Chapter 40 Thirty-six
Thirty-six
Brea
“Hi, this is Taryn’s voicemail! You know the deal.” And then the beep.
The voice of my omega mocked me as, for the fifteenth time, she didn’t pick up the phone. Lin met my eye. “Anything?”
I shook my head, chucking my phone onto the couch in frustration.
Last night’s vote had devastated her. For hours, she’d sat there in stunned disbelief.
She hadn’t even been able to move into the bedroom to go to sleep.
Brooks had lifted her, cradling her against his chest until he could set her so gently in the center of his bed.
The three of us had fallen asleep there.
When we’d woken up this morning, the bed had no omega. The apartment had no omega. When I checked the tracking app, it showed her exactly here. Then we found her necklace on the kitchen counter.
That was ten hours ago. None of us had seen or heard from her since.
Lin had been by Bean & Leaf, The Basement, the park, her favorite thrift shop, the antique store that reminded her of her Gran’s old place, Sheyna’s twice—no sign of our omega.
Brooks had called the hospitals, bus stations, the goddamn airport. No one had seen her.
My omega was a ghost.
Brooks was on Caine retrieval duty now, since Gail’s colleague had managed to lower his bail to an attainable amount. Lin stood with me in the living room as we tried to think of anywhere else she’d go.
But what if she wasn’t somewhere we could find her?
What if she’d just walked out onto the street and Wainwright had snatched her again?
“I’m panicking,” I said slowly. I looked down at my hands as they began to shake.
Lin took them in his. “We’re going to find her.”
“She was counting on this.” Tears blurred my vision. “Maybe I should’ve tempered her expectations. I should’ve—”
“Should’ve doesn’t mean much in the present.” Lin squeezed my fingers. “Taryn is responsible for Taryn.”
The door opened, and Brooks and Caine charged in. “Anything?” the beta said. We shook our heads.
Caine swore under his breath. “I assume we checked the roof?”
Lin gave him a look.
“Fine,” Caine growled back. “What about the apartment downstairs?”
I shook my head. “She hasn’t been in since—well, since the last time she was there.”
Caine led the procession downstairs, pulling out his master key as we approached the apartment where Taryn and I had meant to make our home.
The moment he opened the door, my heart sang. Taryn had been here recently. Her toffee and cream scent, sour as it was, was fresh and strong. We stepped further inside, until one of my steps crinkled. I looked down.
A torn notebook page.
I bent to pick it up.
Day sixteen
Writing writing because Brea said to write I’m not even gonna use periods whoops lost my apostrophes too capital letters whatre those write write write until an idea comes to my mind my brain my thoughts they roll like a car bus wheels on the bus go round and round—
Oh! Idea! (And punctuation!) Can we all give a big round of applause to the Farendale bus team because, damn, these are some clean buses.
Because let’s be real, I’m a princess and using the bus as part of my Engaging with the World Therapy is much easier when it doesn’t smell like a dumpster or when I don’t have to sit in a seat with mysterious stains.
Bus 28 is the cleanest by far of the ones I’ve ridden, but—
Her writing ended at the bottom of the page. I looked around the floor and saw more. Brooks was holding the hollowed-out shell of the notebook she’d been writing in since we came home from the Greysmoke Cabin.
I felt as hollow as the empty binding.
Caine stood in the center of the room, staring into the corner where I guessed he’d once held my omega, the both of them falling into ferality after the break-in and assault that had started all of this. His face was stricken, like he was seeing it play out again in real time.
“Fuck,” Lin breathed, taking in the scene. “Goddamn, where would she go?”
I couldn’t keep the tears inside anymore. Lin cradled my head against his shoulder. “We’ll find her,” he whispered to me, rocking us back and forth. Maybe he was soothing himself as much as me. “We’re gonna bring her home, and we’re gonna be okay.”
“I feel like Sisyphus,” I blubbered against his chest. “Pushing this just…impossibly huge rock up the hill. But there’s always something, something, something else that keeps us from getting to the top.”
Caine’s scent sharpened, and his footsteps stormed past us.
“What—Caine!” Brooks called after him. I lifted my head, and Lin and I watched as he passed through the door. We followed him at a brisk pace into the lobby and to the outer doors.
“Caine!” Lin called. “What’s happening?”
He didn’t even break pace, only calling over his shoulder. “I’m bringing our omega home!”
Caine
Just before I reached the crest of the hill, I pulled the car off to the shoulder.
Cut off the engine, climbed the rest of the way to the top.
Even if I’d missed the shadow of a huddled omega sitting at the top, I couldn’t have missed her scent.
Mottled cream, burned toffee, salt stinging in my eyes.
I didn’t say a word. Just sank to the ground beside her. Looked down the too-tall hill. Synced my breaths with hers. Her pain was a fiery sting in the bond we shared, one I only wanted to soothe.
There was no soothing this, though. There was only sitting with her in it.
“Tell me not to skate this hill,” she finally whispered.
Her board sat under the tent of her raised knees, her hands gripping either side of it. She hadn’t touched the thing since we got back. Maybe that’s why she’d gone into the downstairs apartment. Or maybe she’d just caught sight of it and acted on instinct.
Either way, the demand she requested wasn't what I gave her. I swallowed. “I don’t want you to skate down the hill.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I nodded. “It’s dangerous,” I said carefully. “And your balance is shit.” She actually huffed a mild laugh. My inner alpha preened. “I’ve skated a loooot of hills like this one, Omega. A lot of people told me not to. None of that meant shit until I decided I wasn’t going to anymore.”
She sniffed next to me. “You could bark at me, make me not do it.”
“I’d sooner cut out my tongue than bark at you."
“That’s what alphas do,” she said in a monotone. “And omegas listen. And that’s the way it will always be.”
I didn’t reply. The smell of her tears thickened the air.
“We’re not equal. They’ll never let us be.”
With a grunt, she pulled her skateboard out and threw it with a shout down the hill.
The various cracking and crashing sounds it made echoed in the lonely night.
Then she turned to me, burying her face in my chest as the emotion she'd been running from for months finally overtook her.
Sobs that tore at my heart to hear. Agonized screams directly into my chest that may as well have been knife cutting through.
I wrapped her in my arms, holding her tightly. I kissed her hair and stroked her back. Her pain poured through the bond, slicing me like glass. I stood tall and let it. Let it overwhelm me and chop me to bits. It was nothing, I knew, compared to what it did to her.
She shook her head. “I begged Brooks to let me go back and get caught,” she said so softly I barely heard it. “I told him I couldn’t stand to do nothing when I knew doing nothing meant more omegas would be hurt.
“But that’s all it was in the end. Nothing.” She swiped at her cheeks. “They’ll keep doing what they’re doing, omegas will always be lesser than, and there’s nothing any of us can do about it.”
I swayed my body, kissed the crown of her head. She let the tidal wave of emotion that she’d been repressing for months crash over her.
When her sobs slowed and her breathing evened, I knitted my fingers with hers.
“I haven’t touched AlphX in close to a decade,” I said, voice rough.
“But if someone asked me if I’m an addict, the answer would be yes.
Because that’s not a fight you win and then you’re done.
It happens every day, continuously, forever.
” I squeezed her fingers. “I think, when it comes to stuff like this, it’s the same thing.
We take steps, we make progress, but we’re never done.
It has to be maintained, and it can always slide backwards. ”
Taryn was quiet. So was the bond. I continued.
“Nothing is ever for nothing, sunshine. But the meaning doesn’t come from outside. It comes from you.” I lifted her chin so I could meet her eye. “The last six months, they’ve changed you. But you get to choose how. You get to choose the impact it has.
“So, tell me, Omega, how will what happened to you change you?”
I let the silence hang this time, giving her a chance to think on my words, to sort out her own. Our bond throbbed like a bruise as she sat up and pushed her hair over her shoulders.
“The story doesn’t feel like mine,” she finally said.
“We thought it would be safer to hide the real truth of it, so we watered it down and carried on. When we were working on a case against Wainwright, it was easier to take, but now…” She paused, scratching at a loose thread in her shirt.
"It's like I have the effects of everything inside me, but no ownership of the events themselves.
It feels like I gave it away for something bigger, but I'm just standing here empty-handed. "
The rumble of an approaching car made me bristle. Headlights blinded us, then passed, and the dark grew thick again. Reaching over, I pulled my omega's jacket tighter around her and kissed her forehead.
“So what do we do to make the story yours again?”