19. Sam
Chapter 19
A ll I see is red as rage washes over me. I want to break every one of this motherfucker’s fingers. Fuck that, I want to tear his goddamned arms off and beat him to death with the damned things. How dare he fucking touch my omega—hurt my omega! Teddy’s pained whimper draws my gaze to him, and I can practically hear the tendons in my neck creaking as I turn. He looks shaken, not exactly scared, but unnerved at least.
There’s no decision, no ‘I’m going to do this’ moment before my hand snaps out, grabbing the wrist that’s hurting him and squeezing. The bones grind under my fingers, and the hand attached to it spasms, letting Teddy slip loose to circle behind me into the bathroom. The alpha tries to jerk back, but I can’t let go. Even if I wanted to, the muscles in my hand don’t seem to be taking orders from me right now as they tighten, drawing a high yelp of pain from him.
I step forward and he retreats until he’s the one now trapped against the closed door, his back wedged into the corner as I advance. Garret’s saying something, but it’s all background noise as I press the advantage, pinning this asshole by the wrist. I want to snap his fucking fingers. It’d be so easy, and I have a free hand. All it would take is to reach out and twist. A quick hard turn on each one.
Shit, I probably have a saw, or at least some bolt cutters out in the truck.
He’d never be able to hurt another omega.
He must see some of the thoughts in my eyes, because he goes green and starts swallowing like he’s about to be sick, and the rancid scent of urine fills the hallway.
Warm hands wrap around my waist, and a large body presses against me from behind. Teddy’s warm cookie scent envelopes me and chases away the rotten stench of spoiled fruit and piss pouring off the alpha in front of me. My free hand drops to trace along the edge of the leather cuffs he always wears, sliding along the surface and over the back of his. His fingers lace with mine at the contact. His face is rubbing side to side on my back, marking me and drawing a deep shuddering breath from my lungs.
Then Garret’s there, his hand on my wrist that’s still holding the piece of shit. “Sam, you need to let go. The cops’ll be here in a moment. The barista called them earlier. They were already on their way when I called.”
His voice grows harder. “We don’t need to be stuck here all-night answering questions if you damage this piece of shit. If we’re detained, who knows how long it’ll be before we can get home?”
He’s right. I don’t want to admit it, but he is. Still, I have to concentrate to remove my hand from the fucker in front of me. He slides down the wall when I finally manage it, crumpling into a heap in front of the ‘Staff Only’ door. Hopefully, they don’t need anything out of there for a while, and maybe they’re lucky enough to have a backup mop in the front.
Teddy loosens his arms so I can turn, wrapping my own around him. The faint stench of the asshole behind me comes from his shirt. The collar is stretched and wrinkled where he was being manhandled. It’s only my need to comfort my shaking omega that keeps me from turning around and stomping a hole in the piece of shit behind me.
It doesn’t stop me from wanting to strip my mate right here and rub all over him to replace the scent with my own. I clearly haven’t done that often enough if the fuck on the floor back there approached him.
I need to do better.
He’s mine to protect.
They all are.
I have to take care of them .
Since taking off his clothes isn’t an option, I tighten my arms around Teddy, rocking him bath and forth. It’s hard to force my purr since my body wants to snarl and growl, rail at the alpha who thought for even a moment to take him from me. However, my chest eventually smoothes out into the soft thrum made to soothe an omega, and Teddy melts against me, burying his face in my chest.
Rubbing my jaw along the top of his head, I kiss the crown. Taking a few moments to just breathe him in, I confirm for my inner alpha that Teddy is safe and unharmed. Here with me. A sniff followed by a soft sob loosens my grip enough that I can pull back and raise his chin, look into his red-rimmed eyes.
Rage and shame fill me in equal measure. Rage that Teddy suffered this, and shame that I let it happen. I was so distracted trying to check up on Kelly and Steve that I missed what was happening around me. I missed the possible threat when we walked in, and then I took so long trying to get my stupid sausage fingers to work on my tiny little keyboard.
A commotion in the hallway draws my attention, and I lean back out the door, drawing Teddy with me. A group of two more alphas and a beta are standing at the end of the hallway, glaring at Garret. To his credit, he looks unconcerned with the situation. But the way his fingers twitch around the phone he’s holding behind his back is a good tell of how he’s really feeling.
Keeping a firm grip on Teddy’s hand, I go to stand behind Garret. A loud whimper sounds from the ground as we pass the piece of trash I left there. The boots I wear are heavy duty with steel caps. They’re made to protect my feet from falling wood and any random debris on my shop floor, so if I happen to step on and crush his fingers, it probably won’t register. No one could hold me responsible for a complete accident. I hope.
Garret’s shoulders and arms relax at my approach, and the men standing in front of him tense. Garret isn’t small. He’s not huge for an alpha—he’d be big for a beta—maybe he can bulk up if he wants to join the fire department, too. My lips tug up at the thought of him and Steven accompanying me on site and ingraining themselves with our community.
The men on his other side don’t back off, but they look less outwardly aggressive now, the beta stepping behind one of the alphas. The tall lanky one speaks up. “If we could just get back there, and grab Trail. He’s our pack lead. We’ll just take him and go. Please, man, we don’t need any more trouble.” The man behind us whimpers again and just the sound sets my teeth on edge. He’s a useless excuse for an alpha and a pack lead.
Before I can reply—or say something that would probably get me into any more trouble with the cops—the electronic bell rings and the front door opens, letting in two large men and a woman, all wearing matching beige uniforms. It takes me a moment to realize that these are police officers.
A small woman in a green apron greets them at the door and leads them back our way. The woman in green waves her hands in our direction, pointing to Teddy and me. The female officer unclips a taser as she eyes us up from across the room. As they get closer, I see tags and badges that mark them as Arizona state troopers.
At their approach, the other pack seems to ratchet up again. The beta cowering behind the alphas, who’ve turned to keep an eye on my group, as well as the approaching officers. The green apron, a manager going by her name tag, stops in front of us, and I catch the tail end of her conversation. “—had the one in black pinned to the back wall.”
I can’t stop the growl that slips free at the memory, and all the officers’ heads swing towards me. They’re all three alphas. It’s not unheard of, but it still surprises me, especially the woman. She steps forward, looking around me to speak to Teddy. “Young man, are you in need of assistance? Are you being held against your will?”
Teddy lets out a loud sniff, wiping his face off on the back of my shoulder.
That’s gonna be gross.
I think I need to change my shirt now.
“No, ma’am. My alpha was here, he was in the bathroom, and I was waiting for him when…when…” Another broken sob and my body starts purring as I pull him around and into my arms. There’s barely enough room in this fucking hallway for it, but I’ll be damned if I leave him standing next to that piece of shit back there.
It takes me a moment to realize that the two male officers are speaking with Garret and the trash pack, where they’ve led them out into a more open area. I see Garret pointing back towards us, and the manager nodding her head. She points to a black dome on the ceiling behind the counter, and it occurs to me that they probably have security cameras here. So hopefully that’ll make it a bit easier for us.
“Sir, can you please come with me to answer some questions?” The female alpha reaches for Teddy again and he cringes away. It takes all of my patience to force the words out of my throat instead of a snarl. “Can you please not touch my omega? He’s very shaken up.” She looks dumbstruck for a moment, looking between Teddy and me as her mind filters out what I just said.
She tries again, not reaching this time, but using a softer voice. “Sir, sir, are you an omega?” Teddy’s head nods where it’s pressed against me, and I don’t think he hears her almost silent “Oh” of surprise. Her voice is louder but gentler as she tries again. “Mr. Omega, can you please confirm for me that this is your alpha?” Again, the silent head nod. She nods like she expected as much. She should have. He said it just a minute ago.
She stands back up, addressing me, as well as Teddy this time. “Sirs, if you could please come over here so we can get a statement from you. I’ll also need to see your identification please, Mr…” The question hangs in the air as we walk over to stand beside Garret.
Teddy untangles himself from me and looks down at the officer. “Carpenter. We’re Pack Carpenter from Oak Flats, Mississippi. My alphas were driving me back to the omega center in Los Angeles to pick up my nest and get my classes transferred. We just stopped in for coffee because we’ve been on the road for a while, and wanted a pick-me-up until we could get to a hotel for the night.”
The officer nods along. “Thank you Mr. Carpenter, I will still need to see your ID though, as well as any pack registration paperwork on you, if your pack name doesn’t match.” She looks behind us on the ground before turning to her partners. “We might want to get an ambulance here too, just in case.” Her look of annoyance in my direction is clear, but I don’t care.
The taller of the two male officers turns around, speaking into a radio on his shoulder, but I’m too busy checking Teddy over again to pay much attention. Then I turn to Garret, who at least takes my confirmation of his safety with a grain of salt, even if it does make him blush.
Once I’ve made sure my packmates are ok, I trade my keys off to Garret for the drink caddy he’s been hauling around, and hand Teddy some sort of whipped cream covered monstrosity. He takes it from me and drinks half of it in the first minute, then bends over and clutches his head. A low muttered, “Fuck,” is the only thing I hear before he stands up, tears in his eyes. “Sorry, brain-freeze…but fuck me, I needed something to shock my system.”
Garret speaks briefly to the officers before stepping outside to retrieve all of our paperwork and identification. His from their SUV and ours from the glove-box in the truck. Thankfully, it doesn’t take long after his return for the police to verify all of our information and give us a brief lecture about updating our licenses and Teddy’s omega registration.
While we wait for the medical unit, Garret sits down next to us. At least the coffee he got me is large, if a little sweeter than I’m used to. He asks what was taking so long in the bathroom, and I have to explain to him that I was trying to text Kelly. I was worried since we hadn’t heard from them since the night before when she and Steve went out to dinner and then to her parents’ house. I had been trying to send a text to check in, but my fingers don’t exactly hit the keyboard well, and I was getting frustrated.
We sit in silence for a while before Garret tells us he was able to get in touch with his landlord in Los Angeles. They have a week left of the month that’s paid up, but their father did pay out the nose to break their lease. So anything they want, they need to get it moved in the next six days. I’d like to be home before then, so that shouldn’t be a problem.
If we are going to have to pack everything up, I wonder if we wouldn’t be better off hiring a packing company to help us get everything collected and then stuffed in a truck to take home. Garret must have a similar thought, because the next moment he’s on his phone, tapping away with speed. I have a brief harsh moment of envy for his delicate hands, but I shouldn’t expect anything else from someone who wants to be a doctor. You’d have to be able to do tiny fiddly work in that sort of job.
The shorter male officer comes over to take our statement, and Teddy repeats everything that’s already been said, elaborating a bit on some of what the alpha said to him. It makes me want to go back and do more damage than I did. When the paramedics finally arrived, they lead him away. He isn’t wearing any sort of brace, but his hand and wrists are starting to turn a nice shade of purple.
The manager takes the lady officer into the office and makes copies of the recordings from the surveillance cameras, and it seems like it should be pretty open and shut. Unfortunately, it turns out it’s not quite that easy, and I get a warning lecture about use of excessive force in a given situation. Though she does admit she probably wouldn’t be any better if it was her omega it happened to.
The alpha that accosted Teddy isn’t a local either, and is taken into custody, with his pack following him to the station. I’ve almost finished my giant coffee, and the manager brings us all waters while we wait. Teddy and Garret go back for sandwiches out of the case—while a part of me knows I should eat, the nausea that’s rolling through my middle says that would be a terrible plan.
The whole situation takes more time than I want to think about, and it’s after eight before we finally get released from all the questioning. In truth, we’re all exhausted at this point, but the farther along we can get tonight, the better. I check in with Garret before he heads back to his SUV, then I get Teddy settled into the passenger seat of the truck. “Feel free to climb in back and take a nap if you need to. I can make the next couple of hours on my own. ”
He glares at me, and while he scoffs at the idea, I think a part of it is that he’s still shaken up by what happened. Teddy doesn’t usually get treated like an omega. And with his heat closing in, he’s probably already on edge.
Still, he sinks down into the seat and starts snoring before we’ve been on the road more than five minutes.