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Iwasstandinginthe study of my brother’s cabin as I felt a sense of danger heighten all my senses. The tension in the room was so thick I could feel it pushing on my skin like the air held weight.
The family I’d chosen surrounded me, alongside a few new friends, and I wondered, briefly, just how far I would go to protect these people from the mounting threats outside our gates.
My brother Leif and his best friends Damon, Hunter, and Max had spread out in front of the sliding glass door, scanning the edge of our farm and the forest beyond. I could see the tension in all their bodies. The dogs guarding our cattle out in the forest beyond our fences were barking like crazy and the animal handlers had just reported spotting two unknown men in the trees.
“Lexie.” Damon’s terse voice lightly barking my name had me tensing up and readying for action when I met his gaze. “I need you to take Cary and Ava back to their cabin and stay with them until we know more. They don’t know our protocols or emergency procedures, so you’re responsible for them. Got it?”
I nodded quickly, and for once, I didn’t argue. Biting back my snarky retort. We had potential intruders, and our peaceful life at the farm had become precarious since the Crash. I didn’t want to distract anyone from what they needed to do right now.
I took a quick, deep breath to settle myself. Then I grabbed Ava’s hand and motioned Cary towards the door, but Cary turned towards Damon instead.
“I can help,” Cary said, as he planted his feet firmly in place.
Damon looked him up and down. Cary was a big guy, darkly menacing and aloof, but he was a rare male omega, and we didn’t know him. We had only met Cary and Ava last night when the guys rescued them from the Omega Palace.
Cary and Ava had barely gotten a night’s sleep and a meal in their bellies, and now we had danger at the fence. It impressed me that Cary would offer to jump in and help when he didn’t know us, either.
“I appreciate the offer, Cary,” Damon said, “but I don’t know your training or skills, and we don’t have time to figure it out right now. Next time, I’ll use you. I promise. But right now, we’ve got this covered, and I need you with Lexie. If things go south, she’ll need your help.”
I didn’t need the help, but Damon’s decision made sense. I figured he didn’t want the distraction of an unknown male omega, who smelled tantalisingly like vanilla ice cream, hanging around when they needed to focus on the imminent threat.
Cary lowered his head slightly and swallowed hard before turning away slowly, as though the decision disappointed him, but he understood. He squared his shoulders and took a defensive position behind Ava, a spot he seemed to take instinctively.
Maia glanced at me, and I nodded again before turning for the door. I knew the guys would keep Maia safe. What she wanted, though, was written all over her face. She was silently asking me to keep her friends safe, too. It meant a lot that she had confidence in my ability to protect them after only knowing me for a short time. I wouldn’t let her down.
I patted my leg for Bear to follow, out of habit, but he was already in front of me, ready to lead the way. He gave me a long look over his shoulder, the equivalent of a teenager rolling his eyes.
Bear was part of the pack that was supposed to watch the livestock. Only Bear had adopted us, mainly me, instead of our herd. Nothing I did could shake him. I didn’t really mind; he was good company.
I took off behind Bear, and Ava pulled into step next to me, giving Bear a nervous glance. She was wary of him. I got it. He was a giant Anatolian Shepherd and looked intimidating. I had watched grown men shake when he growled at them, but he was a big blonde goofball when he wanted to play.
“So you read Maia’s banned book about packs, huh?” I asked Ava, trying to make conversation and distract her as we hustled up the path to the guest cabins, noticing the worried frown on her face.
“Yeah, I noticed Maia was always reading it in the little nook in the library she would hide in. So I started doing the same whenever she would disappear. It made me feel like there was hope for her, and for us all.”
I snuck a look behind us toward Cary, and he seemed to have stiffened up at Ava’s mention of hope. Maybe he didn’t hold any for himself? He watched our surroundings warily while pretending he wasn’t listening to us.
I hadn’t seen Ava and Cary talk directly to each other much, but they seemed to gravitate naturally to each other, and he was incredibly protective of her. Maia had told me everyone else at the Palace treated Cary like a circus freak.
“Hey, Cary,” I said, wanting to put him at ease, too. “Our fences are electric, and we’re one of the few people still to have electricity. People will take a poke at us, but it’s only one of our defenses. The guys have got it covered. Nobody has made it through yet.”
He glanced at Ava, then looked at me and gave me a quick nod before returning to watching our surroundings. I didn’t think he intended to trust Ava’s protection to anyone but himself.
Ava took no notice of our exchange, which seemed strange to me. Her eyes always seemed to be sliding away from him. With all that delicious dark skin, gorgeous high cheekbones, and full, pouty lips, Cary was almost too beautiful to look at. He looked like he worked out, too. Throw in his inherent omega allure, and I kind of got it. It was like looking at an exotic flower that you knew was deadly, but you felt drawn to touch it, anyway. Sometimes it was safer not to look.
Still, if a man looked at me with half the intensity Cary directed at Ava, I’d seriously have to rethink my casual sex only rule. I had never met an omega before Maia arrived at our farm, though, so I didn’t know how they normally interacted. I’d heard Omegas could get jealous around each other, which was why the Palace kept them apart and isolated a lot. Yet Maia and Ava seemed tight.
I switched my focus back to Ava. Ava was an omega too, and when her dark cherry scent mixed with Cary’s vanilla ice cream, it was a potent mix. She was shorter than me and seemed fragile, but had curves for days, long dark hair, a smattering of light freckles across her pale skin, and enormous green eyes. She looked like a delicate princess, making you want to pick her up and stash her somewhere safe to protect her. I was a beta and didn’t swing that way, but even I wasn’t immune.
I shook my head and tried to get my focus off the two intriguing omegas, and back on our surroundings. I took a deep breath again, now that I was outside. The scents of the farm that always seemed to float up the hill on the breeze, a sweet mix of fruit and fresh growing things, always centered me. The scent changed subtly with the seasons, but always fed my soul.
I caught the faint sound of people yelling hello to each other in the fields, laughter drifting down from the women in the dining hall kitchen, and animals calling in the distance. The sounds of a busy farm usually brought a quiet joy to my heart, yet right now, they seemed at odds with the tension in the room we had just left.
I increased our pace until we reached the cabin. I ushered Ava and Cary inside but left the door open, so Bear could come and go if needed. Bear’s agitation as he paced between the door and the windows made me nervous. I’d learned to trust his instincts more than most people. I needed something to do to distract all of us.
Ava and Cary had arrived with nothing but the clothes on their backs, so I couldn’t help them unpack or settle in. There was no food in the cabin either, as we’d been conserving food since the Crash began and eating all our meals together in the dining hall.
