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She shrugs, then hardens her jaw. “Is this what you came here to talk to me about, because if it is, I think I’d rather not.” She starts to close the door again.
I catch it again. “Shit. No, that’s not why I came, obviously.” I silently add that we’re going to talk about it later. I won’t let her drink herself into oblivion. Not when I know the reason she’s drinking is us.
“Then why?” There’s venom in those two words. And my eyes slip shut at it, as if that will make them sting less.
“I know I don’t have any right to ask, Vee.” I open my eyes to stare into her pretty hazel gaze. “I know I gave up that right seven years ago, but I need to know.”
She looks up at me, looking sleepy and sad and broken. “What do you need to know, Ford?”
My fingers tighten on the doorjamb to keep from grabbing her, pulling her into my chest. “You said you revealed as an omega when you were living on the street.” My chest tightens with the words. “What-what happened? Were you… safe?” Please let her say she was safe, that nothing happened.
Vee runs a hand down her face, shaking her head. “I don’t think you actually want me to answer that, Ford.”
“No,” I whisper. “No. Please, Vee. I need you to tell me nothing happened.”
She looks up at me. “You want me to lie?”
I stagger back a step, the blow from her words hitting like an ax to my sternum. In the next moment, I’m lurching forward, curling my hands over her shoulders to pull her into me. My face buries itself into her neck, inhaling her faint sweet fruit scent. “What happened?”
She’s stiff against me, doesn’t melt like she used to, even as her perfume blooms faintly, nowhere near what other omega’s release. It starts out sweet, but when she begins talking, the acrid scent of smoke tinges it. “I wasn’t really on the street.,” she clarifies. “I staying in a motel in Alver City, living off the cash I’d made in tips while working at the ice cream parlor.” I relax a little after hearing that. We’d been imagining her sleeping in a cardboard box under a bridge. But her scent remains charred, so I know even if she was housed between four walls, it wasn’t safe. “It was a shitty little place. Definitely not safe for a seventeen-year-old girl to be staying alone and worse for a newly revealed omega. The walls were thin. So thin it did literally nothing to contain scents. It was… awful, sometimes. The smells that came through those walls. A lot of betas, but a fair number of alphas too… alphas bordering on feral.”
My arms tighten around her while a low growl rumbles out of me.
“They scented me almost immediately after I revealed. I didn’t have any control over my perfume, or scent blockers, suppressants. None of that. The locks didn’t exactly hold up against the full weight of an alpha banging against it.” I think Vee was right and I don’t want the answer, I don’t want to hear the details of how we failed her.
She’s shaking now, trembling so badly I’m shaking from the force of it. Unable to stand it, I scoop her into my arms and enter her house, kicking the door closed behind me, before I head to her couch and drop onto it, cradling her on my lap. I grab a blanket that smells like her and tuck it around her before rubbing my hands over her to warm her up.
“He pinned me by my throat and held me down.” Vee’s voice is a whisper, her gaze far away. “I think I screamed, think I fought. But he was so big and he… he barked at me. Told me to stop fighting, so I did. I couldn’t resist it.” She lets out a shuddering breath. “Its an awful feeling, not having control over your own body. Knowing something awful is about to happen, but not being able to do anything about it.”
I want to tell her to stop, that I don’t want to hear any more, but I make myself stay silent. This story, this awful event in Sylvie’s life, shaped who she is today, turned her into this beautiful woman forged of steel. I deserve to feel pain over it, to agonize over how we failed her. “He got most of my clothes off before his bark faded. I kneed him in the balls and ran, right into the arms of another alpha.”
The tension that had waned when she said she ran comes barreling back, but her scent turns sweeter. “Bethany Kinsella. She was already bonded with an omega in a settled pack and not interested me in the slightest, beyond helping.”
She blows out a breath and shakes her head before looking at me. “It could have been so much worse. But Bethany bundled me up and brought me back to her pack house.”
“You just went with her? A complete stranger?”
She arches a brow at me and shakes her head. “I should have taken my chances with the shoddy motel and the broken door and the feral alphas?”
I speak through gritted teeth. “You should have come back to us.”
Vee ignores my comment. “They took me in. Gave me a loan for my schooling, helped me find clients. They gave me a better life than anyone ever did before. I owe them my life, Ford. They saved me.”
My alpha howls inside me, torn between guilt and gratitude. We should have been the ones to give her that life, to save her. No, we should have never put her in the situation where she needed saving.
But the truth is, we did. And this new pack, the Kinsellas, they helped her when no one else did. “I’d like to meet them. Give them my thanks for taking care of you when we couldn’t.”
Vee’s mouth kicks up into a half smile. She shakes her head. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
I go still at her words. “Are they the pack? The one that offered you a bond when they already have an omega?”
Her brows lower and a huff of laughter pulls from her chest. “What? God, no! They’re like my siblings. All of them. Not one member of their pack is… I don’t feel that way about them.”
I use a gentle finger on her chin to turn her face toward mine, to meet her eyes. “Then why?”
A grin blooms on her face, beautiful and wide. It steals my breath and I feel a pricking in my eyes, emotion hitting me in my chest. I thought I’d never see her smile at me like that again. “They know the whole story, Ford. Your pack isn’t exactly their favorite. They didn’t even want me to come here. Said they’d have their lawyer handle it for me.”
I hum and lean forward, unable to resist. I need to taste that smile, to feel it on my lips. The move must take her by surprise because she freezes as soon as my mouth brushes hers. Lightning sparks, travels all the way to my toes, making them curl in my boots. A whine sounds out of her chest as she pushes closer to me, one of her little hands tangling in my shirt.
