29. Eight
Eight
Lin
The apartment smelled like despondent omega. Like toffee left to burn on the stove and cream left to spoil on the counter.
Three days since Detective Banerjee had dropped the bomb on us. None of us had left the apartment in those days, Brooks and Brea both taking personal leave and me assigning the meetings I couldn’t push or cancel to my assistant.
We were scared, and we hid it poorly.
Hardly a moment since the big reveal had passed without one or the other of us catastrophizing, asking the same questions and giving the same answers.
Why would they want to control omega genetics?
Why wouldn’t they, honestly? There was money in omegas from healthcare to luxury perfumes.
Brooks told us about the trials using synthetic omega hormones, but so far they weren’t even close to the genuine article.
There were even rumors that part of what made AlphX so addicting for alphas was some manipulation of omega pheromones.
Besides that, if omegas disappeared, the entire multimillion-dollar supplement industry disappeared with it. Heat control, rut suppressants, scent neutralizers, slick camouflage, instinct dampeners—they all depended on omegas’ continued existence.
Not to mention that in many circles, designations still carried social clout. And enough of those circles would be willing to pay through the nose for the guarantee.
Will they try to take her again? Probably. The scheme had been ongoing for decades, and I doubted one incompetent bounty hunter would deter them.
What do we do? Hell if I fucking knew.
Taryn rarely left her room. She didn’t even try to convince us she needed to get back to work.
With the realization that her “paranoia” may have been somewhat based on reality—it wasn’t out of the question that people were watching her—we all felt safer holed up on the top floor of the building, where no one was alone, and where there were four fighting bodies between our omega and the villains coming for her.
That had happened at some point—that she’d become ours. It hadn’t been explicitly stated by any of us, but by virtue of hers and Brea’s staying here, their trust in us, it didn’t really need saying.
We would, though. Sometime soon, when the saying wouldn’t be marred by fear.
The fourth night brought a preheat spike.
I woke in the wee hours to a mouthwatering sweet scent.
It practically carried me to the closed guest room door without any conscious decision to move.
Enough me persisted that I didn’t burst through it and pounce.
I stood outside, sweaty forehead pressed against the doorframe, inhaling the buttery, sticky toffee scent of a perfuming omega as if it were a drug.
Then I heard the moans. The sighs. The creak of the bed as two bodies moved on it, an alpha tending to her needy omega.
Caine joined me at some point in the dark of night. We kept each other anchored, each of us pulling the other back when we sensed they were teetering on the edge of control.
In some other universe, we’d be in there with them. They’d invited us to be heat partners; stood to reason we’d be welcome at preheats, too. But Clint Hooper and Phoenix Labs and goddamn Wainwright had shattered that universe.
When Brooks also stumbled out of our bedroom right as the dark outside began to lighten, the sounds and scents had already lessened a good deal. Yet there we stood. All three of us craved her, craved them .
The door swung open inward, and we all jolted back.
Caught.
Brea stood at the door, hair mussed and cheeks flushed. Fuck, she smelled of Taryn’s slick, and it made my cock twitch in my sweats. Behind her, Taryn lay sleeping in the bed, face more peaceful than I’d seen it in weeks.
“I asked her before she conked out,” Brea whispered as she stepped aside. “You’re welcome to spend the rest of the night in here.”
Brooks immediately burst through and claimed a spot on the far edge of the bed, knitting his fingers in with Taryn’s.
I ran my fingers over Brea’s cheek, noting that she, too, looked calmer.
I left a light kiss on her lips, indeed tasting Taryn there.
I forced my horny and eager alpha down and stepped over the threshold.
Caine, though, stayed rooted to the spot.
God, this had to be ten levels of weird for him.
He’d been convinced that their invitation had only included him out of politeness, but I wasn’t sure.
He only ever gave me the bare bones of what he and Brea covered and worked on in their sessions, but I knew how immensely they impacted him.
And I knew his respect for Brea was deep and solid.
Was she technically even his therapist anymore? I didn’t see how she could be after the last few weeks. They may have begun as strangers who happened to share a building, but they shared so much more now.
They shared an omega, even if they didn’t realize it yet.
“You can come in too,” Brea said softly, a hand on his wrist.
He stepped back with a grunt. “Hall’s fine,” he muttered before stationing himself at the doorway, settling in like a soldier on watch.
We didn’t try to change his mind. Brea simply left the door ajar, our scents able to reach him and his form never out of our sight.
Then Brea and I climbed quietly into the bed, Brea on Taryn’s left side and me behind her.
It was a tight squeeze with four of us. That was fine—none of us was looking for space anyway.
Day six found me staring at my computer screen. Early enough that the automatic coffee timer hadn’t tripped yet. I sat at the kitchen counter. None of the others had emerged from their rooms yet.
An idea was germinating.
Eventually the coffee machine got to work, and the smell of his favorite brew brought my mate straight to me.
“Whatcha looking at?” Brooks asked as he walked up behind me and planted a kiss on my cheek.
I reached behind myself without turning, placing my hand on his cheek in a loving pat. I turned my screen toward him without speaking.
“But…”
“I know,” I said. “We’d make sure it was safe.”
Taryn would be safe. Had to be safe. But safe had to mean more than just subsisting here, waiting for the next onslaught.
Every day she stayed cooped up in this apartment, no closer to an answer of what we were going to do or how were we going to fight the forces coming for her, her spirit died a little more. Her light dimmed just a touch.
Safe had to be safety from hopelessness, from the surrender she fell deeper into day upon day.
Over my dead body would I let any of their lights go out.
We had to do something, anything. It wasn’t a solution. It wasn’t a future. But it was action, and action was something we all desperately needed.
“How?”
I checked my phone. Caine hadn’t replied yet. “Working on it.”