I grabbed Raiden’s hand and led him inside after Finlo and Naja. I let the Betas in the front door on the way past, and Seven locked it behind them. I found Finlo and Naja in the living room, Luisa playing at her feet.
Seven paced around the room. “We should be up in our own territory. Fucking Wilkie prowling around is like ants crawling across my skin.”
I clapped him on the back as he strode past again, my eyes flicking between the Beta and Naja. “Wilkie being here is a problem, but we can protect this place enough to get through the heat. Unless Naja okays returning to our territory with us? I promise you’ll be safe there. We have everything you’ll need.” Before I even finished, Naja was shaking her head. I couldn’t blame her really. What we were offering was an impossibility to her. I could see the fear in her eyes, and knew that she’d been hurt in the past. My Beast knew too, could sense the injuries that festered inside her. I ached to make them better.
“No. I’m not leaving. I don’t know you guys any better than I know that fucking Monolith that was pretending to be a human.”
“Manix,” Ellar corrected softly, coming to wrap his arms around her once more, dragged toward her by her pain. I envied him the ability to take her in his arms without feeling threatening. Never thought I’d want to swap with a Beta till now.
She rested her face on his chest, and exhaled. I saw the tension run from her body, and spotted Raiden stroking her back. Ellar and Raiden together were like a drug, but one that made you chilled out and happy. I was glad they were turning that effect onto the strung-out Omega female.
“I realize that we are still strangers to you, and that you only have our word telling you that we are nothing like Wilkie, but what does your gut say?” Finlo asked softly, and she sighed again.
“My gut lies. It doesn’t warn me people are evil until it's too late.” There went the trauma of her past again. One day I’d get to the bottom of what happened, but we’d deal with the problems at hand first. Her heat was a day away, two max, and then we’d all be in a rut. No one would have our backs and we couldn’t lock this place down tight enough to satisfy me. Wilkie wouldn’t leave town now he knew there was an Omega female here.
Couldn’t take her home. Couldn’t stay.
We were fucked.
“It’s fine, we’ll figure something out,” I said softly to the room. “Will you allow us to stay? We can protect you better if we are here.”
She only hesitated briefly before nodding. I could see Ellar’s smile widen as he looked around the room at us all. His eyes said,See, we’re making progress. Just a little further and she’ll be ours forever.
Yeah, except we had to make her like us enough to want to be with us for even a little while. I held myself tall as I said, “You won’t be able to go to work tonight.” I put a touch of Alpha into my voice, and she narrowed her gaze at me. Ellar gave me a ‘you’re fucking this up’expression, but it needed to be done.
“Obviously. I’m not an idiot,” she hissed. “I can’t ever go back to today’s job either. How would I explain nearly a dozen oversized fucking giants turning up at a damn flower market to fight over me? How am I meant to explain running out of there like I was some kind of damsel in distress? How am I going to explain any of that?”
Sweat was starting to bead on her brow, and her scent was going wild. Fear mixed with lust, mixed with the scent of the beginning of her heat-slick—it was all sending my Alpha insane. I looked helplessly at the Betas, because one look at Finlo told me he was no better off than me, and quite frankly, Raiden looked just as rough.
Ellar proved once again that just because he was physically the weakest member of our Pack, didn’t mean he was the weakest link. “Come on, Angel. I’ll run you a bath. You need to relax, little mama. You’re all stressed out and that heat is riding you, I can tell.” He scooped her up into his arms, his chest thrumming with the purr, and she nuzzled straight in. She wanted comfort—I could see it in every line of her body, but her brain wouldn’t let her take it.
Soon. Soon we could see to her needs.
She murmured something into his chest, and Ellar nodded. “Seven, grab Luisa. Naja would be more comfortable if she could see her cub.”
My chest cavity cracked open. She still didn’t trust us with the baby, but I got it. She didn’t know us. But it felt like we were beating ourselves black and blue on this brick wall that surrounded Naja.
Ellar’s eyes warned us all from commenting, and Seven scooped the baby into his arms, holding her high in the air. I could imagine the stubborn Beta with our young. He’d be a great father, that near Alpha stubbornness would make him protective, but the underlying Beta of his nature would make him a nurturer too. He just didn’t know how wonderful he was going to be yet.
Once they were out of the room, I turned to Finlo, squishing Raiden between us. It soothed the Alpha a little, protecting the Omega with our bodies, even if it wasn’t this Omega who had been in harm’s way.
“What do we do? We don’t have time to properly fortify this place for the mania of the rut—”
“Which she still hasn’t agreed to,” Raiden added.
“Indeed, which she still hasn’t agreed to. And with Wilkie and his Pack in town, we are sitting ducks, literally with our naked asses in the air for him to take a shot.”
I nuzzled into Raiden’s neck. “Maybe he’ll respect that the Omega has made her choice.”
Raiden growled low in his throat, making it vibrate against my nose pressed there. “When has Wilkie respected anything from anyone lower down on the food chain than himself?”
Raiden had a point. But I didn’t have any answers. “Outside of reinstating Plan A and abducting her back to our territory, we just have to do what we can. Maybe try and sit out this heat from the outside.”
They both groaned, and I didn’t blame them. It would be torture for us all, including Naja. We were hardly equipped to let her suffer, but I would if I had to, if that’s what she chose.
Finlo slapped my shoulder. “Let’s show her how easy we could make her life; that we’d make a good Pack for her and her young. As Ellar would say, we’ll woo the fuck out of her until she comes to the Pack house willingly. Then we can court her properly.”
I mean, it was a sound plan, but I didn’t think it would be that easy. I could already tell that Naja wasn’t going to be won over by cooking her food and giving her foot rubs. No, she had to decide we were worthy, and it was going to take some extreme trust building to get there. We could do it though; I knew it.
