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“Tell us about him?” Gigi says from the backseat. “Please? I feel we know close to nothing about him.”
“You can ask him yourselves.” Sawyer glances up from his phone, shoots me a look. “He’s you roommate. I appreciate that you’re going through all this trouble to check on him but… what am I missing here?”
“Thing is…” I glance at my mates through the rearview mirror. “We want to claim him.”
Sawyer says after a long moment, “Claim him? As in, Mate him? Mark him and all that?”
“All that,” I agree and can’t help a grin at the thought.
Sawyer twists about to look at the three sitting in the back. “For real?”
Ronin growls, an alpha sound unlike any other, and Sawyer jumps a little. “For fucking real,” Ronin says.
“Well…” Sawyer straightens in his seat and a small smile plays on his lips. “Good. I like you guys, and Casey deserves nothing less. Seeing how you’re rushing to his rescue… I approve.”
“Next, you’ll give us your blessing like you’re his old man,” I mutter.
“Anyone who gives a shit can also give blessings,” Sawyer says. “Wait, that didn’t come out as solemn as I wanted.”
Gigi snickers but it fades quickly. Grey whispers something to her and I see his head bowed close to her through the mirror.
“Ask, then,” Sawyer says. “What do you wanna know?”
“Anything you’d like to tell us about him.”
He’s quiet for a bit as we turn onto the highway, fiddling with his phone. The map he has open on the screen shows the way in blue. He has the sound turned down.
Finally, he says, “We met at art camp one summer when we were little. We must have been, oh I dunno, ten? Eleven? It was an art summer camp for omegas. You can imagine. Chaperones everywhere, no beta or God forbid, alpha was allowed inside. It was like a fortress. We hit it off right away. I was a shy kid. He’s twice as shy. I felt… protective. You know?”
I nod. Of course I do.
“He was small and scrawny, scrawnier than me, and he always seemed to be looking over his shoulder. One day he confessed to me that his family was very strict. An old-fashioned pack that considered their omegas to be chattel, only fit for popping out babies and nothing more. Like it used to be a century ago. I could sense there was more to what he said, and as he opened up, he told me more. He mentioned a sister who liked to drag him around by the hair, and a brother who liked to rough him up, and his parents didn’t let him go out of the house. You didn’t need to read between the lines to see what was happening. I told him if he ever needed help… that he should come to me.” Sawyer gives a short laugh. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Back then I was still a kid myself. No idea how I could have helped him. My family isn’t that progressive and modern, either. Which explains how we both ended up in that camp, I suppose.”
“Holy shit,” Ronin mutters from the back seat.
“He reassured me before we left the camp that it wasn’t all that bad,” Sawyer goes on. “That he was fine, really. He didn’t want me to worry. He was such a sweet kid. But he stayed on my mind, even though I had no way to contact him. Anyway, the years passed. I even did a search once online, trying to find him, but couldn’t. Didn’t hear from him, either. Then one day I got an email from him. He’d found me online, found the Book Café’s website and email.”
“And he asked for your help,” I say.
“He did. Didn’t say much. Apparently, I hadn’t been able to find him online because his family had forbidden him access to the internet.”
“Jesus.” I grip the wheel so hard the plastic creaks. I don’t know how much more of this I can hear before I have to stop and punch the wheel a few times.
“But now his family had decided to sell him to a pack and his fear had driven him to finally escape,” Sawyer whispers. “He broke the lock on a window, walked for two days through fields, hiding during the daytime, a small bag with cash he found and some clothes on his back. He got to a bigger road, hitchhiked to the city, and came to find me. The rest you know.”
Gigi makes a small sound from the back. This time it’s Ronin who whispers something to her, and I see both guys with their arms around her, rocking her slightly.
My chest is tight. “Thank you for telling us all this,” I say. “He won us over quickly, as you know. Without knowing his past. But he’s brave. Much braver than I ever could have imagined, and we can only love him harder now.”
Sawyer says nothing but his eyes glitter wet as we speed down the highway.
* * *
The town is indeed small, a main street with a few shops and houses. We speed through it and head out, through the fields. There is a haze over everything and it’s cold, as if the winter still lingers out here.
The farmhouse is big but poorly kept, the fields around it gone to waste. There is a pen for horses, perhaps, but it’s empty, the fence crumpling in places.
Throwing the truck into park, I jump out and stride to the front porch. It’s not abandoned, I don’t think, and there are embroidered cushions on the rocking chairs and curtains at the window, but when I bang on the door, nobody replies or comes to open. The door is locked. I kick at it and turn to face the others who have climbed out and are standing on the steps.
