Peaky Girl (Peaky Blinders ABO Omegaverse Smut Fanfiction)

Nine

As I had asked, John left the apartment after his knot swelled down to a reasonable enough size to slide out of my body. I regretted the emptiness immediately, for the pain of the heat was relentless. As the door closed behind John and he left me alone at Watery Lane, I rummaged in the green trunk wedged at the bottom of the oversized bed. The prison tablets were sitting right on top of my clothes, and I shook a handful into my palm and swallowed them all.

Then I curled into my nest, wrapping my arms around my knees and tucking them to my chest while I ducked my head as close to my center as I could manage. The position reminded me of how I slept at night at the camp during my heats, waiting for an alpha to scent me and come searching for the object of his sudden insatiable desire. But I could only think about John, his fiery scent weaved into the nest, his hands roaming over my body, his fingers crooking deep inside me, his mouth against mine as he drank in my cries.

I stayed like that until morning when the sun leaked through the dark shades along the wall, replaying the night I met John in my head like an old film. I remembered seeing him with Arthur and Tommy, all three sets of eyes staring at me as I danced with the ghosts on the edge of the bonfire, alone. I remembered the way they watched me, as if they knew me, as if I was already theirs. They had looked at me as if the war meant nothing, as if the mud and the blood and the death were all worth every second they could spend looking at me. The Shelby alphas had taken my breath away, so much so that I had barely noticed when Polly rose from her seat at the tea table, where she had been smoking, to whisper in Tommy's ear. He had nodded and made a beeline for Zilpha's wagon at the center of the caravan beside the bonfire, gypsies buzzing around him. Then John's strong frame interceded my vision, and his green eyes were all I could see as he asked me to dance. For a distraction, I realized much too late – for Tommy had noticed the smart eyes on their fated omega.

That was the night Tommy had bought my future. The night I went from being the Lees' Red Ruby to being the Shelbys' Red Ruby.

It made it worse that Tommy had known nothing about me, known nothing about my residency with the Lees, before he had ripped me away from the only family I had ever known – or the ghost of one, anyway. He hadn't cared who I was, just that I was his. And he had proved he would do anything, including buying me, to get what he wanted.

I didn't understand how John could have kept it a secret from me. How he could have known since the fair and not said a word until he'd fucked me. Not when we were fated mates.

Then again, I knew what fated mates meant to Thomas Shelby and his brothers. They were gypsy by blood, but Birmingham raised. To Brummies, fated mates was a word tossed around to control omegas, to claim them into your pack and then leave them to their own devices, claimed but untended. Whored and had. Just like I had been with the Lees. Just like I had refused to be again. But there I was.

To me, fated mates was something special. I had dreamt of my fated since my brother George had shared the gypsy tales with me. My mother had never known it, but Esme had shared it with Joseph since they both came of age. She had told me it was something real, tangible, an inseparable type of unity. She had said it wasn't just one singular moment or a simple scent match that determined he was right for you. It was a deep, innate knowledge that you belonged to each other.

And I knew. I think I had known since that night I danced with John, that night when Arthur looked at me like I was his whole world, and Tommy looked at me like he could forget the war. They were mine, and I was theirs. I hated them for it.

The door to the bedroom banged open. I shot up, snatching my little knife off the nightstand and holding it out in front of me as if I might cut the next person who touched me.

"Going to cut me, are you?" Ada huffed.

I flicked the knife closed, set it back down on the nightstand beside the bed, and pulled the covers higher up my body. "Thought you were John. Did he send you?"