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I’m halfway across the room when Rune turns back to the drinks cart and throws together a gin and tonic just the way I like.
I take the glass he offers me with a grin. “Thanks. And she’s afraid of Lawrence. We’re the good kind of alphas.”
Cian snorts. “After the way she recoiled from us? There are no good alphas in her eyes. And she’s not staying, remember? She’s afraid of alphas, and sooner or later, she’s going to go into heat. If that happens when she’s here… well, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how things will go.”
Everleigh will be begging for our knots, the only thing to help an omega through her heat, and we won’t be able to hold ourselves back for long. Even if she’s not our omega. And even if, as I strongly believe, Everleigh doesn’t want any alpha’s knot. The damage Lawrence did to her wasn’t just physical, but mental and emotional.
“So we just throw her out on the street?” Rune yanks at the tie he’s mostly pulled off and tosses it on the table. “Serve her up as prey for any alpha to find her and hurt her more than Lawrence has?”
I study Rune, his frustration so high, I swear I can see it. “You sound like you’re getting attached.”
“She’s not a fucking puppy,” he growls, scrubbing a hand over his beard. “What I am is feeling responsible, and so should you. We helped her escape Lawrence, which means we’re responsible for what happens to her.”
“Like you just said,” I remind him. “She’s not a puppy. She’s an adult. More than that. She’s a bonded omega who wanted to leave that prick, Lawrence, and for good reason if he was knocking her around. All we can do is give her a place to stay for a couple of days and when she tells us where she was headed, we take her there and we can get back to finding our omega. Because she’s not ours.Sheis Lawrence’s omega. Everleigh can go to a free clinic to ride out her heat there. She’ll be safe.”
Wealthy omega families send their newly perfumed daughters to Haven Academy, a finishing school for omegas. Their end-of-year ball is one we’ve had numerous invitations to attend and spent the last several years actively avoiding. We all got so sick of those gold-embossed invitations turning up like clockwork that we have Nancy, our housekeeper, dispose of them as soon as they appear.
What they actually learn in that finishing school is a mystery to me. Whatever it is seems centered on stamping out all traces of personality. I’m not sure what I want in an omega, but one thing is certain. It isn’t whatever the academy produces.
“If the Council finds her here…” Cian warns.
Everleigh was right in the limo. The consequences of some broken rules are more devastating than others.
If the Council ever learned we’d taken Everleigh from Lawrence, we could lose everything.
Lawrence would claim that we had stolen his omega. It doesn’t matter that he comes from one of the wealthiest families in the city. Even if he were dirt poor, he’d still have the power to destroy us. In the eyes of the law, Everleigh belongs to Lawrence until or unless he ever gives her up.
Cian, the more politically minded of us, calls it a recipe for abuse. I can’t say I disagree. It’s likely the reason the law came to be in the first place.
Even before my designation revealed itself at sixteen, I was fully aware alphas in this world have too much fucking power. I learned through firsthand experience that alphas get away with far too much. And that, if you want justice, you have to look for it yourself.
That view hasn’t changed since then.
With the extent to which Lawrence scent marked Everleigh, I doubt he’d ever give her up.
We’d lose all our clients. The banks would refuse to do business with us in order to avoid pissing off the Wentworths. The Council would fine us. Millions if we’re lucky. If we’re not, they’d confiscate even more from us when Lawrence takes us to court and demands restitution. Maybe we’d avoid jail time because we’d be able to afford a nice, expensive attorney. But that’s doubtful. He’d be gunning for us, and he’d be gunning hard.
The law is completely and unerringly on Lawrence’s side.
We process the heavy consequences in silence, Rune sipping from his glass as I do the same.
Cian rarely drinks at home. It’s only when we’re out hitting the beta clubs that he’ll nurse the same bourbon all night. He likes to stay sharp. Always. Right now, he’ll be thinking of how we can extricate ourselves from this big mess before it explodes in our faces.
But he won’t toss Everleigh out. There’s a kindness in Cian that he doesn’t reveal often. He’s quiet and serious, rarely smiling, but he’s fucking loyal. Loyal to Rune, to me, and after the way he tried to soothe Everleigh in the garden, he’ll do what he can for her.
I’m more spontaneous. Quicker to act. But I do my own thinking too. And I process the haunted look in Everleigh’s eyes. The way she flinched away from us. The way she tried to scale that hedge.
“Lawrence must have pulled some serious connections getting a live interview that fast,” Rune says.
I nod, still thinking. What did he do to her that had her so desperate to escape him? “I think one of his daddy’s friends used to own a newspaper. Maybe that connection was at the party tonight.”
That’s the sort of people Lawrence Wentworth has as friends. Alphas are driven, determined, and ambitious. If anyone knows that, we do.
We’re upstart self-made entrepreneurs who clawed our way to their circles. We have wealth enough to get invited to the same parties they do. They fling their unbonded omega daughters at us, but they never let us forget we are not like them, and we never will be.
“So we offer her safe haven, and then we get back to hitting Pulse and fucking betas to scratch the itch,” I say.
Cian gives me a long look. “And how long do you want to continue doing that? Because I’m getting sick to death of omega mamas shoving their daughters at us. I’m also getting sick of coming home from Pulse and scrubbing myself clean.”
