weird, not being in charge. I’m used to leading this merry band of thieves. But the shock still has me in its grip. Letting this massive alpha take over feels natural.
Isn’t it?
I want him to take over and keep me safe tonight.
Atticus has a sleek black Jeep—I know, generic, but I’m not good with brands, especially not tonight—and we all pile up inside.
It almost feels like a high school excursion, only I feel terribly cold and am grateful for June’s arms around me. She’s practically pulled me into her lap and the other girls are pressed to either side of us. We’re a pile of puppies inside this alpha’s expensive car.
I hate feeling so vulnerable.
But I’m the luckiest girl alive to have such caring friends. Everything will be all right, everything will be okay. I find myself whispering the words under my breath, very much a sign that everything doesn’t feel all right now, but it’s okay.
I trust in time. Always have. If I’m patient, good things will come to me. My heat, revealing me as an omega. Nice people. A nice pack.
I cling to June and sink into the repetition. An old habit for when fear grips me.
You see, as a child, I suffered from bad nightmares. My parents were concerned. Took me to a therapist. Took me to classes and sleep specialists.
I was always lost in my dreams. Lost in landscapes that felt familiar but rundown and broken, with people that I know and yet foreign and alien. That feeling of displacement and estrangement, of alienation and loneliness was always present.
Thinking back, it may have been a reflection of the conflict in me, the clash between what everyone expected me to be and what I wanted to be. What I knew I was.
My nightmares these days are few and in-between, but I have a feeling tonight they will be back to haunt me.
Atticus parks on the street and opens the door for us. Gigi grumbles as she steps out and goes around the car to extract the still very drunk Ruby.
“I’ll take her home,” she says. “She needs to walk this off.”
“Will you be all right?” Atticus asks her as he reaches for me. “Or shall I drive you?”
I like that. I like that he is concerned about all of us.
“We live around the corner,” Gigi says with a smile. “Thank you, though.”
“I live in the same building as her,” June says, relinquishing her hold on me so that Atticus can pull me out of his car. “Two stories up.”
She sounds kind of... tense? I can’t focus, not with his strong hands dragging me up to my feet and slamming me against his side.
“That means I’m coming up with you,” she goes on, scrambling out of the car, “and I’ll take care of her. You can go now, thank you.”
“I’m accompanying you both up,” he says. “That’s the deal.”
“Coco,” June starts. “Do we know?—?”
“Let’s go,” I say. Maybe I should be afraid after having been dragged away by those two guys, afraid of being around such a big, powerful man. I get June’s concern, I think. What if Atticus takes advantage of us?
Of me?
