Chapter 23 - Caspian
Caspian
As soon as I couldn’t feel them, panic burst through me.
I'd gone downstairs to finally do some work in my office. Sin locked the room four days ago when I was finally conscious enough to let go of Mel without snarling at him. I needed to catch up on everything I had missed at work after the sheer shit show I’d caused.
But I swear, Sin was going to eat the key if I didn’t agree to rest.
But as soon as I sat down in my chair, I collapsed. I didn’t even have the strength to hold a fucking pen as I stared at the blank computer screen like that would get my mind sorted.
Being away from Mel and Kai hurt so much that I had to force myself to stay in my office and act normal so Sin couldn’t gloat.
Sin was still completely there in the bond, like he’d always been. But my alpha instincts were telling me to reject him so I could have our omegas all to myself.
It was only in the past day that I finally started coming to terms with what I had seen in Camille’s room. My rogue state, my new bond with Mel, and Kai’s possessiveness were all I could focus on as I lay in bed and gave in to my instincts.
So, I sat at my desk, growling at myself for being so weak and pathetic. Every time Sin sensed I wanted to ask about Camille, he would shut me down with a slap of his aura.
No matter how amazing it was to fuck like our omegas were in heat, I didn’t want to admit I was broken. Something snapped inside me, and I didn’t know how to fix it.
I lay at my desk, hiding from my pack. I knew I’d have to go back to them soon, but I just needed time to not fucking feel anything.
Until I heard a rumbling, so slight I would have missed it if I hadn’t focused on the silence surrounding me.
“What the hell?” I murmured, sitting up, listening harder. I could definitely hear it in the distance. I was on the second floor, and it was the middle of the night, so there wasn’t traffic. But it was definitely coming from inside the house.
I reached for Mel and Kai again, and there was a weird flickering between them. It was the same when Kai or Sin had nightmares. Their fear and panic was there, but it was muffled because of their heavy sleep.
Something was off. I shot up, listening out for the sound again as I flung open my office door and ran outside.
Kai and Mel were only one floor above my office in her room, so I could still tug on the bond and wait for their answer. I just needed to know that they were still there.
I’d already felt how Kai blocked us from him in the bond, but this wasn’t the same.
My brisk walk turned into a run as I fled through the corridors.
Why the fuck did I have my office at the opposite end of the house?
Because Kai would always get horny and pull me away from my work.
That shimmering had changed to the dark wall Kai kept slamming down between us whenever Mel was asleep. I couldn’t reach him.
And it was wrong. It felt so wrong. There shouldn’t be empty space where my omegas were. I’d rather have Kai sending me seething hate than absolute emptiness.
I picked up speed, running down the stairs to get to Mel’s room. My body ached, my muscles lagged, and joints tore as I ran as fast as I could. I wasn’t healed enough from my rogue state and from fucking Mel nonstop, but I couldn’t let that slow me down.
Because panic was turning into something darker, and my heart clenched the more I reached for them.
I thought Mel would answer, at least. After everything we’d gone through together, all the ways we had connected and opened up to each other, I thought she would reach back for me, but she was a solid wall as well.
As I launched myself up the stairs to get to her room.
There was no way I could have known how deeply I’d come to love her and her smile and those sly looks she gave me that perfectly matched Kai’s.
I might have fallen for Kai straight away, but she laid her plans out to worm her way into my heart, and now I couldn’t escape from either of them.
But what if they wanted to escape from me?
That was the fear that flooded my mind as I ripped open Mel’s bedroom door to find nothing there.
They were gone. The lights off, the bed empty, the sheet thrown to the floor with boxes fallen on top of it.
Clothes laid strewn around the room, the closet and drawers all pulled out and empty.
They had stripped the place clean like they were in a rush, and the only things left were her huge piles of boxes and bags.
A snarl tore from me, and I didn’t hesitate as I launched myself from the room and ran with everything I had.
That noise, that thing I thought I heard.
It was the rumble of our underground garage door.
But I brushed it off because I didn’t think that was possible.
No one was supposed to come or go in the middle of the night, so why would it be opening?
And I had an alarm system set up for the whole house that would monitor and track everyone coming and going.
“Sin!” I yelled as I reached the stairwell. “Sin! Fucking hurry! Where are you?”
I stood there, frozen. I needed him with me; I needed my alpha to come because I was so fucking terrified that my mind was spinning.
I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do when it was so fierce it ate me alive.
I heard Camille’s screams, I heard Mel’s cries.
Kai’s shouts and Sin’s bitter tones, they were beating around in my head and drowning out my thoughts because the fear was so intense that all I could do was keep calling Sin’s name like a fucking child until he suddenly appeared at the top of the stairs.
“They’re gone—” I choked out. “Sin, they’re fucking gone.”
I needed to make sure he knew what was happening.
As soon as I saw his hard gaze, it was like my consciousness kick-started again.
I jumped over the banister, dropping to the next floor below.
Pain shuddered through me as my feet hit the ground and I launched myself down the long stairs that led to the garage.
“Why is this house so fucking big?” My voice echoed off the walls as I urged my body to move through the pain.
I was still reaching for them through the bond. Slamming against the wall between us like a battering ram, trying to get to my omegas.
I gasped as I crashed into the garage door, flinging it open. It banged against the wall, and their consciousness flooded into me.
I felt Mel’s fear first, quickly followed by Kai’s pure rage that surged at me like a tidal wave. He hurled it at me, again and again, so that I couldn’t reach out to her.
My fear sank into cold despair, because they were too far away.
A suitcase lay clattered near the car, like they didn’t have time to pack it. And I knew what it meant. I could see what was happening.
Mel was shouting at Kai behind the windscreen, and his sneer fixed on me.
The headlights flared, and I raised my arm to shield my eyes as the car reversed.
“No!” I yelled as I launched myself towards them. “No! Fuck! Where are you going?”
But it was too late.
The car shot backwards and up the slope, and I ran barefoot across the cold concrete floor, going as hard as I could to reach them. I needed to stop them, I couldn’t let them go.
“Wait!” I screamed. “Fucking wait! Don’t go!” But Kai was already driving out onto the road.
“No! Don’t go! Please—you can’t—” My heart was beating too hard, everything was going too fast, and, just as I reached the top of the slope, I saw the back of Mel’s head as they shot off down the road.
“No,” I gasped as I forced myself to keep moving. “No, this is a fucking joke. This can’t…”
I was still too weak, inside and out, and I couldn’t hold it together.
I was suffocating, wheezing, growling, and snarling as I pulled myself onto the road. “This can’t fucking…”
My legs gave way, and I fell to my knees. My eyes wide, my body shaking, I couldn’t fucking breathe as the panic took me over.
“No, you can’t—” I choked out, looking down the empty road like I could still catch them. “You can’t fucking—!” I snarled. “You can’t just fucking leave like that!”
I kept shouting, fighting against it even though my body was done for. Even crawling pathetically over the cold tarmac was better than sitting here and crying out like a madman.
Crawling across the ground, I waited for red to seep into my vision. But I wasn’t angry. That wasn’t why I was fighting.
I could still feel them there in me, but the further they grew, the stronger the deep emptiness clawed at me, until I was crying out for them.
Sin’s calming aura swept over me from behind.
“Get off me!” I snarled as he pressed his hand against my shoulder. “Get the fuck off me!” But he wouldn’t let me go.
“Caspian,” he said, his voice filled with warning, like he didn’t care.
His grip was firm, and I felt him kneel on the ground. Everything was so tight, and panic was swallowing me whole.
“They’re gone,” I wheezed as Sin held me from behind, pressing his chest against my back and wrapping his arms around mine as he let me rock against him. “We need to go after them. Sin, we can’t let them go.”
I didn’t cry. I wasn’t a fucking crier. No matter what happened, I would never give in to that part of myself.
Grabbing his arm, I dug my fingers in, hoping I could hurt him enough to get him the fuck off of me so we could move.
I bit my lip, harder and harder until Sin hissed as I cut through the skin to stop myself.
“Are you sure we can’t let them?” he asked. I jerked as he murmured the question next to my ear. “What if we don’t go after them?”
“What the fuck are you talking about? We have to go. They’re our fucking omegas. We can’t let them escape.”
“Why do you think they are running, Caspian?”
“What?” I froze, turning my face so I could meet his cold stare. “What the fuck do you mean?”
His grip was firm, and I gasped as a growl rolled from him. “I’m asking you what kind of alphas are we that our omegas have escaped in the middle of the night?”
“Why do you care? We just need to move. We have to go after them!”
“And where are we going to go? What will we do? Because our best methods are to either growl and snarl or to pretend it isn’t happening. And neither of those highly effective methods will work.”
“But we have to try! What if they leave and they think we don’t care? Come on, Sin! They fucking beat into us what shit alphas we are, and this just proves it.”
“If we go to them like this, we’ll make it even worse. I promise you, Caspian, we can’t fix it when we’re like this. Just because you’ve bitten Melanie doesn’t mean that our pack life is suddenly going to become easy.”
As Sin talked, he spread his scent over me, and my muscles relaxed.
Even though what he was saying was mad, his vanilla swirled around my nose and into my lungs, shuddering through me and softening me up.
I should have fought him, told him to fucking stop, but everything hurt too much.
Camile, Zania, and watching them drive away after making love with them for so long.
I didn’t know how to cope with it apart from letting myself be held by my alpha.
It was only when I started breathing in time with Sin that I was able to feel his emotions, and I gasped, jolting, falling over at the sheer fear that crashed into me as soon as I made space for him.
I suddenly realised that I wasn’t the one he was supporting. He was holding onto me because there wasn’t anything else, because he was as fucking terrified as I was.
“If we force them to come back, they will find another way to run. And we can’t be like that, Caspian.
We can’t be the kind of alphas that keep their omegas locked up because they are scared of what might happen.
We swore we wouldn’t hold Kai back, and that’s all we’ve done since he met us.
If he wants to run now, we should let him. ”
“Are you fucking stupid?” I yelled, flinging open my arms and knocking him away.
I didn’t know if I could stand, but I twisted around to face him, another snarl tearing from me.
“They are ours. We’re a fucking pack. We can’t just let them disappear like this!”
“We’re not letting them go. They aren’t going to disappear,” he said, his fists shaking as he rose to his feet. He offered me a hand, and I groaned at the pressure in my body as he lifted me up.
“If you really think about it, you’ll know where they’ve gone,” Sin said.
“Just tell me!”
“You can figure it out yourself, you already know the answer.” He opened his mouth to say more before he sighed. “Do you want to stay here, or are you coming with me? We could both use rest.”
“Are you fucking joking? Sin, we don’t need rest.”
“Understood,” he nodded before he turned away from me, and my heart plunged.
“Hey! Where the fuck are you going?” I shouted, but he didn’t turn his head to look. “Don’t walk away! Sin!”
But the door closed behind him, and I stared at it in shock.
I never expected him to give up. I didn’t think he would run away.
I knew we were both shit at showing how we felt.
Kai and Mel had made that so clear to us, but we had to try.
We had to do something. We had to find a way to show our omegas we loved them.