“I’m gonna go check on him, y’all can start without me.” He says before plodding after his mate.
Leo comes to squat in front of me, and takes both my hands, looking into my eyes. Even crouched down, he is still taller than I am sitting on the couch. I’m eye level with his chin right now, so I think this is as close as we are going to get unless he sits flat on the floor, and I don’t see the fastidious veterinarian doing that.
“It’s not your fault, you know.” He tells me, leaning down to kiss my forehead before sitting on the couch beside me, pulling me sideways into his lap, and wrapping his arms around me. Gabe watches us for a moment before he too comes over and sits beside Leo, behind me. He touches my shoulder, offering silent comfort before Leo continues.
“We moved to Shreveport when I was 13, and Gabe was in my class...”
Ididn’t realize that big tears were running down my cheeks as Leo finished talking.
My poor broken boy.
What the actual fuck.
“What happened to that bastard, the one who…” I trail off, I can’t finish.
Gabe speaks up behind me, hand still running up and down my spine. “He went to jail for a while. But he was young, and his parents argued that onemistakeshouldn’t ruin his life. He was an alpha with a lot of promise, an athletic scholarship for college.”
His hand stops rubbing, and I can feel the tension in his arm where it rests against me.
“He got out after a couple of years, though, I’m honestly surprised that they convicted him at all. Fucking bullshit that he got off with a slap on the wrist after…” His choked sob makes me jump, and Leo continues, “Janey was basically an older sister to all of us. Gabe grew up next to her, and Jacks and Xan were friends for years before I even moved to the area.”
I’m aghast, “So that bastard is just running around free now, like nothing happened?” I stare up into Leo’s pinched face.
“No, he died about six months after he got out of prison.” I jump; I didn’t realize Xan had come back. He’s leaning on the banister at the foot of the stairs.
Gabe’s head snaps up, “What? Why didn’t I hear about that? What the fuck happened.”
“Car accident.” Xan looks indifferent about the subject, staring up the stairs, towards their bedroom.
“Brakes…” he mutters, then clears his voice to speak a bit louder.
“His brakes failed. He shouldn’t have been driving at night, not after he’d been drinking, and certainly not with his depth perception issues.” His dead stare swings back to Leo and his head tilts to the side as they lock eyes.
Gabe grunts behind me. “So, Little Omega, now you know. Jacks is kind of…broken. After everything went down he turned inward, he eventually got his GED and did online school for computer programming. Not that he needed it, but it was a good springboard for him to learn more. He doesn’t really leave the house.” There was a long pause. I tried to crane my neck to see him. “Well, until you. He gets in a mood every so often, twitchy and out of sorts, and Xan will take him in for a tattoo or a piercing.”
I turn again to Xan, feeling like my head’s on a swivel, but he’s walking towards us, stopping behind the couch, he leans around Leo and rubs his jaw over the top of my head. “He says when he gets a tattoo or a piercing the pain helps him feel.”
I barely recognize my own voice, “Feel what?”
“Just…feel.” Xan has finally lost that emptiness to his eyes, but the broken look that’s replaced it isn’t any better.
I take his hand and drag him around to the front of the couch to sit beside Leo. His legs unhinge and he collapses onto the cushion by my feet, his head falling into his hands. We all sit quietly, each of us deep in our own heads.
Finally, Xan scrubs his face a few times and raises his head, looking directly into my eyes. The intensity is unnerving.
“Bottom line, Pretty Lady, Jacks is broken, he wasn’t exactlynormalbefore this.” He uses air quotes around normal. “But ever since Janey died, he's gotten worse. He takes care of us because he can’t take care of himself. He’s under some kind of fucked up belief that he owes us something because we were there for him after what happened, when his own family wasn’t. He doesn’t owe us shit, we all love him…Not like that you perv.” The corners of his mouth tip up in a smirk as he looks at me, but I know he’s just trying to lighten the mood.
Leo strokes my hair. “As Janey was like an older sister to us, so Jacks is the baby brother that neither Gabe nor I had. His family fell apart when she died, and we were there to pick up the pieces.” Gabe’s hand starts it slow trek along my spine again. “That’s why we needed to tell you love, we need you to understan’ that Jacks is part of us. He may be broken, but I think it’s pretty damned obvious to everyone how much he loves you already. And while we all want you here, he needs you. It’s just gonna get worse the longer your around. And if he helps you through your heat…well, it’d kill him if you found out about all this afterwards and left.”
I’m struck dumb for a moment…too surprised to react appropriately.
“Ok, what the actual fuck?” I slide out of Leo’s arms brushing away Gabe’s hand, and turn to stare hard at the three Alphas sitting on the couch. “You actually fucking think I would do that. Fucking seriously?”
I start pacing, needing to move. “I know we haven’t known each other that long…but fuckmeguys.”
I am breathing heavily and spots dance across my vision. I’m so livid my stupid accent has come out to play and it makes me even angrier.
Fuck, gotta calm down.
