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Desperate.
Kylian stares across the table at me. He doesn’t snap back. If I were anyone else, I would fully expect a fist to the jaw. But he sees parts of me no one else ever has. “This won’t break you,” he assures me.
“Like my mom walking out on me did?” I wish I had his confidence.
I sit back in my seat. The papers we have strewn over the office aren’t only invoices. It’s evidence we’ve all spent the last several days gathering. Proof the alphas in the city need to be watched, locked up, or as Kylian has muttered more than once, taken out the back somewhere and shot.
After my mom walked out on me and Dad, I swore never to let anyone I loved out of my life again. I swore tofightto keep them in my life. And yet I’m doing everything I can to ensure Everleigh walks out.
Antsy, I shove myself to my feet, pacing the office to pull the door closed. I stare at the wood as I speak. “Don’t you think I wish I hadn’t noticed that envelope in Sloane’s office? Don’t you wish I hadn’t left it right where it was?”
But I noticed the envelope and the address on it, putting the information together with everything else I’d learned. Now it’s going to cost us Everleigh.
Kylian is quiet on his feet. His hand squeezes my shoulder.Hard. I have a feeling we’re going to be leaning on each other a lot after tomorrow. More than we ever have before.
“It doesn’t have to be forever,” he says. “Everleigh trusts us now. Enough we could tell her we’re scent matches and she’d stay.”
I turn around. “We can’t do that to her, Ky. Not now. We can’t make her choose, and that’s exactly what we’d be doing.”
Kylian releases his hand from my shoulder, leans on the wall beside the door, and crosses his arms. “Have you called them yet?”
I shake my head. “Was about to.” I pause. “No. I’ve been delaying.”
Kylian glances at the door, releases a sigh, and then pulls his cell phone from his pocket and hands it over. “I don’t want to do this. But…”
I take the phone from him. “Everleigh needs this more than she needs us.”
I dial the number for a tiny, out of the way private clinic I memorized from an envelope I pocketed from Sloane Eddiswood’s desk.
The phone rings twice. It’s midafternoon, so someone will answer soon.
A soft click announces someone has picked up, and a woman with a crisp, clear tone says, “Almeida Private Clinic. How may I direct your call?”
Chapter53
Rune
Everleigh is sleeping, her breathing measured and quiet and her skin a soft creamy peach. All signs her heat is well and truly over.
It’s been four days of bliss. Four days of having Everleigh to ourselves. Of taking care of her. Now that her heat is over, there’s the real possibility she walks away from us.
I willneverforget that image of her trembling with her back to us in a small glass cage, an announcer making her out to be some sort of prized stallion. Treating her like she was a thing to sell. Not a person.
Everleigh heard all that. I’m determined to spend the rest of my life—and hers—helping her to forget it. She’s a person. She’s real. Being an omega doesn’t make her less than.
As she flutters her eyes open, automatically lifting her arms up in a long stretch, I realize why I have no desire to move her from the home theater to her bedroom.
I rest my head on my elbow as I watch her stretch out the kinks in her back. Muffling a yawn, she blinks big green eyes at me. “Rune?”
“I’m gonna need you to do something for me, cher,” I say, tucking a soft strand of white-blonde hair behind her ear.
“What’s that?”
“Lie still.”
Her eyes widen. “Why would I do that?”
“You see…” I start working my way down her body, kissing a slow, steady path on my way to the reason we’re still in the home theater. “There’s a certain pretty pussy I’ve been dreaming of tasting.”
