AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I turn my head to find Lukas and Seb watching me. Their eyes are just as sad as mine. Lukas moves to lie on one side of me, and Missy turns her head towards him. Seb sits beside me.
“We should tell her.”
“I’ll think about it.”
Seb nods. Just a short jerk of his head. He’s tired, but he looks content. Healthier, younger, even.
I don’t want to think about life outside this room, so I don’t. I focus instead on counting the freckles on her back and wondering if her skin is more pale cream or peach. The air changes, and I inhale deeply, taking a moment to fully understand the change.
Her heats broken. It’s over.
I want to howl. I want to rage. Instead, I hand her to my pack mates, and with a kiss to her head that she will never know about, I leave my paradise and return to my nightmare.
My phone takes forever to stop with the notifications. It takes me two hours to sort out the mess that has occurred in my absence, and by then, Seb’s joined me.
“We have a chance here.” He says calmly.
I don’t look up from my phone.
“We could be happy. She could be ours.”
I swallow hard and shoot him a frigid glare. “We made a promise.”
“We did, but it’s been a decade, and fuck, don’t we deserve happiness?”
I lift my head and stare at him. “I got him. Madeline came through.”
Seb freezes. “What?”
“They want us to do the security for the Fields Gala. If we do that, we can get it done. Finish it. It will be over.”
“You think she will wait? Another pack won’t have snatched her up?” Seb says scornfully.
I snap my teeth together. “Do you think I don’t want her? Do you think I want to do this? We made a promise because every single day, another person disappears off the street, and we know where those people, not all of them but enough, go. We know what happens to them. We have to stop it. It’s our responsibility.”
Seb sags. “All right. So what if we tell her? Maybe she will want to help us.”
I shake my head but pause to consider it, only to dismiss the idea. “It would be too dangerous.”
Seb growls. “What if we consider it? What if we see if we can do both, just for a while? A trial run.”
I frown but incline my head. “All right. Let’s try that.”
“You should get some sleep.” Seb says with a concerned squeeze of my hand.
“Phones done. I’m just chasing emails at the moment. Then I’ll go to sleep.”
Seb pauses there in the doorway for a moment, then with a grunt, he retreats to the nest. My room. I shake my head, remembering the last week. My cock stirs, but I ignore it and head downstairs to the office.
It’s empty, but I go through checking everything before slumping in my office chair behind my desk.
Her heat changes her biology, marks her an omega. She’ll get her heats regularly now, every six weeks. She won’t be able to hide that scent. If we don’t claim her, someone else will.
Her heat changed everything inside me. I want the dream back. I want to wake up every morning to her. I want to smile at Seb and Lukas and remember what it was like when we felt like family.
I close my eyes and rock back in the chair, allowing dreams to chase my nightmares away just for a bit longer.
twenty-two
