Knot Their Omega Bundle (Paperback)

“Holy shit,” I say aloud to no one but my empty office and the computer in front of me. Sitting back in my rickety old desk chair, I fan myself with my hand. “There’s that contract finished.”

I peruse over the final chapter I just finished writing for my client, checking for spelling errors and the occasional word mix-up. The completed manuscript looks good, especially with the explosive ending scene. Hot enough to literally set fire to the rain. It’s definitely spicy enough to set me on fire, and I wrote the damn thing. Her readers will be needing a change of panties. I know I do.

Every time I have to ghostwrite romance, I get all squirmy and hot writing the sex scenes. 

Of course, squirmy and hot is a better alternative to the dark loneliness I feel when I write out the romantic scenes, the ones with the epic love confessions and handsome Alphas and Betas doing anything for their Omegas. Those just hurt. I wince, but not even the reminder of what I can’t ever have douses the flames still lingering in my core from writing that spicy group scene.

Did I touch the thermostat?

God, it’s hot in my office. 

Almost as if I’m…

Shit.

I jump out of my desk chair so fast it topples over onto the carpet with a muted thud. I dash toward the bathroom, only to trip over the bedroom slippers I left scattered in my front hallway. I catch myself with one hand on the wall before I hit the floor completely and cuss out my past self. 

When I work, I get into this perfect headspace where I can tune out the outside world and just write and write and write. The downside? I forget to take care of myself and end up forgetting things like tidying up after myself, eating three meals a day… or taking my goddamned heat suppressants.

I hurtle myself into the bathroom and catch a glimpse of my reflection in the mirrored door of the medicine cabinet. I’m an absolute mess, but that’s nothing new when I’ve been working. My straight dark hair actually has some volume to it, not because of any miracle product, but because I’ve been running my hands through it roughly every time I blank out on a scene or can’t remember the perfect word to use. Now my hair is in this messy “I survived a hurricane” hairstyle. The shadows under my eyes nearly match the violet shade of my irises. 

But it’s the flush in my cheeks and slightly enlarged pupils in my eyes that startle me most. I know what they mean.

Normally, after I finish a manuscript, I send it off to the client and then fall into bed, waking up sixteen hours later hungry and ready to work all over again. 

Not this time.

A jab of anxiety pierces my gut as I rip open the cabinet, already having a pretty good idea of what I’ll find. Or more accurately, what I won’t find.

“Please,” I whine to myself, digging past the empty bottle in the front labeled falsely as aspirin to the many others behind it. “Please, please, please.”

I shake bottle after bottle, hoping for that familiar rattle of pills, but there’s no sound at all. I’m out of heat suppressants.

“Fuck!”

How could I let this happen?

I pinch the bridge of my nose and slam the cabinet shut so hard that the lock doesn’t engage and the door bounces back toward me. Frustrated at my own irresponsibility, I lean in closer to the mirror, checking for the unmistakable signs of impending heat. My cheeks have a slight pink flush, but it’s faint enough that I would probably be the only one to notice it. 

The dilation in my pupils isn’t too bad yet, either, and while I feel that familiar thrum of need like a distant drumbeat echo in my core, I don’t have the crazed, fidgety feeling that normally goes along with it. Which means there’s still time to fix this. But when I inhale deeply to calm my nervous system I can already smell my Omega pheromones mixing with the cool but stale air of my apartment. 

“Think, Rile,” I demand to myself. When did I take my last pill?

There was that chapter I wrote, the one with all the groveling. I’d gotten up to make a sandwich and had taken one then. But that was what? Two days ago? 

I shake my head at my own idiocy.

Panic starts to bubble in my chest like a broken fountain. 

I’m never this irresponsible, not even when I was juggling my former job at the bookstore with my current ghostwriting work. I strip out of my ratty sweatpants and thin T-shirt, push open the shower curtain, and step into the small but clean shower, turning on the hot water. ‘Small but clean’ describes everything about my efficient apartment. 

It isn’t a dump by any means, but there’s nothing about it that whispers welcome home. Nothing about it that shows any emotion or sentiment other than ‘this is a place to live, and nothing more’, aside from the small nest I’ve made for myself in my bedroom. 

I grab a washcloth and coat it with scent-blocking body wash, much more than the directions recommend, but who actually pays attention to those anyway? I need to smell like something else, someone else, if I’m going to be able to leave the apartment. 

The body wash smells like vanilla and cinnamon, almost like a holiday cookie, but it works wonders and is worth the hefty price tag. Some people might buy their toiletries based on quality and the ability to make them look beautiful, but I just shop based on safety. And this body wash keeps me safe. 

After I’ve scrubbed my skin until it is pink and raw, and allowed the scent-blocker to remain on my skin, burning slightly for a few minutes before rinsing it off, I’m satisfied my Omega scent is covered for now. I turn off the shower and step out onto the rug, shivering in the cool air before I wrap myself in a gray-striped towel. 

The scent-blocker should normally last about twelve hours, but given the heat trying to build at my core, I’d give it maybe six before I’ll need another wash. Long enough for me to meet up with Kennedy and get what I need.

I go into the bedroom and dress in another plain T-shirt and jeans, tying my wet hair up into a messy bun. I won’t put on makeup or dress nice for a meeting with Kennedy. I don’t want anything to stand out about me, anything that would cause any Alpha—hell, any person—to look at me twice. I grab my cell phone from my dresser and scroll through my contacts until I find the one I need. 

Kennedy picks up after three rings, his naturally sleepy voice coming clear through the speaker. “Hey, sexy lady.”

“Hey,” I say back, glancing around my room as if someone could possibly be eavesdropping. Some paranoia never really leaves you. “I need more suppressants, Ken. I messed up my schedule, and now I’m completely out.”

He whistles, long and low. “That’s not good, Rile. How long has it been?”

“Two, maybe three days?”

He is quiet for a moment, probably calculating dosages in his head. “I can get you back on track, I think. It will have to be a higher dosage than you’re used to. Can you meet at the usual place in an hour?”

“Any chance you’d make a house call? Just this once?”

“You know it doesn’t work like that, babe.”

I sigh.

“Right. All good. I’ll see you in an hour then.” 

He hangs up without a goodbye, and I clutch the phone to my chest, my hands shaking. 

What a mess. At least Kennedy is a decent guy, not one of those skeezy drug dealers you see in the movies or on the news. He sells suppressants to help Omegas stay under the radar and designer drugs for Alphas with cash to spend, like rut-blockers or focus enhancers, or just plain old party drugs for having a good time. But while technically almost everything Kennedy sells is helpful in some way, it’s still illegal. Omegas aren’t allowed heat suppressants without the permission of the family whose care they’re in or their packs. Since I have neither, it’s pills of the illegal sort for me. 

I open up my top drawer to find the pair of red woolen socks I have balled up in the back and turn them inside out. A roll of cash falls out, and I count out the money I’ll need for today’s exchange. Once I have it, there’s only about a fourth of the cash left to tuck back into my hiding place. 

I’ll have to take on several more contracts to make up for the loss, but it’s worth the extra hours of work. I pull on my boots, tuck the money into my nondescript purse, and steel myself before heading out the door for my meeting with Kennedy.  

* * *

The ‘usual place’ is a café called Charlie’s, which serves decent coffee drinks and pastries near the university. Anyone outside this sort of life might think that these unsavory exchanges happen in darkened alleys or abandoned apartments, but it simply isn’t true. Drugs can be passed around just as easily in a family restaurant, sometimes more easily because it doesn’t look suspicious. No one expects a drug deal to go down in the same place where they just celebrated Grandma’s birthday. 

Kennedy prefers Charlie’s because he blends in, looking like one of the college students that frequent the place between classes. In another universe, it would be easy to picture him kicking around a soccer ball or hacky sack on the lawn in front of the student union. 

There are no Alphas in here, and no one has glanced my way yet other than the teenage server behind the counter, and that’s probably just to see if I’m done with my iced coffee yet so she can wipe down the lop-sided table. 

My heat symptoms are getting worse, exacerbated by my own anxiety. If I don’t get control of it, something far worse than my heat will rear its ugly head. 

Right on cue, a tick makes my head jerk and I force myself to breathe slow and easy to soothe my rapidly beating heart. My hands won’t stop trembling, and dizzy spells come over me in short bursts every few minutes. The iced coffee is helping to keep my temperature low, and I wrap my hands firmly around the cup, sloughing the condensation off with my fingers. 

I feel like I’m swaying in my seat, but again, no one has noticed, or they are too polite to say something. Or maybe they have noticed and just think I’m drunk. That would be the perfect cover, and I’d get in a lot less trouble for daytime inebriation than for illegally suppressing my heats. 

The dull bell over the door rings, and Kennedy comes through, a wide cocky grin on his face and a messy stack of mail in the crook of his arm. The guy is a total beach boy, heart and soul, from his long blond curls to the woven flip-flops on his feet, even though it’s nearly November and there’s a constant chill in the air. Even his little yellow coupe has a surfboard strapped to the top, like he’s going to find the perfect wave driving down the streets of downtown Rogers City. 

“Hey, sexy,” he says, angling his lanky body over me and giving me a tight squeeze. “I’ve missed you.” He plants a cheeky kiss on my forehead before sitting in the wobbly chair across from me. He plops his pile of mail on top of the table–and on top of the envelope of cash I’ve had sitting there since I arrived. Then he stretches out his arms and sprawls his legs into the aisleway, looking as casual and relaxed as can be. 

“Missed you too,” I say, giving him a shy grin. To any outsider, we look like close friends, maybe even college kids in the throes of their first real relationship. Sometimes I wish we were in a relationship. Everything would be so much easier. But while I enjoy Kennedy’s company, and I know he’d take care of me and treat me right, it isn’t meant to be. He’s a Beta, and neither of us is attracted to each other in any way other than friends. “How’s life treating you?”

“Same as always,” he says, stealing my iced coffee and taking a big gulp. I swat at his hand playfully, and he grins at me, showing off dimples that would rival Shirley Temple’s. “How’s your mom doing?”

“Recovering well,” I say with a shrug. “The orthopedic doctor says she can start walking without the crutches now.” It’s all a lie, a made-up conversation to keep the façade going. My mom is long gone, dead when I was three from cervus, a wasting disease that targets Omega genes, making us rare and decreasing our population as a whole. I have very little memory of my mother, other than the legacy she left me–the cervus now running through my own veins, slowly killing me.

“That’s good,” continues Kennedy, still keeping up the ruse. “I feel sorry for her physical therapist. Your mom is kind of a firecracker.”

“That she is,” I agree, swirling the plastic straw around in the coffee, clicking the half-melted ice cubes against the sides of the cup. “You should have seen her when they took the cast off. She was ready to march right out of the hospital all on her own.”

My chest pangs, imagining living in a world where what I was saying was true.

“Well, I hope she’s back to her grouchy self again soon. And what about you? How’s the writing going?” Kennedy waggles his brown eyebrows at me with a goofy leer on his pouty lips. “Anything salacious you can read me? Possibly while in my bed, feeding me grapes?”

“Yeah, that dream will never come true. And you know I can’t read you anything. I’ve got my name written on enough NDAs to keep me quiet for life.”

“You could always write me my own story. Something sexy, just for me.” He winks at me, and I shake my head with an indulgent smile.

“Absolutely not. Besides, you’d only want sexy surfer stories, and that would get old after a while, trust me.”

“What’s wrong with surfers?” he protests, gesturing at his entire body. 

I give a dramatic performance, checking him out and letting my eyes catch on every bit of him before shaking my head dismissively. “Sex and sand don’t mix.”

He opens his mouth to complain, and then snaps it shut again. “Yeah, you’re right on that one. It gets everywhere. And I mean everywhere.” He grimaces with a full body shudder. “Look, I gotta get going. I’m meeting Zoe for dinner later.” Never mind that Zoe is the name of his Himalayan cat, and dinner just means opening up a can of gourmet kitty chow for her.

Kennedy stands and stretches with a leonine yawn, showing off sleek abs that should be making me drool, but I can only admire them aesthetically, the way one would look at a Greek statue. He scoops up his mail again, leaving behind an envelope next to my nearly empty cup. “See you around, Rile.” He lumbers out of the café, the bell over the door announcing his exit.

I exhale slowly, leaning back into the café chair and closing my eyes. Kennedy is extra smooth at these types of exchanges, but I can’t help the anxiety that overtakes me every time. I pick up the envelope from the table—identical to the original one but with completely different contents—and tuck it safely into my purse. I wait a few more minutes, finishing up my coffee, and then stand and head straight to the bathroom.

I stop a moment to catch my breath, which has become shallower over the past few minutes, then I tear open the envelope and pull out one of the heat suppressants. The pill is white and chalky, leaving traces on my fingers as I toss it back and lean over the faucet to bring a palmful of water to my lips as I swallow it. 

The relief is immediate, not because the little white pill is working, but because I know it will. I take a second one, knowing Kennedy is right about needing to up the dose for a few days, and wipe the back of my hand across my lips before leaving the café.

A wooden bench sits out on the sidewalk, and I make my way over to it, collapsing on the seat. I try to keep my inhales and exhales steady and rhythmic, and eventually my lungs are able to take deeper and deeper breaths. After two dizzy spells that make my stomach lurch, I finally start to feel like myself again. Truly myself, not what my Omega genetics tell me I am. I am more than my heat, more than what my body dictates, and if it takes heat suppressants, scent blocking soaps, and an arsenal of sex toys to keep myself safe, then so be it. 

At last, I trust my legs not to collapse under me when I stand, and when I touch my fingers to the back of my neck, it feels cold and clammy instead of the dry fever it had before. Clarity comes back to my mind, instead of the constant thoughts of run hide run that were swirling around in my brain earlier. This was a mistake, but it’s not one that can happen again. With a deep, bracing breath, I gather up my purse with the precious pills inside and head down the street.