Chapter 37
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Easton
Tatum’s asleep in the room across the hall, but I don’t like the way the air shifts through the house. I can smell him. Her teacher . Ferris.
I know exactly what sort of man he is.
Easton: I think I’ve accidentally stumbled upon a mess.
Ghost: As one does.
Easton: It’s a solution to my safe house issue. Old fuck.
I’m still salty with him about the suggestion he made earlier. Pfft . Go stay with the Hayes brothers. Fucking lunatic. And he calls me looney toons?
Ghost: Unlikely, little shithead.
I snort at the message, a small smile tugging my lips up. He’s grown on me over the years, I suppose.
Easton: Why’s that?
Ghost: No back up. No protection.
Easton: I have been protecting myself just fine for the better part of the last twenty-six years. Asshat.
Ghost: That so? How's that worked out for you so far? Sure, you’re alive, but what do those skeletons you keep trapped in your closet like a booby trap hide for you? What secrets have you buried so deep, you can’t even remember them? Which scars are one slip away from tearing back open?
Easton: Who the fuck are you? My therapist?!
Ghost doesn’t reply for a long time, and I realize I’m panting. My chest heaves with every inhale, and I hate the way my hands shake as I stare at my phone screen. I reach a hand into my front pocket, caressing the handle of my favorite blade.
Ghost: Alright then, kid. Location.
Easton: You really are an annoying old bastard. Have your kids already picked out your nursing home? I have some suggestions…
I send him a link to the location on maps, and he responds with a thumbs up and a middle finger.
I stuff the phone back in my pocket and crack my neck, before rolling my shoulders.
I know what obsession looks like. What an Alpha looks like when he watches an Omega with a possessive glint in his eyes.
I thought this would be easy. I thought I’d get what I wanted and be done. But then those bright blue eyes changed my entire fucking world.
Which is why I’m picking the lock on the door to the room Mr. Ferris has me locked in. Greasy old fucker. Slimy. Not literally. His…aura. His soul. Vibe. Whatever it is. He’s diseased inside. Not literally, but at the core of his existence, he just radiates…hairy ball sack. I imagine myself slicing those off of him… His screams. The symphony to my nightmares.
He’s planning evil tonight. I can taste it in the back of my throat like a cancer spreading through me.
An Omega once asked me why I saved her. I think she was especially confused, because like Stella, I’d drugged her and taken her to the buyer. I’d handed her over, taken the payout, and then just like with Jennings, I ended him. I don’t remember her name, only that she had long black hair and striking gray eyes that looked so goddamn tired.
She was young and pretty. Came from the streets, like so many before her, and so many after her. Or so I thought. Turned out she was a rich girl from the upper class, running from her past. She had the balls to break the cycle of her circumstances and was kidnapped for her troubles.
Obviously, I saved her. After, when I was waiting for Ghost’s support to retrieve her, she looked right in my eyes and just stared. I felt oddly exposed.
“You’re an Omega,” the dirty thing beside me finally said, after holding my gaze for an eternity. I couldn’t look away for whatever reason. I nodded, curious now that she’d spoken. “That's why, isn’t it? Why you saved me?”
I let the silence hang between us for a while, considering my answer. When I shook my head, her frown deepened. “No. I saved you because… Everyone deserves a choice.”
“You didn’t give Daris a choice. You just…” she trailed off, finally looking away from me.
“Killed him? I do believe he made his choice the moment he purchased you.”
That was the reason I let the transaction happen. Not because I thought it would make them easier to kill. Or fool them into thinking I was just a mover. The smartest thing to do would be to simply kill them on sight. But I wanted them to have a fucking choice. They could always change their minds. They never do.
The door clicks, and I step out. If we hadn’t shown up unexpectedly, I expect this Alpha would have been a little better prepared for having Tatum in his home.
Ferris reminds me of my uncle in some ways. Just lacking the same intelligence and power.
The first time my uncle contracted me to kill someone, I was scared. I was only sixteen. I wasn’t an Omega then. Well, I was, but I didn’t know I was. I’d been trained as if I’d be an Alpha.
But a kid nonetheless. So that day, standing in the middle of some stranger’s pool house, I lifted the gun I’d been given and pulled the trigger. And missed. Four times. Eventually, I’d hit my mark, and as his dead body floated in the pool, something in me sort of…cracked.
Then I saw the girl that had been hiding behind a potted plant. She was my age. She came out, and stared at the dead man floating in the pool, and said… “He raped me.”
I remember thinking I wish I had killed him slower. Then she turned to me and her face morphed from void of all emotion to a smile. Then she walked away.
Never saw her again. That moment stayed with me for my entire fucking life. And every time I was responsible for another piece of human garbage taking their last breath, I think of her words.
Of all the people who were hurt, and who would never see their abusers floating in a pool as it filled with their blood.
Of course, Uncle didn’t give a shit about that girl or any of the horrible things he’d done. He only cared about the fact that the man he sent me to kill had stolen from him.
What did he steal that deserved murder? No idea. He never told me. But I did my own research on my victims from that moment on. Some never found themselves on the other end of my gun, but rather, placed on a plane to another continent by Ghost.
I had a structure. A routine. A plan. I kept myself alive. I killed those that deserved it, and I saved those that didn’t. Some were given a choice, others had made their choices before they had the misfortune of crossing my path.
Then there was Tatum.
She’s so smart and strong. Yet she doesn’t seem to sense what Ferris is.
Maybe I just have more experience with men like him.
I unlock her door and slip into her room.
I watch as Tatum rolls over and the moonlight peaking through the curtains hits her face. Her hair looks like a halo.
A growl rumbles in my chest, making the Omega whine in her sleep. I pull the blade out of my pocket and approach the bed. My chest tightens with the impulse to wrap my fist around her throat. To hold her down and ravish her. Force her to come in her sleep. Make her moan for me while she dreams of me…
I drag the blanket down her body, revealing her bare legs, and the boxers I’d given her back in the concrete hellhole I grew up in. I pull my bottom lip between my teeth and growl again. I want to mark this pretty flesh…
I can’t resist dragging the tip of the knife across her midriff, just below her belly button.
“Oh, the things I’m going to do to you, my sweet Sparrow,” I promise her, before taking a hold of her shirt and slicing it down the middle. She didn’t have a bra, of course. When we arrived, she was wearing my clothes, and then after her shower, Ferris had lent her clean dry clothes to change into. His clothes.
Reaching out, I caress her cheek, as her lips part on a sigh. I’m absolutely loving the sweet little whimpering sounds she releases, and the scent of her slick fills the air.
Doesn’t she know what someone like me could do to an Omega in such a vulnerable position?
I slice through the sleeves of the shirt next, and tug the fabric out from under her. I put my blade away, before tugging my black T-shirt off. I pull it over her head gently, but I’m not concerned she’ll wake up. I suspect every drink she had tonight was laced with something intended to keep her asleep.
I poured all of mine into a potted plant…
Once Tatum is in my shirt, I relax marginally. My instincts where this woman is concerned are all going insane. Everything I’ve ever been told about how protective and possessive Omegas become of their Alphas, never made sense before.
I think I’m starting to understand, though…
She feels different. Her scent is intoxicating. But her spirit. Her light. She’s special.
And fuck me, that blueberry scent flooding the space between us…
I place my hand to the center of her chest, feeling her heartbeat steadily. It grounds me. Then she whispers sleepily.
“East…”
“Well, fuck,” I grunt. When she says it like that…
Can I get what I need and keep Tatum?
Well, maybe not willingly. But I can keep her. I never did give her those replacement suppressants.
The sweet Omega reaches her hand up, placing a palm to her head, and groans. I step away from her, into the shadows, and away from her light.
I don’t want my darkness to corrupt her.
I’ll just have to be her black soul, so she can remain my golden light.