Knot All That Glitters, Part 2 (FatedVerse #5)

Chapter 14

Little Bombshell

Haven Bell is too fucking good for this world. I’d suspected it months ago, but now I know it to be true. She sits quietly and listens as we tell her our story, Janie’s story. Fingers twisting in her lap, wincing every time we say how much we loved our omega. How we knew she was ours. How we planned a fucking life together. A family.

Haven wears her heart on her sleeve and right now, we’re ripping it apart. I wish I could keep her from feeling this pain, but she needs to understand where we’re coming from. Why we did what we did to her. How it started as revenge for our omega, and turned into a second chance at a life, at genuine happiness. One we never thought we’d get.

And it’s because of her.

I don’t know if the others notice how each time we say Janie’s name, Haven flinches slightly. Or the way her nails are digging into her own skin, not hard enough to make her bleed, but definitely hard enough to leave indents.

I hate that we’re doing this to her. Hate it so goddamn much that we’re heaping more pain on top of what we’ve already caused her. But this is necessary.

It’ll be better to have everything out on the table. Once she knows everything, we can move forward.

Hale’s in the middle of talking about Janie’s reaction when he presented as an alpha—as if there were any doubts he would—when Haven finally loses patience with us.

“I’m sorry,” she blurts out, digging her nails into her skin deeper. I want to untangle her fingers, kiss her palm, soothe the hurt she’s inflicting on herself, but she won’t welcome it. When she speaks again, her voice is modulated. “But I don’t understand what this has to do with me. Why you losing your omega means you would do this to me. I’m not understanding why I need to know all of this. And as badly as I wish this hadn’t happened to you, to-to Janie-” She stumbles over her name, like it’s painful for her to say. “I don’t particularly want to hear every happy memory you have with her. Not when I thought-” she bites her lower lip and blinks heavily, staring down at her fingers.

After a moment, she sighs heavily. “I just-if this has anything to do with me, I’d like to skip ahead. I understand you love her, understand she was taken from you, but why does that mean you would play some kind of sick game with me ?”

“Your father’s the one that took her,” Creed says bluntly, tearing the band-aid off so quickly she flinches. The three of us glare at him, but he’s unperturbed. This is what he’s wanted from the beginning, to tell Haven exactly how much of a monster her father is.

She doesn’t deny it, which I’d been braced for. Not because I think she trusts her father or anything, but because he’s so damn good at pretending he’s not like other alphas. That he wouldn’t take and use an omega, because he has his instincts under control.

Her brow furrows. “Why would he do that?”

There it is.

Hale barks out a sharp laugh. “Really? You can’t think of why an alpha would steal a young unbonded omega, Haven?”

Our girl’s jaw tics, but she meets his gaze steadily. “You’re sure it was him?”

That makes all of us bristle, and I have to tell myself it makes sense that she would ask. Frederick Bell isn’t the only fucked up alpha in the world.

“Janie came back to us,” I say as gently as I can. It’s hard when I think about my omega, how broken she was when she returned. How no matter what we tried, we weren’t enough to bring her back to herself. She was there, but not . “Two years after she was taken, she showed up on our doorstep out of nowhere.”

“We’d spent that entire time trying to find her, spent every goddamn penny we had on trying to track her down, and then she just shows up out of the blue, beaten to hell, pregnant, smelling like suppressants and bonded to someone else.”

“Bonded?”

“Bonded,” Tic confirms.

The furrow in Haven’s brow deepens as she stares over Hale’s shoulder like she’s remembering something. “She told you my father had done all that to her.” It’s not a question. She already knows.

“She did.” I tell her. “We tried everything we could to take care of her, tried to put all her broken pieces back together. But… she couldn’t handle it. She couldn’t handle knowing what had been done to her, what had been taken from her, from us.”

My chest gets tight, remembering those dark times. Remembering finding her, the red splashed across white tile, the paleness of her skin, the stillness of her chest.

Not one of us wants to say it, but from the devastation on Haven’s face, she understands what happened. She knows how her father hurt us, took from us, from Janie. She blinks and tears trickle down her cheek, her scent turning sour with sadness, with heartbreak, for us. Maybe a little for herself, too. Because right now she has to be thinking that we love Janie so much, there isn’t any room for us to love her too. Which just isn’t true at all.

Haven nods and pushes to her feet, hands fisted at her sides. “Okay. I get it. I always knew my father was a monster, always knew he put on a mask every single day, I just- I never knew how bad he actually was.”

I let out a relieved breath at her simple acceptance and her understanding.

See? Too good for this world. Definitely too good for us. Especially if she’s willing to overlook what we did to her in the light of her father’s actions. I start toward her, wanting to hug her, hold her close to my body, stroke her hair and kiss her forehead, but she’s quick to move away from me, to keep space between us, between all of us.

She holds up a hand when I growl and step toward her again. “No. Stop. I get why you’d be angry at him. I’m so sorry that happened to you, so sorry that he did that to you, but I don’t… I still don’t understand what it has to do with me.”

“You’re the monster’s daughter,” Hale says, like it’s reason enough. But it’s not. We all know it’s not. Now. Back then, we didn’t care.

“And you thought what? That I was in on it? That at eleven years old I condoned his actions? That I cheered him on?”

“No-”

“You want to get revenge on him? Fine. I get it. I understand it. I welcome it. He deserves anything you can give him and so much worse. But… what did I do to deserve what you did to me ?”

I flinch at the question and I’m not the only one. Atticus’s eyes drop to the carpet. Creed runs a hand down his face. Only Hale keeps his eyes on her, meets her furious, hurt gaze. “Nothing,” he says in answer, and our girl scoffs. Shakes her head in disappointment.

“I must have done something , Hale. If I didn’t, why would you do to me what he did to Janie? If I did nothing , how could you take an innocent omega, drug her, and then coerce her into giving you what you want?” Another scoff when Tic flinches. “Oh, what? You thought I didn’t know about the drugs you slipped into my smoothie every fucking morning? They tested my blood at the hospital. Asked me why I’d been taking a heat inducer if I didn’t have a pack. That was you right? You so lovingly made every meal for me. Plenty of chances to get drugs into my system.” She pulls her attention off of him and looks at the rest of us again. “How could you video every fucking interaction, every blowjob and orgasm and knotting and keep a record of it? How could you make my falling in love with you into a fucking game? So tell me. What. The. Fuck. Did. I. Do?”

Hale shrugs. “You were born, Haven.” She jerks like he hit her, her mouth dropping open. “You were born to the wrong fucking asshole. And we thought… We thought you meant something to him.”

“Hurt me to hurt him, hmm?” Another scoff from her. Her arms drop and her fingers flex at her sides. “What was the prize for winning your fucked up game?”

My heart drops and I look frantically to Hale, to Creed, to Tic. But they’re all focused on her and I can’t fucking sense them anymore. I have no clue how we’re going to handle this.

“There had to be a prize, right?” When we stay quiet she narrows her eyes on us. “Was it just bragging rights? Just to say you won?”

Hale shakes his head slowly. “No, not just bragging rights. The winner of the game… they got to be the one to tell your father.”

Haven’s breath hitches and her voice comes out strained. “About me? Or about everything?”

“Just about you, angel,” Tic answers softly.

“It was always the plan to tell him about Janie together,” I add because apparently we’re doing this.

Another hitch in her chest as she drops her gaze to the floor, head bobbing almost mechanically. “Right. Makes sense.” I’m not sure it does, and I know she doesn’t fully understand, but I’m not sure how to make it clearer when I don’t even completely get how we could do this to her.

With a sigh, she eyes the space between her and the door and I know what she’s going to say before she says it. “I’m leaving.”

Hale stands up, twists his head until his neck cracks, readying for a fight, and he pins her with a look. “You aren’t.”

Haven’s chest rises and falls in a deep breath. “I am. You can’t keep me here.”

Hale’s jaw tightens and releases as he shakes out his arms at his sides. The rest of us follow suit, shifting on our feet, preparing to catch her if she tries for the door. She eyes all of us warily, before settling on Creed, the alpha that has without a doubt been the kindest to her, the softest. “Really?”

He nods grimly. “Really, baby girl. It isn’t safe for you out there.”

“It isn’t safe for me here either.” Another moment where we all flinch. My alpha tells me I fucked up and I need to fix it. There should never be a moment where Haven fears us, where she thinks we might hurt her. She should only feel safe here, in the arms of our pack. But then, we aren’t a pack anymore. We fucked that up, too.

Hale stalks toward her and Haven retreats, taking quick steps backward until she bumps into the wall and he’s towering over her. She looks so tiny next to him, thinner than is healthy. But she still tips her head back and meets his glare with one of her own.

“You can run from us, little mouse, but know we’ll find you and drag you back. I’ll chain you to the fucking bed if I have to. If that’s what it takes to keep you safe, to keep you from falling back into your father’s orbit, under his command.”

“Wow.” A humorless chuckle falls from her mouth as she shakes her head at him. “Just… wow . You’re trying to convince me you aren’t like him. But here you are, making me a prisoner just like he did.”

Hale’s head drops, his forehead presses into hers as one of his hands cups the back of her neck, holding her in place when she would have pulled away. I have a brief flicker of jealousy, hating that he’s the first one who gets to be that close to her, touch her soft skin, soothe her. She’ll probably deny it, but I see the way she relaxes at his touch, the way she leans into it.

“I don’t want to fight with you, mouse,” he says so softly, I almost can’t hear it. “I don’t want you to spend the next few weeks being angry and hurt. I don’t want to make you a prisoner. I don’t want to take away your choice. But if you think for one second, I’ll let you stroll out of here, that any of us will let you put yourself at risk like that, then you’re fucking insane.” His fingers tighten on her neck and she sags against the wall, a low whine coming from her chest. “You are ours to protect, ours to keep safe, ours to cherish and love. You just have to let us do it.” The tip of his nose nudges hers gently. “Please, let us do it.”

Haven lets out a shuddering breath, her lower lip quivering as tears fill her eyes. “You’re still doing it,” she whispers. “You need to stop.”

“Stop what?” Tic asks, far closer to me than I thought he was. I realize while Hale’s been crowding Haven, we’ve been crowding him, close enough to see every emotion that flickers over her face.

Right now it’s devastation. “Stop lying,” she chokes out. “Stop talking about how I’m yours. It’s a lie. Just like everything else. Its… confusing to me, to my instincts.”

Hale’s expression goes soft, softer than I’ve ever seen it, even with Janie. His thumb strokes over her pulse point, making her eyes flutter, and he tsks, “That’s not a lie, mouse.”

Haven huffs and pushes against his stomach, getting him to take a step back. I’m surprised when he lets her, his hands dropping away from her. “You just got done telling me all about your scent match omega, how you had a fated mate, Hale. And it sure as hell wasn’t me. So I am not yours and you are not mine. Stop manipulating me to get what you want.”

“Baby girl, it’s not a manipulation.”

Haven’s nostrils flare and her lower lip quivers again before she stiffens it. “Yes, it is.” she folds her arms over her stomach, a physical barrier between us. “I’ll stay,” she says before any of us can argue with her. Relief flows through my body at the two words. “I’ll stay until you deal with my father. I’ll help in whatever way I can, within reason. But you have to stop… you can’t say things like that to me in the meantime. And once you’ve gotten your revenge, promise you’ll let me go.”

“What happens if we don’t?” I ask, voice gruff with a growl. “What happens if we keep saying things like ‘you’re ours’? What if we don’t promise to let you go?”

Pain flickers in her eyes. “You must really hate me—or him—to want to keep hurting me like this, even when you know how it was for me… how he was for me. But to answer your question, I’ll find a way to slip away, disappear. It might take a while but I’ll do it. And then you won’t have another tool to use against my father.”

The four of us look at each other. A tool? Is that what she thinks she is to us? Only a tool, something to get revenge against Frederick Bell? She hasn’t been that for a long fucking time, probably since the first night we spent with her. We were just too fucking dumb to see it.

“Haven-” Tic starts and from his tone I know he’s going to try to disprove her notion that she’s only a tool for us, a pawn, but Creed cuts him off.

“Okay, baby girl, if that’s what you want, we can refrain from calling you ours, and we’ll let you go when we’ve gotten our revenge.”

There’s a flicker of that same deep hurt in her eyes, like she was hoping for more of a fight from us, but then she lets out a breath, her chin firm and nods resolutely. “It’ll be better this way, you’ll see. I’ll do what I can to help you and you can stop pretending.”

Pretending.

She thinks we’re pretending. Manipulating her.

Can we even blame her? After everything we did?

Creed gives her a small smile. “You’re right. Of course you’re right.”

Hale pins her with a look that burns with longing. “We’ll stop pretending, little mouse.”

Frustration boils in my stomach. How can they let her think this? How can they agree to just letting her walk out of here so easily?

Her lower lip trembles again before she bites it, sucking in a shaking breath through her nose. “Let me know what I can do to help. I’d rather… please don’t release the videos and pictures. I want to have the possibility of finding a pack when this is over. And I don’t think that will happen if… if everyone sees…all of that. Like… the park.”

She says it like it’s something to be ashamed of, as though her enjoying herself with us is disgusting, like letting us finger her in public was wrong. It’s fucking not. It was one of the hottest moments of my goddamn life and I’d do truly devious things in order to relive it.

“No one sees those videos but us, baby girl,” Creed reassures her. The rest of us nod. We’d never release them to the media, even if it was the only way to bring down Frederick Bell. “And we’ll do everything we can to help you find your pack when this is over, okay? If that is what you want.”

“ What ?” Tic says, far too loudly, making Haven wince. Creed glares at him, then turns his attention back to the omega, still fighting tears in front of us.

“Why don’t you take a nice long bath, hmm? Relax and take some time? We’ll finish dinner and by the time you’re done, it’ll be ready. Okay?”

She sniffs and nods, runs the back of her hand under her nose, before swiping her cheeks. “Yeah, okay.” She sounds so heartbroken it takes herculean strength to stay put, to not go to her and wrap my arms around her, purr for her, ease her and make this better.

Without a backward glance, she leaves the room, and the four of us watch her go. We wait until we hear the click of her door closing upstairs before Tic and I spin on Creed and Hale.

“What the fuck was that?” I hiss at them. “Telling her we’ll let her go, that we’ll help her find a pack? Really?”

“I don’t know about you,” says Tic. “But the idea of anyone touching her makes me feel like a fucking psycho. I’d tear them apart.”

Creed folds his arms over his chest and then looks at Hale, who is in the same position. “Relax,” our once prime alpha says, running a hand over his face. “Haven has spent years working around her father’s alpha commands in order to get a modicum of freedom. It wouldn’t take long for her to figure out how to run away from us.”

The anger I had been feeling slips but doesn’t vanish. “So you were what? Manipulating her again? Lying?”

Creed rolls his eyes. “We didn’t lie, asshole. We can refrain from calling her ours, even if that’s what she is.”

“We won’t pretend with her,” Hale adds. “Nothing we said to her tonight was pretending. She just thinks it was.”

“And the pack thing?” Tic asks.

Creed shrugs. “I told her we’d help her find her pack. I just didn’t add that her pack will be us. You assumed the same thing she did.” My shoulders slump in relief. We aren’t giving up on her. Haven is ours. She will always be ours. And we’re hers. So fucking hers.

“You said we’d let her go when we get revenge on Bell,” Tic reminds them, sounding pissed as hell about it.

Hale and Creed share a look, like they’re in on a secret that Tic and I aren’t. Finally, Hale says, “If we only have Haven with us until we get revenge on her father, then we’ll just never get revenge.”

With that little bombshell, he strides out of the room, leaving us gaping after him.