Page 20 of Bubblegum Pop

I’d never felt so used.

I lay on the bed that had been my stage, legs hanging off the end, my heels knocking on the footboard, arms spread at ninety-degree angles as I stared at the ceiling in shock.

Burning tendrils of heat still lit my veins, but my mind was too numb to care about my need for a knot—my body was in charge of that.

I’d been doing this for years. Sex was my game; sex was the way I survived, and how I kept myself in control, but my heat… My heat was something else entirely.

I was a whore—I was here to be used—but there was a huge difference between acting like you wanted it and being so desperate for a knot that you’ll let alphas do anything to you as long as you got it.

Even when I was at Stevie’s, and lowlife alphas were paying shit money to fuck me in the attic room, pinning me down, sometimes even beating me while I endured it, I had more control than that.

Beta attendants stood inside the room throughout my whole heat. They were the ones who made sure I showered, ate, had time to sleep. Because I knew the rich kid alphas who bought me would have just kept on fucking me until I passed out from exhaustion.

Those alphas didn’t give a shit that my body was still on fire when they left.

The attendants were meant to sound the alarm if anything happened outside the boundaries of the strict rules set in place by Michael. Even though I kept throwing them signals, showing them I needed the fuckboys to stop, the bitches simply gave me blank looks and shook their heads. Every single thing those alphas did to me was permissible.

Now I couldn’t move. White noise filled my ears on the second day, and I had disappeared inside myself to hide from what was happening. I was there through all of it, but my omega instincts had completely taken over. That primal part of me that demanded a mate was in total control, my body in charge of my mind.

I kept my eyes shut as the fuckboys took me, laughing, jeering, seeing what they could make me do if they deprived me of a knot. I imagined I was with my alphas, that Apollo, Zeus, and Odin were surrounding me with love and drowning me in their scents, dreaming of how they would tear those alphas apart for me.

I thought when the alphas who bought me left, I would pass out and sleep for days. Instead, I was wired, my mind running at a hundred miles an hour as I tried to process what I had been through.

I’d been attacked before; I’d been held down in a dark alley, my screams muffled by a hand over my mouth as an alpha beat and fucked me, but I fought. I fought him every step of the way.

The scars on the bottom of my feet where I ran barefoot across broken glass to get away from him were always there, vivid white lines slicing through my pale skin that proves my strength.

But this time, I wanted it. In my heat, I wanted everything those fuckboys could give me, and I couldn’t stop myself from wanting it. Even now, lying here, staring up at the ceiling, my body ravaged and ruined, I still wanted it.

The moment the alphas left, the beta attendants dragged me to the bathroom and made me wash myself. They said they needed to empty the room for the cleaners.

I honestly thought it would be different here. The tears I shed during my heat weren’t just from my loss of control, it was from the callous looks of the betas who attended me, immune to my cries for help.

Fuck Michael and his promise to keep me safe. Fuck all of them.

In the end, there was no changing what I really was.

I begged them to let me stay in the room, throwing myself onto the stripped bed before they could take me away.

I rejected the post-heat treatment; I didn’t deserve any kindness after all that. I didn’t want anyone to treat me like they cared, because in the end, everyone was a liar. No matter how many disgusting alphas I’d fucked since I started selling myself, I never felt dirty. I might have had a shower, but it wouldn’t get rid of the stench of my heat.

And I didn’t want some random pack taking care of me. I wanted them.

Now the cleaning staff worked around me, clattering empty plates and bottles, hoovering slick from the carpet and scrubbing cum off the walls. All I had were the sounds of people chatting underneath the vast emptiness that consumed me.

The girls at Stevie’s had warned me that my heat would be like this, but I didn’t realise how much I would lose.

My breaths were the only real proof that I was alive. My chest rising and falling, the brutal thoughts and images assaulting me from every angle as life carried on around me.

I wouldn’t let this happen again. I had to be prepared next time. I’d learn how to use my heat, like I did with everything else in my life.

How was I meant to live through it? How was I ever going to live with myself if that was the person I became every time I had a heat?

Because it wasn’t only me that had been destroyed. I had three scent matches, three alphas who stood guard as the fuckboys took me for days. But I didn’t even know if they were out there anymore. Maybe they were so disgusted with me that they’d abandoned me.

Fucking someone for a few hours a night was nothing compared to what I’d just done.

I used to own the word ‘whore’. It was a nasty slur that shocked people, but it was my badge of honour. Because even though life had thrust me towards selling my pussy to survive, I still chose it. It was my choice to fuck for money, but that…