Good Girl by Sam Hall

Chapter 25

“You look like you’re not doing so well. Do you mind if I sit here on the floor with you?” she asked.

I didn’t reply. I couldn’t. Speaking required having opinions. Opinions required thought. Thoughts resulted in emotion, and there were tidal waves of it smashing against the four walls I’d erected around me, creating a mental nest. I wasn’t lowering them for anything, not for my therapist, not anyone. I’d keep them up to the end of my days, learn to function better with them, do important things like shower and be able to hold conversations. They would keep me safe, I knew that with a surety that pulsed louder and clearer than the need inside me. When I held them firm, they made everything mute. Longing for Rhys, the endless rehashing of what had gone down, my heat, my mating, my… I let out a long whistling breath. No more thoughts, no more feelings.

“Cyn, your mother filled me in on the details that she’s aware of, but what would really help me is to listen to your side of things.”

No, no fucking way. She could expect all she liked. She wasn’t getting it. The waves grew higher, I could almost hear them roaring as they smashed into my walls, drowning her out. I focussed on strengthening them.

“Cyn? I can talk about what she told me. I can spend all the hours your mother paid for, sitting here, talking about and analysing that, if you want.”

I didn’t want anything, didn’t she get that? Wanting was worse than thinking. I’d been all excited about my first season when I was eighteen, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, yearning with every fibre of my being to find the alpha to complete me. Instead, I’d been led into a darkened room with a predator who—

“You don’t want to talk, that’s obvious. There are some things to consider though. Alphas have rights to their mates, something your mother wasn’t aware of. Rhys, I think his name was, can petition through the courts for access to his mate. I know she’s mobilising her legal team now so—”

“What?”

My voice was cracked from disuse, my throat closing down, a series of dry coughs robbing me of any further words, but the damage was done. She handed me the water bottle, and that was all it took to break my will. Of course it did.

“You think you’re weak,” she said.

My eyes jerked up, the walls inside me starting to shake as I did so. I’d tried to make them strong, but just one little bit of eye contact threatened everything I’d created. When I met her gaze, my eyes hurt, and when they hurt, that was it—the straw that broke the camel’s back. I couldn’t bear any more pain, and she knew it. She had good, clinical reasons for it, I’m sure, shuffling closer until her court shoes were almost touching mine. I grit my teeth, staring back at her deliberately. If she wanted to see, she could. I’d fall apart, and she’d be my witness, reporting back to Mum.

“Of course I’m weak.” Hands on my shoulder, steering me into the room, pushing me down. Hands herding me in the direction they thought I should take. Shepherding me towards one person or another, shifting me to where I was needed. Hands holding me close, cradling me within— “It’s what I am. What all omegas are.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“Why not? The world does. Legally, we’re little other than children. Any mate we take basically has partial power of attorney over us.” I bit off every word.

“And the world’s full of dumb rules that serve someone,” she shot back. “But this isn’t about omegas, it’s about you. Fuck your designation.” My eyebrows jerked up at that. “I’m outside of my consulting rooms,” Rosemary explained. “I can get away with being a bit more forward. What do you feel, Cyn? Not about omega rights and the way of the world, but you. What did they do to you?”

Fuck, I could hear the walls inside me cracking at the sound of her voice. It was strategic, what she was doing, all her professional calm gone. She sounded strident, uncompromising, pissed.

Pissed for me.

“There’s many theories about depression, but there’s one I like for instances like this. Internalised anger. Sometimes women, alpha, beta, or omega, don’t feel like they can lash out. Smashing your fist into a wall, into a door, into the face of the person who wronged you is off the table. Trashing your bedroom…” We both looked around at the enclosed space, smelling stale now from having the windows closed. “Trash your car, your house, trash yourself.” Her brown eyes were warm and kind but uncompromising. “People try to tell me that designation overrules gender, but there are differences, trust me. The part of us that’s raised to care for others, care for any children we might have, doesn’t want to lash out, knowing the pain that will cause. Instead, we hurt ourselves. Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you aren’t beating yourself up right now. Tell me you aren’t angry, wanting to deliver a beatdown.”

She called this strategic challenging. She’d explained it to me one day when I was finding her questions stressful. The purpose of posing questions we didn’t necessarily want to answer was to get us thinking, considering perspectives outside our own.

Rosemary got to her feet as she heard a muffled sound at my window, putting her hand on the sill, reaching for the sash to open it.

“No!” I barked.

“No? Why, Cyn? What are you going to hear? What are you trying to block out?” The window creaked as she raised it a fraction, his voice sneaking into the sour smelling nest I’d created in my mind. One padded with ash, tears, and broken dreams, to replace what I’d lost.

“Cyn, please!”

“Please is promising,” Rosemary said. “Not a lot of rapists and fuck boys use please, though it’s not unheard of. Why don’t you want to hear what he has to say?” She peered out the window, her eyebrow cocking upwards. “He’s quite the specimen. No mistaking him for anything other than an alpha.”

A low growl escaped my lips as it all rushed up. Was I warning her off him or just the whole fucking world? My walls weren’t broken down, they were incinerated, pure unadulterated fire roaring inside me.

“Cyn…” His voice was nails raking down the blackboard of my soul. “Omega!”

I stiffened, like a gazelle on the savanna, pretty damn sure a fucking big lion was lurking in the bushes, about to make me its dinner. Every muscle quivered at the sound of Rhys’ command, adrenalin pumping through my body, getting ready to fight or flight.

“Omega, you need to—”

I didn’t catch the rest of it, striding over to the window and slamming it down so fucking hard, the therapist had to jerk her fingers away or have them broken. The glass didn’t fare as well, cracking and crazing across the whole pane. I stood there, looking down, my view of the world fractured in a multitude of little shards, and that seemed just about right. I stared down at the figures on my mother’s lawn, seeing only one. More mountain than man, he paced across the grass, back and forth, and then his head jerked up, those eyes burning like blue flame as they gazed up at me.

But he wasn’t getting that, the chance to stand there, pining after me like some Romeo to my Juliet. My fists balled in the correct form, thumbs on the outside, just like Kai had taught me, and then I strode over to the door.

Trash your room, punch the door.The therapist’s words reverberated around in my head as I wrenched mine open, catching Mum hovering there, an audience for the moment when I slammed the fucking thing into the wall, the handle burying itself into the plaster, but I didn’t pause to inspect my handiwork. I thundered down the stairs at speed, which was impressive, given my light frame, then zoomed through the living area, Mum on my heels.

“Cyn, don’t you think—?”

“No. No, no, no!” My mum jerked back like I’d fucking slapped her, and for a second, I realised what being an alpha must feel like. You declared things, and lo and behold, it happened, your demands met automatically, the power gifted you by biology making it so. “You knew. They knew. Everyone fucking knew.” The last bit was where my voice broke, the tears bleeding through, but I ground my teeth hard enough to feel them crack. Not yet. I wasn’t safe.

“I didn’t want to—”

I shook my head, running over to the front door and wrenching it open, and there they fucking were.

I needed an omega psychologist, I realised, someone equipped to help me to understand this, because it didn’t make any sense. None of the omegas I’d met in real life or online talked about these parallels in their lives, moments overlaid on top of each other, despite the time elapsed.

Because they stood there in the late afternoon sun, each of the four men cast gold by the sunlight, and I saw double. Savage teenagers, much more savage adults, hiding their claws right now, but I wasn’t that omega they’d coaxed into the forest. They froze, so fucking still, it was eerie, like someone had decided to destroy my peace of mind by erecting statues of them in my yard, but I prowled closer, eyeing them with an anger and suspicion that burned so hot, sweat pricked my forehead.

“Cyn—” Rhys said, starting forward.

“Shut up, stand back, don’t come any closer.” It was my voice that was a whip crack, and I lashed them without even a second thought. “You will not fucking speak unless I give you leave.” I watched their throats work, like they wanted to disobey, but I knew without checking that they wouldn’t. Couldn’t.

“You…” I was the alpha now, moving like a hunting cat towards Orion, his skin so pale, his eyes appeared to glow. “You manipulated this whole fucking thing. Must’ve creamed your pants when I suggested Bridgerton-ing this thing. I thought I was so smart, but I played right into your hands.”

I jerked away before he responded, not wanting to give him any more of my attention, moving to Marcus.

“You knew. What I would do, what Orion would do, what Benson would do. All of it. You said you see everything coming, but you weren’t talking some alpha bullshit. You do see, all of it, and you chose to play your game rather than include me in it.”

I took a long shuddering breath, then another, before I moved again.

“You?”

I sneered now, my mouth twisting, because ugly words were about to spill out. Brendan stood tall, hand clasping at the wrist, a criminal at an execution. By taking me to meet his family, letting me sink into that, he’d stolen from me as sure as if he’d broken into my room and stripped it of valuables. In some ways, this was worse, because I could replace things.

“You said you were the spear bearer. The not alpha, pulling his forelock, following orders, doing as you were told because those brighter, smarter, or better than you delivered them. You didn’t have to. You don’t have to be their fucking servant, just to earn your place at their side. You could have told me, and I would never have let you leave mine.”

I jerked back as his eyes dropped, my feet feeling like they were encased in concrete right now, but I forced myself to move, standing farther back from Rhys, unable to countenance getting any closer. It was OK, Kai said I was never going to win if I relied on body shots. I had to dart in, deliver something punishing, then get the fuck out of Dodge.

“And you…”

I forced my eyes to study him, took in the lank hair, the filthy clothes, the leaned down and hollowed out look of my mate. My omega nature kicked me in the ribs, wanting to get closer, to stroke his brow, smooth his hair back, to hold him. I let myself feel that impulse, to give it its head for just a few seconds, before I crushed it like a bug.

“The sweet one, the growly one, the protective one, the knowledgeable one. You were the lure in their trap, and I bet you didn’t even know. There is nothing true in them, nothing pure enough to catch my heart, but you?” My teeth were an alpha’s, sharp and vicious, as the words formed in my head. “That’s what they use you for, why they keep you around. To remind them of the humanity they left far behind. You fucked me so good, tied me to you, forced me to…because you…”

I was raging. I’d been filled with a poisonous black cloud since I stumbled home, and now I’d let it out. This had been what I was scared of, why I locked myself in the room. I just needed to lie over this mess, absorbing the explosions until they finally stopped detonating. Otherwise, there was this—that cold, hard moment of regret. My words faltered, what had been dammed up inside me all having rushed out, but what was left? Just an empty fucking shell, one who witnessed Rhys’ next move in quiet horror.

He dropped down to his knees in an ugly, rickety movement that spoke of aching joints and bruised muscles, making me wonder how they’d gotten there. But the thought couldn’t stay as he made it, kneeling before me, the silence, the piercing intensity of his gaze so much more effective than any words.

Because a silence was always filled, and mine was by ragged breaths, like I’d been running for miles. That and almost sobs.

They wanted to come, the pain in my chest expanding out and out in the way pleasure had when I was with him last. Then his arms went out, a perfect display of surrender. We were the anti omega, the anti alpha, our roles totally reversed, though there was precedence.

“Pound for pound, the most powerful designation is the omega,” Kai told me. She ignored my snort of derision and continued, “They might not demonstrate it often, usually only when their children are threatened, or their mate. Omegas lifting cars off children, beating the shit out of house invaders, tearing abusive alphas to literal pieces. It’s all been documented extensively. I can give you an annotated bibliography if you like.”

“Ah, no, that’s not needed.”

“So you’ve got to have more belief in your power, omega.” This was delivered in a much more neutral tone than her usual alpha purr. “I do.” She slapped a hand down on my shoulder, then removed it just as quickly. “Find your power and don’t relinquish it to anyone. No true alpha would want you to.”

This should’ve been my “Eye of the Tiger” moment, where to the sounds of an eighties synth track, I claimed my birthright as a strong, independent omega who didn’t need no alpha. Instead, I watched the others drop down to their knees, taking their cues from Rhys again.

And they always would be. Marcus might be the brains of the operation, but Rhys was the undisputed heart, and right then, I couldn’t bear that at all. Not when my own was still so fucking bruised. So I turned and ran off, back into the house, then slamming out the backdoor to the sound of Rosemary firing herself as my therapist.

“I could be struck off the register for what went down today,” she snapped at Mum. “It wasn’t safe and could have backfired terribly—”

“Cyn!” Mum said, but I was out that door, running still, my stride getting longer and longer until I reached the trees. I paused for a second, feeling the enclosed space they created with their huge canopies of leaves, and then I dove in, muscle memory telling me where to go and why.

I arrived at the trashed car at some point. I couldn’t tell you how long it took to find it and if my tale was a symmetrical one, they would have been there, older boys intent on more convoluted, cruel games. Instead, I had someone waiting for me, one I would never have expected out here. I frowned as they watched me draw near, sucking in breath, and then they smiled.