Four months later #7
"No histamine reaction to this antigen, the cells are responding normally."
"Seriously?"
Blue nods.
"Are you sure?!"
"I am."
"Yippee yay!!!!" I yell, spinning like crazy, twirling around the room, dancing and almost losing my balance, and Blue watches all of it with a subtle smirk.
Then I stop. Hesitation returns.
"Wait, tell me again. Is it over? Is it really over, the hell we were through…"
"I do believe so."
"I really… I…" My voice breaks.
At the end I rush toward him and grab him in a tight hug, pressing him to my chest. I know Blue is the kind of person who avoids touching other people but I just have to do it.
"Thank you, you did it, Blue! You’re a genius, your reputation is one hundred percent deserved!"
Then I let him go and continue dancing all over the office. Blue smirks, tilting his head.
"I can be with him? I can finally be with him, all the way?" I shout in disbelief.
"I’m pretty sure you can."
My breath keeps catching in my chest so I take a hit from my inhaler.
Blue still watches me.
"I hope you let me know how everything goes in actual real life," he says, folding his arms, but there’s no denying that his usually tart expression is now full of satisfaction.
"Of course, I’ll text you the moment Bay gets home!"
After saying goodbye in a flurry of excited jumps, I dash out of the office, passing silent Gabriel, but I don’t care. When I reach the elevator, my phone buzzes.
"Darling, I ordered an Uber for you, it’ll be waiting at the main entrance."
And again with the darling. Well, well.
I hesitate for a second, wondering whether to text him the results right away, but I don’t.
He can wait just a moment longer for this sweet surprise.
I step out of the building, a wave of spring wind hitting me, and I practically lift off the ground with happiness.
Sure enough, an Uber pulls up at the exit. I glance at it carefully because I’m used to staying alert, but behind the wheel sits an omega who gives me a kind smile.
"Alex?"
"That’s me, my husband ordered the ride." I savor the word husband, almost tasting it on my tongue.
"Great, let’s go," the omega says with a friendly smile.
For a moment his face looks somewhat familiar, but I don’t think much of it.
I only notice that he slides the glass partition closed between the front and back seats, but many drivers do that for safety so I pay it no mind.
I unlock my phone and start writing a text to Jared, wanting to tell him the fantastic news, but…
But then I realize we’ve turned in a completely different direction than usual.
"Excuse me, are there any roadworks on this stretch? Because normally we’d turn down that avenue."
"Yes, they just put up a sign and we have to go around the detour," the omega says.
I go back to texting.
I only notice that my fingers feel clumsy and move slower than usual.
I struggle to tap the words.
"Hey, I have great news, my therapy is finished…" My phone slips from my hand.
A moment later everything goes black and I slide sideways on the seat, losing consciousness.
◆◆◆
When I open my eyes I realize I’m stretched out on something like a cot, and my arms and ankles are tied to the four legs of the bed.
My first thought isn’t even frightening, I just assume I’m dreaming, because everything is slightly blurry and hazy and fogged over the way it is in dreams.
A second later it hits me.
I let out a wild scream and jerk my head up as much as I can to check what’s around, panic pouring through every limb like a cold river.
I see him immediately.
A giant of a man, so huge that even sitting he’s taller than I am, watching me with an icy gaze.
His long hair is steel colored, silver mixed with gray, his face looks carved out of gray stone, and there aren’t that many wrinkles even though I know right away he must be well over seventy.
His massive, muscular body is so enormous that even Bay’s brother Storm wouldn’t compare, even though he’s also a purple.
Eugene Hanson is the largest purple alpha I’ve ever seen.
Fuck. The ground seems to split open beneath me. At the moment when something so miraculous happens in my life, this happens too, another tragedy hits.
Is my world really about to shatter in a fraction of a second?
I should have known. Bay has never called me ‘darling’. For some reason that thought flashes through my mind. And in the last two messages he called me that twice, which makes no sense, so could it mean he didn’t send them, that they… have him too?!
A cold shiver shoots through me. I nervously glance around.
The room is terrifying. I see right away I’m in the basement of a funeral home.
That huge cabinet with metal doors is unmistakable.
They keep bodies in there, it’s a cooler.
I vaguely remember from the trial back in high school that the Hansons have various businesses: clubs, shops, but also funeral homes.
I try to think of what I could say, what I could demand or negotiate, but the truth is that right now I am entirely at his mercy unless… he dares to touch me.
Even lying here, tied like a pig, my mind still refuses to accept these facts, it keeps trying to rewind time and stop it at the moment I got into that Uber. I want to wake up from this nightmare, that’s all I want, someone pinch me, please.
This driver, the omega… only now do I start to understand why his face looked familiar.
Those rough features, of course I should have recognized him.
Back in high school, when all of this began, there weren’t only the alphas from their family.
There was also a beta, Kaleb, and… one omega, and they both were the brothers of the ones Bay killed.
I remember his sugary, fake smile, and damn, he sold it well, I suspected nothing.
But it’s too late for regrets now. I can’t rewind time. I have to deal with what’s in front of me and trust that maybe another miracle might happen.
"Do you know what it’s like to live for over a decade without knowing what happened to six of your grandchildren?"
His voice is low and gravelly, almost booming.
I stay quiet. I’ve already decided I won’t argue with him, because I know perfectly well there’s no chance I can talk my way out of this.
"Yes, I spent exactly twelve years trying to figure out what really happened. When my other sons gave up, when they moved on, I kept pushing. The police refused to help, private investigators found nothing, but… I didn’t stop."
Eugene leans forward a little, his massive shoulders bulging as he braces his hands on his knees and tilts his gray head. His neck is actually wider than his skull!
"Until one day, driving for the thousandth time along the route where three of my grandsons died, I noticed one of the factories about six miles from that road was replacing its cameras."
A short pause. My eyes stay fixed on his grotesque face, all sharp angles and heavy brow ridges. I stay silent as he goes on.
"On a stupid impulse I went in and talked to the old guard watching the place. He told me his boss had a thing about keeping old recordings because he’d been robbed once and preferred to store everything. I slipped him some money and he let me dig through the old server footage."
Eugene rubs his knobby hands together with a dry crackle.
"By some miracle one of the cameras was pointed toward the road, the exact road that leads along the cliffs.
I knew the moment my boys drove down that road, the exact minute their phones went dead, and…
lo and behold, I saw him. A car with no bumper driving by.
The same brand your boyfriend drove back then. "
I force myself to stay calm, but my heart betrays me, beating faster. Eugene slowly stretches his mouth into an almost demonic smile.
"When they pulled my boys’ car out of the water, along with their rotting, fish-gnawed bodies, nobody cared about the dent in their rear bumper. They said it was too small to matter, nothing important… but not to me. I knew they were pushed off that cliff."
He sighs and tilts his head, his washed-out brown eyes studying me coldly.
"The police said that dent could’ve happened in any parking lot. But I didn’t buy it. I went over everything a thousand different ways. I know my boys set out to hurt him, and something went wrong along the way."
The fucker… I can’t take it anymore.
"Yeah. Your boys hurt him before; do you even care about that?" I burst out. "And what? After that they still wanted to kill their victim?" I spit the words because I can’t hold them back, I can’t believe this man is so warped he refuses to acknowledge even a shred of their guilt.
His jaw clenches hard.
"Do you know what happened to Kit and Matt after that stupid process? When they went to prison they were nineteen. They were young alphas." He leans toward me a little, eyebrows furrowed. "They were the ones who got hurt in there. Again and again."
A moment of silence settles.
Then I say slowly, choosing every word, "I hope you’re able to trace this whole mess back step by step to the very first thing that started it. When two of your grandsons tried to take my inhaler and my boyfriend simply said, ‘Don’t do that.’"
"That’s what he said? You forgot he also broke my grandson’s nose," he replies bitterly.
"So what? They paid him back. Kit and Matt beat him so badly he couldn’t go to school for three weeks. You remember that, right?" I growl even though I know it won’t help. "Or do you only remember your family’s suffering? What about Bay’s?"
"My grandsons paid for it, and paid hard. They went to prison for a year, and when they came back they were different. Young alphas become playthings for older inmates, it’s practically a prison tradition."
"Well, violence breeds violence. Everyone knows that. At some point they should stop, but… they didn’t. They tried to kill him, remember? It started with them and ended on them."