Chapter Sixteen
Luke
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They'd been in the shithole prison for five years, seven months, and fourteen days. In those years, they had found a routine. It wasn't good, or happy. But they'd had each other, and that had been enough.
And he should be really happy that she wasn't here anymore, that she was safe and being watched over by that female alpha lawyer with a cool toned voice that set his spine straight.
She had said she would keep an eye on their mate and keep her safe. That was good.
But holy fuck he missed her. He couldn't just go back to doing routine maintenance on the hundred year old boiler system that was never going to fucking work. He couldn't go back to eating unidentifiable slop in the caf.
Welding fittings together wasn't the same anymore without Eden snuggled up into her nest in the corner anymore.
The food wasn't the same without them feeding her and while she watched them eat with that adorable little wrinkle of disgust on her nose.
It wasn't the same without her apologizing for taking a goddamn dump in the toilet, her face beet red as if they expected her to reprimand her for having bodily functions.
His life was the exact same as it was before she came into it, and it was all the lesser for it now.
Somehow, when she left, she didn't just take herself, she took half of his soul with her.
.. or some shit like that. Flowery words were Tenor's deal.
All he knew was fuck his hottie omega, black ops, eat hot chip, and lie.
And they didn't even do black ops anymore, not since they'd taken that stupid fucking mercenary gig while they were on shore leave.
"It'll make us enough cash to take a year off," Julius had said. "We could buy a house," he had said.
What they hadn't fucking known was that the piece of shit they were supposed to be a protection detail for had been trafficking omegas, the same fucking way Eden had been trafficked.
He was funnelling them out of developing countries under the guise of matchmaking.
And when those hopeful omegas arrived there expecting to be matched with wealthy American packs, they instead found themselves forced into sex work in brothels that sat in plain sight in fancy neighbourhoods with big ol' new build McMansions.
When they'd stumbled upon one randomly one evening when they'd intended to be checking in on their target's whereabouts, they'd promptly put a bullet in his head, along with the other thugs guarding the girls, as well as one of the patrons for good measure, since the sick fuck had been raping an underage girl.
They'd done their best to get the girls to safety.
They'd given them as much money as they could, had tried to help those of them that wanted to get to shelters.
But they had no idea what happened to the rest of them.
He and Julius and Tenor been scooped up in the night by an unmarked van and multiple darts of trazodone straight to the neck.
Their trial had been the same bullshit as Eden's.
The judge was probably in the pocket of whoever else was in on the trafficking ring.
They hadn't gotten a real trial, no paper trail, just a midnight bus trip to this shit place.
"Private prisons" were no better than a fucking slave market.
It was a goddamn black hole where they could drop anyone they wanted and do whatever the fuck they wanted.
Eden might've been the first omega they knew about in here, but neither of them were the first inmates with a story about being thrown in here without any real trial. Eden was just the first one that got out.
The corruption ran bone deep everywhere he looked. But somehow they had gotten her out. They had gotten her somewhere safe. And that would just have to be enough.
"Hey," Julius grunts, pulling him out of his brooding. "It's my turn to sleep with her pillow tonight."
Her pillow was the only thing that still held her scent and they'd been passing it between them each night with an unspoken rule that if anyone got jizz on it and ruined it for the others, they'd get their ass beat.
He doesn't know when they last said anything more than a few words to each other. Life without Eden was fucking bleak.
He'd only just handed over the pillow when what looked like the entirety of the guards' night shift show up at their cell.
"You pieces of shit got some damn good friends in high places," one of them says.