Page 10 of The Packaged Deal

I can see on her face that she’s telling the truth.

I'm not sure how to take this omega. She’s a shadow of the woman I remember at the Omega Meet that Pack Treyfield hosted. I'd heard about how this all went down, and at the time, I hadn’t taken sides. I don’t know what happened, but Silver has not come out of this in a good position. Life has been hard on the omega.

“Do you remember me?” I ask her gently.

She looks up and narrows her eyes. She is really beautiful in a classic way. Her bone structure is fine, her eyes deep and blue, her hair glossy and black.

“No, I don’t think so.”

I smile slightly. “Which is good. I was at the Omega Meet. I had light brown hair down to my ass, and, oh, I wore these awful dresses that covered me from my neck to my toes and to the tips of my fingers. I was meek and mild. An invisible omega who trembled under the weight of disappointing my mother. You were the reason I changed. The reason I found my strength.”

Silver’s eyes widen as she looks me over. “I'm sorry to be blunt, but no one should be inspired by me.”

I laugh and shake my head. “Silver, you were so full of life, confident in who you were, you didn’t back down to those alphas, you didn’t change. Neither did you let them push you around or insult you. You were my inspiration to change. Take it however you want. But I don't regret what happened to me.”

Silver reaches for the new bandage and accidentally drops it. “You could have been killed. You shouldn’t emulate me. Honestly, find someone more worthy, someone like Onyx.”

“If he’d have killed me, I would have been me instead of my mother’s puppet. It was worth it,” I say with conviction.

Silver looks up, her eyes wide and full of something so raw that my chest aches for her. What happened to this omega? She’s been to hell and back. The fires in her eyes are doused, and sadness is a blanket weighing her down.

“Look, we’re two omegas who met at the Omega Meet. I don't have any friends, and you don't seem to, either. I'd like to be your friend.”

Silver looks away. “I don't know.”

“Think about it. You’re the reason I'm free. The reason that I'm able to be the person who I want to be. That means something. I could use a friend. After this,” I lift my fingers to my cheek, “happened, I realised that I truly had no one to talk to, nowhere to go.”

“Except here,” Silver says like she’s answering an echo and not me.

“Well, the man who gave me a lift didn’t tell me where he was dropping me.” I shrug. “We were having such a pleasant conversation, and then I wake up in the icy rain.”

“He left you in the rain. Like that?” Silver has stilled, her mouth open in shock.

“People aren’t terribly kind, I’ve found,” I whisper.

“No,” Silver whispers back, her eyes huge. “Friends?”

“Yes,” I shrug. “Let's be friends.”

She nods her head in a stiff jerk. “Okay. I'm just going to go…” She trails off and winces. She picks up the tray and walks to the door. She glances back at me, her face tight in confusion.

I wave at her, and with incredible skill, she balances the tray on her hip and ducks out of the room.

I sit back on the bed. Adrian must be coming today. I know he’s worried about the cut on my wrist; he mentioned infection several times. I will bet anything he’s told them to come and change this bandage every couple of hours.

Throwing out a hand of friendship to Silver had been impulsive and out of character for me, but I'm doing something new. Perhaps it’s the pain. Perhaps it’s the shock of what I went through.

Maybe it’s seeing a familiar face in this sea of strangers.

I think of the doctor, his image exploding onto my eyelids in incredible definition.

I miss him. I don’t know him.

He’s beautiful. Everything about him. That icy aura, the dark hair and cold eyes. He’d burn you with icy disdain if you let him. There’s something so sad about him, though. Like he’s really, truly lonely. It’s hard not to reach out to him, hard not to curl up against him.

He’s a stranger. It doesn’t matter how many times I repeat the words. They feel like a lie.

He’s mine. Those two foreign words chime like bells inside me, peeling the truth, my truth.