Chapter 15
Gage
I catch up with Diego outside the showers. Between Auryn and myself, his skin is going to be nothing but pruny wrinkles in no time.
“Diego, I need you to come with me.”
“Sí, boss. Right away.”
He trots down the hall after me, following me to the garage. I appreciate his automatic obedience, his willingness to go where I go. I love our pack like brothers, but sometimes–especially since Auryn arrived–Emmett is a bit abrasive. Resistant. Not like Diego. I could’ve asked him to follow me into hell, and he’d be right by my side.
Am I risking a lot by leaving Emmett alone with Auryn? Well, alone with Auryn and Olly, but Olly’s so caught up in Auryn’s blood samples that he won’t notice if Em and Auryn throw down again. I don’t think that will happen now, but asking him to show her to a bedroom might have been a bit of a gamble. We could have another Diego situation, another hasty mating, but I think after my … “talk”
with Em, he’ll be nice. Even if they hook up, I don’t think they’ll require bandages. Maybe.
Diego and I get into the Humvee and drive off towards the Orions’. It’s about an hour’s drive, which begs the question: How did Auryn get so close to our compound on foot? Was she driven by the same primal instincts that brought me to her cave?
I know she’s my mate. We’ve got the start of a bond, that much is certain, but so does Diego, it seems, and possibly Olly, too. I’ve heard of omegas bonding to entire packs before, but given our luck with women, I never thought it would happen for us. We’re the lone-ranger mercenary types, not homebodies.
Does Auryn, our spicy omega, even want homebodies? Maybe there's more to this bond–these bonds–than can be seen at face value. Sure, she started a nest in the cave, but maybe there's something to Olly’s cinnamon and peppercorn.
The situation with Auryn is so muddy. Usually, the omegas we are hired to bring in are only running away to get a taste of freedom before they solidify their mate bonds. More cases of getting in that last hurrah before they settle down and breed. But Auryn? She seems to be running for a different, more desperate reason.
She seems to be running to escape horrors that I can’t begin to understand.
Alphas lie. Alphas are bad. Alphas harm. Her notions about alphas don’t fit with how true alphas should act. Is this coming from experience? If so, I feel duty-bound to root out what's going on in the Orions’ pack and put a stop to it.
As we turn onto the road leading to the Orion pack home, Diego perks up and sits straighter in his seat. “We’re going there?” he asks.
“Yep.”
I cut the engine before we get all the way down the drive and coast to a stop about two hundred yards from their house. “We’re going to get to the bottom of Auryn’s issues with alphas, which I suspect stem from this place.”
“Will we need guns?”
I only pause for a moment. “Maybe.”
Diego hops out and opens the back, getting out two holsters. “Tranq ammo or …?”
“Live ammo.”
“You got it, boss.”
We arm up, and I draw one of the guns from my holster before ducking into the woods and creeping through the brush. Diego follows right behind me. The wind blows in our favor, keeping us upwind of the Orions. With any luck, they won’t see or hear us either, and we can be in and out without having to use the guns.
Circling around in a wide arc, we march towards the outer rim of trees that grow near the house. A sudden sound forces me to stop, and I strain my ears to better hear what’s ahead.
It’s the sound of digging. A shovel.
The breeze picks up, carrying voices to our ears.
“Another one bites the dust, huh, Willie?”
“Yep. Sneed’s just tearing through them. Soon we’re going to be more haunted than a native burial ground.”
“Too bad that one got away. What was her designation again?”
“Five-seven-six. Damn, she was a fine one. Such a tight fucking pussy, but the mouth on her! And the claws. Heh. She was a fucking fighter. I hope that the team Sneed hired gets her back. I could use another hour or two with her in the breeding cell.”
“You and me both! Makes my mouth water just thinking about all the fun we had with her.”
My heart drops into my stomach, and bile rises in my throat. Auryn …
Sneed’s been harming more omegas than just Auryn, and from the sounds of it, most have met a horrific end. If that’s a body they’re burying …
A chamber clicks next to me, and Diego growls.
“Neither one of them makes it back to the house,”
I say, chambering my own weapon. “For Auryn?”
“For Auryn.”
We split up, approaching the two men from opposite sides. The shovel covers the sound of our footsteps as they dig what appears to be a shallow grave. A blanket-wrapped body lies on the ground at their feet, and it takes everything I have not to rush the two men and tear them apart with my bare hands.
They hurt Auryn. They hurt and killed the woman on the ground.
They don’t deserve the quick, clean end they’re about to meet.
Two silenced shots later, the men land in their own half-dug grave with a pair of thuds. The shovel clatters to the ground, and Diego and I come out of hiding.
While Diego covers the men’s bodies with the upturned dirt and rocks, I inspect the bundle next to them. Inside the blanket lies the nude body of a young woman, her face bruised and battered, her skin lined with the same surgical scars that mar Auryn’s pale form. This woman’s scars are more pronounced, fresher, like they hadn’t had time to heal. Whoever she was, she wasn’t here as long as Auryn. Not long enough for the scars to fade from angry red to stark white.
“Gage, what they said … Do you think they–Do you think this woman and Auryn–”
My only response is a feral growl.
I’m not well-trained enough to tell if this woman was violated in the same way the men talked about violating my mate. That’ll be up to Olly, once we get her body back to the compound. All I know is that two of Auryn’s tormentors are now dead, but it’s not enough.
We have to kill them all.
While I stand there, trembling with rage, Diego covers the dead woman back up and hefts her into his arms. “Come, boss. Let’s get her to Olly.”
A sudden thought occurs to me, and I grab the shovel.
“Boss?”
“You get her to the car. I’m digging up one of these assholes. They may have been useless sacks of shit in life, but in death he may give Olly some answers that we need.”
I get their heads uncovered first, and I position the point of the shovel under one dead man's chin. “I know you’re not squeamish, Diego, but you might want to look away.”
He shakes his head. “I'm not missing this for the world.”
Diego watches me behead the two bodies without the slightest flinch.
Once I've accomplished that gruesome task, I dig up the rest of one of the pathetic alphas and dump his body on the luggage rack. The heads get stuffed under the seat.
Diego brings the woman to the car, where he carefully, reverently lays her across the back seat.
We didn’t investigate nearly as much as I’d hoped, but we learned more than I ever wanted to know about the Orions.
Back at the compound, Diego and I bring the bodies to the lab, where Olly’s still studying Auryn’s blood. I toss the dead alpha at his feet while Diego lays the woman on an exam table. Olly turns ghostly white, his eyes wide with fear.
“We brought back tissues samples,”
I say. “Find out everything you can.”
Without giving Olly a chance to reply, I stalk down the hall to the guest room. Auryn’s been keeping things from us, and while I now better understand her hesitance to trust us, we can’t let her hide anymore. We have to know what’s going on in that house, know what we’ve gotten into, and we have to formulate a plan for how we’re going to stop it. That means getting the whole ugly truth out of her, no matter how painful it might be to relive.
I throw open the guest room door and come to a screeching halt.
Well, I guess Auryn and Em sorted out their differences …
I clear my throat to get their attention, and once Auryn looks up from the bed, I toss the severed heads on the floor.
“These two hurt you, yes?”
Her eyes widen in shock, but she nods.
“Well, there are two fewer bad alphas in the world tonight.”
I make eye contact with Em. “I need to talk to her when you two are finished.”