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

Chapter 23

Sneaky, Vicious Little Mouse

The female alpha has a few hours free later in the day, so I spend most of that time in my nest… My nest. I’ve never had one before, and I still can’t really believe it. But they’ve assured me it is mine. All mine.

A part of me… well, she knows I shouldn’t even entertain the idea of this room being mine. That I should spend the time moving my things back to the guest room, but I wander around, taking in the little touches they worked into the room for me.

Creed told me they did all of this themselves, from the painting to the fairy lights, to putting together the furniture. They’ve been working on this for weeks. I have no clue when they were doing it, though. There was hardly a moment where they weren’t with me.

Though there were a few days where one or two of them would disappear for a few hours with vague explanations of what they were doing and where they were going. I have no idea what they did on the nights when I locked myself in my room early.

I still can’t believe they did this. Painted the misty trees, organized my journals chronologically, decorated it with the exact right cushions, blankets and pillows. It’s just too freaking beautiful.

I can’t let myself have it.

Not yet. Not until…

Not until they’ve let me go and given me a chance to process without their presence.

I’m standing in the middle of the room, staring at the bed that I know will fit all five of us, when there’s a soft knock on the open door, Tic hovering just outside, like he’s not sure if he should enter. Like he’s not sure he’d be welcome.

Or like he’s respecting the instinctual boundaries of an omega’s nest. No one enters without permission. Though technically, this isn’t my nest because… well, I’m not nesting. I haven’t arranged all the soft goods just the way my instinct requires.

Right now, this is just the perfect room with all the right things to build my nest.

It still makes my heart ache that he’s being so considerate, so careful.

“Belinda just buzzed up from the gate,” he tells me with a soft look in his eyes. “She should be here in a minute or two.”

I nod and, with one last glance at the room, follow him downstairs.

The three other alphas are already in the foyer and watch as we descend. They appear at ease, but I know they’re all bristling with emotions. Excitement, trepidation, eagerness. Protectiveness.

That last one is mostly what I see when they look at me.

I have the feeling if the female alpha steps one toe out of line, they’ll rip her apart, regardless of if we could use her help or not.

There’s a knock on the door, and my stomach immediately knots with nerves. Rather than going to open it, Hale looks at me, waiting. “Ready?” he asks gently, giving me a moment to compose myself.

I give a jerky nod. “Yes. Ready.”

He waits a beat, then pulls open the door as Jude and Creed step marginally in front of me, like they’re worried Belinda is going to attack as soon as she’s able. But the elegant woman just takes in their protective stances with an arched brow and shakes her head. “I only have an hour, so let’s skip the alpha posturing and get right to it, shall we?”

As one, the Calloway pack growls, making my hair stand on end, even though I know they aren’t growling at me.

“No?” Belinda says with a sigh. “Fine. I am not here to harm your omega. I swear I will treat her with respect and answer whatever questions she might have.” She maintains eye contact with Hale the entire time she speaks, likely trying to confer her honesty.

The four protective alphas relax slightly, though not all the way, and I take advantage to push between Jude and Creed, though I don’t go far when Jude loops an arm around my waist to pull me against him. “Thank you for coming,” I tell the female alpha. “Contrary to the greeting, we really appreciate it.” I motion to the living room. “Should we have a seat and get started?”

Belinda nods and inches by Hale, who I find staring at me with a pleased expression on his face. I have no clue what he has to be pleased about, so I arch a brow in question. He chuckles and shakes his head as Jude nuzzles into my neck. “Look at you, acting like a hostess.”

My cheeks flare bright red. Because that is exactly what I had done. Invited Belinda in like this is my house. “I-I’m sorry-”

“Don’t apologize, angel,” Tic says roughly. “We fucking love it.”

He sounds like he means it too. But then I already know that. They haven’t hidden that they want me to stay, that they want me to pack with them. It’s just for how long? When will they grow tired of me and change their minds? When will the shine wear off and they’ll be bored, longing instead for a girl with light brown hair and flashing green eyes?

I shake off the embarrassment with a deep breath and follow Belinda into the living room.

I should ask her to help with my father. Should ask if she has any evidence of his wrongdoing… video evidence, if at all possible. But as soon as she’s seated, what comes out of my mouth is. “How did you know my mother?”

The female alpha settles against the couch across from me as she gives me an appraising look, like she’s weighing my emotional state. Fair enough, it’s not great. She looks at the alphas hovering behind me, then meets my eyes. “Your father paid us to keep her.”

“Keep her?” She makes it sound like my mother was a pet.

Belinda tips her head. “Indeed.”

“But why would he do that?”

Her gaze is steady on mine when she says, “because she was an omega.”

My head explodes. That’s the only reason I can think for its sudden weightlessness, like the top of my skull and my brain are just gone. But… “No, she was a beta. He never would have married her if she were an omega.”

“Elise was from a family that had birthed generations of betas. Not a single alpha or omega in their bloodline,” Belinda says. “She turned seventeen without presenting, with no sign that she would be an omega. It was assumed she would be a beta. She met and married your father when she was eighteen. Got pregnant with you before the wedding, and when she turned twenty-four, she presented as an omega. Just before your sixth birthday, I believe.”

I blink at her. Trying to process what she’s saying. I think I whine, because in the next instant I’m wedged between Jude and Creed, both pressed so tight to my sides that I don’t think even a molecule of air could pass through.

If what she’s saying is true, that my mother was a late presenting omega—not unheard of when a bloodline is so saturated in betas—it would have enraged my father. I could absolutely see him getting rid of her, divorcing her. But to keep her like a pet?

Belinda carries on. “It happened while they were… being intimate,” she says delicately, like admitting my parents had sex might be hard for me to swallow. “He went into a rut and bonded her.”

Tic nods. “He wouldn’t have been able to be away from her if they were bonded. Either by sending her away or killing her.” Bonded alphas and omegas hurt if they’re separated. The agony gets worse the greater the distance and the longer the time.

“He would have wanted to keep her close, but with his reputation for being against mating bonds, he wouldn’t have been able to parade her around.”

“Like he did with Haven,” Jude growls.

Belinda hums. “Yes. I suppose we should be grateful he didn’t do something similar when you presented, my dear.”

I cringe internally. He might have, had I not presented in the middle of a party surrounded by people. I’d felt gross for the week leading up to it, but as always, he’d demanded my presence, regardless of how I was feeling. I’m sure he’s never regretted a command more than the one that left me perfuming uncontrollably in a room full of people.

I’d been terrified and confused. He’d been apoplectic and blamed it on me, on my inability to control myself… which was true. But I was also sixteen and still a child in most ways.

“He wouldn’t have been able to,” I say tightly. “It would have raised questions.”

“Yes,” she agrees. “An unhappy wife leaving her husband is one thing, but a devoted and dutiful daughter also disappearing shortly after presenting would have raised too many eyebrows. Anyway, we kept her for about six years, I believe.”

She says the number so casually, so offhand, like keeping a woman prisoner for that long isn’t horrifying.

Six years of being abused and raped by my father.

“What happened then?” I ask, both needing and dreading the answer. “Did she… Did you help her escape?”

God, please let her say yes. Please let her tell me my mother is alive and well. Even if it means she left me, I need her to be okay. To be thriving after the nightmare that had been her life.

But I know that won’t be the answer I get when she gives me a pitying look. “She died.”

I knew it was coming, and it still hit me in the chest hard enough to steal my breath. “How?” I wheeze out as Jude wraps an arm around my shoulders and pulls me into his side, while Creed takes my hand and rubs circles into my palm with his thumb. Hale and Tic stand behind me, Hale’s palm on the back of my neck, a soothing weight, and Tic stroke his fingers through my hair.

Belinda takes in all of this before she meets my gaze again. “I don’t think you want the details of what was done to her, but suffice it to say, your father is a monster.”

“He killed her.” It’s a whisper, barely more than a puff of air from my chest, and yet the statement lands with the weight on an anvil.

“Yes,” she confirms, then seems to consider her next words. “He resented her. Resented his need for her, especially after they bonded. He ached when he was away from her, became obsessed. He couldn’t…” she shakes her head. “He couldn’t stand it, the way she consumed his thoughts. So he cut her out of him, out of his life.”

Cut. I don’t want to think about what that means.

“Why didn’t you go to the police?” Hale growls, his voice harsh, even as his fingers are gentle on my skin. “You obviously knew what he did. Why didn’t you turn him in?”

Belinda sighs and shakes her head. “I wish I did. More than anything, I wish I had taken what I knew and gone to the police. But…” she hesitates and meets my gaze. “At the time, my husband was a partner in the club, not me. When he told me what the Senator had done, I begged him to tell the authorities, but he pointed out that everyone involved would be culpable, including myself.”

Nausea roils in my stomach.

“You let a murderer go free to avoid a little jail time?” Tic’s voice is icy cold.

To her credit, Belinda meets his gaze steadily. “It wouldn’t have been ‘a little’ jail time, Atticus. We helped hold her hostage. Stood by while he abused her. Did nothing to stop him from killing her. It would have been a life sentence. Even if I cut a deal for turning in everyone else responsible, I was looking at ten to fifteen years.” Crimes against omegas usually have a harsher punishment since we’re not natural fighters, and all it takes is one alpha bark to force us to obey. In order to dissuade alphas from doing exactly what my father did, the law prosecutes to the highest extent it can.

“I regret it now. But at the time, I was barely twenty-two and married to an alpha twice my age.” She bites her bottom lip and then lets out another breath, shoulders drooping. “Of course I realized my mistake when he brought another omega to the club a few months later, asking for us to keep her like we had Elise.”

“Did you?” Jude asks, sounding… devastated . A few months. A few months after my mother died, almost ten years ago. Janie. He would have brought Janie to them. The Calloway pack’s fated mate. I’m fairly certain they’ll rip Belinda apart if she says that they did. I’m equally certain I’ll let them.

This woman is just as culpable in our collective pain as my father is. She just doesn’t realize it. She has no clue that the teenage omega my father brought to them was this pack’s fated mate. She doesn’t realize the bomb she just dropped.

She shakes her head slowly, no doubt feeling the charge int he air, scenting the aggression rolling off the alphas around me. “No. Hugo, my deceased husband, refused. He knew what the Senator had done and didn’t trust that there wouldn’t be a repeat. He didn’t want another murder in the club. I don’t know where he took her, but it wasn’t Shock and Awe.”

She meets my gaze. “I never realized what was happening to your mother. She never told me she was there against her will. Never once asked me for help. She talked about you constantly, made plans for your future together. She seemed content during the times between your father’s visits, happy almost.”

“It never occurred to you he barked her into that frame of mind?” Creed asked. “You’re an alpha. You know how easy it is to have that kind of control.”

She snorts and shakes her head. “I’m barely an alpha. My husband was more dominant than me. He barked at me plenty of times to get me to comply.” That surprises me. I never really considered an alpha barking at another alpha, but it happens, doesn’t it? Hale could bark at any of his pack mates and force their obedience. He just doesn’t because he’s not an asshole.

“I helped her where I could,” Belinda tells me. “Made sure she had medical care when she needed it, entertainment if she was bored. I tried. It just wasn’t enough.”

I nod slowly. It would be easy to put all the blame on this woman, to shout and scream that she should have done more, been braver or stronger or smarter. If she had been any of those things, my mother and Janie would still be alive. My father would be in jail.

The Calloway pack would be happily bonded, with a slew of kids running around. And I would never have experienced being so completely under someone else’s control.

Who would we be if this single person had done the right thing years ago? Who would I be?

But what’s done is done.

She’s here now, and I can only hope that means she’s going to help.

“We want to take my father down,” I say in a voice as neutral as I can manage. “We want to decimate him. We need any evidence of his wrongdoing over the years. Any conversation or action that will put him in jail. That will ruin him.”

Belinda leans back on the couch, long legs crossed at the knees and eyes the five of us. “I’ll help.”

“Thank you,” I say in a relieved breath. “Thank you so much.”

“Do I look altruistic to you?” She shakes her head. “I’m not doing this out of the goodness of my heart, Haven. Or guilt. That’s not who I am.”

“What do you want?” Hale asks, getting right to the point. “You want money? We have plenty of that.”

She shakes her head. “No, I want the club.”

I frown, not understanding, and apparently the Calloway’s don’t understand either. “Don’t you own half of it?” Jude asks, sounding as confused as I feel.

“I do. But I want all of it. I don’t want to be partners with a pig of a man who more often than not thinks I can’t make a business decision because I have a pussy. My late husband left me his half, now I want all of it.”

The four of them glance at each other. “You want us to buy his half and give it to you?” Tic asks finally.

She waves her hand. “No, that won’t work. I’ve tried that and he refuses to sell. He told me I’d have to pull his shares from his cold, dead fingers.”

Her phrasing isn’t lost on us. Not by a long shot.

“You want us to kill him?” Creed growls low and dangerous. I don’t think he’s totally opposed to the idea, more that he doesn’t like the idea of me knowing he’s not totally opposed to the idea.

Belinda pushes to her feet and smooths her hands over her hips, getting rid of the nonexistent wrinkles in her tight pencil skirt. “I didn’t say that, now did I? But I’m sure you’ll be able to convince him… somehow . And,” she pins me with a severe look. “I want your guarantee that you will not seek revenge for my part in your mother’s death.”

I want to laugh and tell her no fucking way. Want to rip into her for not doing more, but just like before, it won’t help anything, it won’t bring my mother back. We need her to help us. The Calloway pack hasn’t said as much, but I know they aren’t confident that why have enough to truly ruin Frederick Bell.

With Belinda’s help, we might just get there. If she’s fast about it, we could have this finished by the end of the week. I could be free in days.

“Fine,” I say, ignoring the growls of the pack around me. Belinda does too. “I promise won’t go after you for my mother’s kidnapping, imprisonment or death.”

She hesitates, like she’s turning over my phrasing and trying to find fault with it. “I trust that you’ll keep your dogs on a tight leash, then?”

I give her a sickly sweet smile. “The tightest.” I push to a stand and motion toward the front door, eager to get her out of this house and away from me. “I’ll walk you out, shall I?”

She tips her head in acknowledgement and precedes me to the door, where she pauses, turning to look at me over her shoulder, before she swivels to face me entirely.

I stand there wanting to push her out the door, but it feels like she has something else to say, so I just wait.

Belinda stares at me hard for a moment, her face impassive before she sighs and rolls her eyes. “Lord knows why, but I feel compelled to tell you that the Calloway pack has been members of the club for at least five years. During that time, they’ve sampled our product many, many times.”

Fuck. I don’t want to hear this. Why would she think I do? My mouth waters unpleasantly as my stomach sinks and my gaze drops, focusing on the tips of her shoes. She tsks and hooks a knuckle under my chin to lift it until I’m looking at her again. “A few months ago, they stopped sampling.”

My eyes widen in surprise. And her lips twitch like she’s glad I understand. “They would still come in, still go through the motions of hiring a girl or two, but they never, ever utilized them.”

I wince at her use of the word utilize, like the girls in her employ are a tool. And maybe to her they are.

I don’t think I like Belinda very much, but I suppose I’m grateful she’s told me about my mother and she’s agreed to help with my father.

Her thumb strokes over my chin. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but that was around the time they started whatever this is with you, is it not?”

I swallow thickly and nod but can’t give it a voice. “Well, my girls were disappointed. But I can’t say I am. I’m glad to know they recognize a good thing when they see it.” Again I keep my mouth shut, because… well, she doesn’t know the entire story. The way they used me.

They didn’t need to have sex with Belinda’s girls because I was so damn willing to spread my legs for them, eager even.

She leans down and smacks a kiss on my cheek, no doubt leaving a red mark from her lipstick. “I really must dash. I’ll be in touch if I find anything useful.”

I stare after her, not sure what to make of everything she’s told me.

My brain is too full.

My heart hurts for what happened to my mother. For what happened to Janie. For this pack. For myself.

Sighing, I turn to find all four of the Calloway alphas standing on the threshold of the living room. Not one of them looks happy with me. It doesn’t take long for Jude to tell me why.

“Why did you tell her we won’t go after her for her part in what happened with your mother?”

“She deserves to be punished, baby girl.”

I shrug. “We need her help. She wouldn’t give it if we didn’t give her a guarantee.”

“Lesser of two evils then, angel?”

I shrug. “Something like that. We won’t go after her for what happened to my mother. We’ll go after her for what happened to Janie.”

They all look at each other, stunned, like it hadn’t occurred to them that Belinda fucked up in more ways than one. That I would consider what happened to their omega just as heinous as what happened to my mother.

But if she’d stepped up when my father murdered my mother, Janie would still be alive. Nevermind that she and her husband never held her captive or stood by while she was abused. Instead, they just sent her away with him, turned their backs on an omega in need.

Hale shakes his head, pride in the grin he gives me. “Sneaky, vicious little mouse.”