32. Five
Five
Lin
I was going to strangle this client.
I normally was fairly immune to the bursts of alpha aggression.
When I’d first presented, it took a long to time accept my designation because I felt so different than the other alphas I knew.
Where their new hormones pushed them into brawls and arguments, moods swinging wildly back and forth at the drop of a hat, I just…
didn’t. Even into adulthood, even after finding and bonding Brooks, my alpha remained calm and in control.
Maybe that control, in itself, was its means of asserting his dominance.
I’d never particularly struggled with attaining respect or standing as the leader in charge when needs must. I’d never needed to strive for intimidation.
People had just acquiesced as I needed. I thought I’d been lucky enough to escape the stereotypical alpha posturing.
Apparently fucking not.
Final walkthroughs were always tedious. I knew this. Yet as we inched our way through the latest building to be finishing up refurb, the client pointing out every little imperfection for the punch list, I wanted to punch him .
Add to it the fact that the client hadn’t been satisfied with an assistant-led walkthrough and had insisted I emerge from the bubble of our apartment, and it took everything in me to keep the scowl off my face. We’d already been at it for nearly an hour and were barely halfway through the property.
A buzzing in my breast pocket was my saving grace.
I shot the contractor and client an apologetic look as I reached for my phone. “Apologies, but I have to take this,” I said, already walking backwards away from them and swiping my phone open. I had several texts from an unknown number.
Batten the hatches. They’ll be coming in droves.
This went live about two hours ago.
Then an image, thumbnail obscured, and a vague link. I glanced over my shoulder to ensure the other two were already neck deep back in punch list land before clicking on the image first. It was a screenshot of a plaintext webpage. When I clicked to open it larger, though, my body froze over.
WANTED ALIVE. OMEGA APPROACHING HEAT.
TARYN ROSE LENNOX MADDOX. AGE 27. FEMALE. SSN 5900-1-29314. CENSUS NUMBER 25-O-15672-V-234.
REWARD FOR CAPTURE BEFORE HEAT COMMENCES: $500,000.
REWARD FOR CAPTURE BEFORE HEAT ENDS: $350,000.
REWARD FOR CAPTURE FOLLOWING HEAT: $250,000.
I was running for the exit, shouted apologies over my shoulder, before I’d made the decision to move.
The burgeoning alpha fury beneath my skin grew with each slow driver on the road, each red light and meandering pedestrian as I sped my way toward the apartment that served as a piss poor fortress against the myriad of dragons likely already barrelling our way.
We all stood around my phone on the counter like hikers who’d discovered a dead body out in the woods.
Brea’s skin was ashen, shoulders hunched near her ears and her fingers twisting the ends of her red hair.
Caine looked murderous, chest rising and falling as he visibly struggled to maintain his composure.
“They more than tripled their price,” he seethed under his breath. “She’s just an object to them.”
Against my better judgment, Caine had clicked the accompanying link in the text as soon as I’d laid the phone down, which just took us to the live webpage of the ad. Which showed that more than sixty people had already downloaded the attached images and files.
Sixty potential attackers currently racing for our omega, worth half a million bucks. And once Taryn’s heat began, we’d be all but helpless to stop them.
Brea gave a small shake to her head. “We can’t stay here,” she said softly.
I mirrored her head shake. “No, we can’t.”
She met my gaze, eyes glassy. “I can’t ask you to help us. Not now. Not—”
“You think we’d just bail now?” Caine growled. “After last night?”
She placed a gentle hand on his arm. “No, I don’t think you’d bail. I think every one of you would run into a wall of razorblades for her.” She shook her head again. “I’m the one who can’t let you do that. This isn’t your fight.”
“The hell it isn’t,” I muttered, running my hand over my face as I turned, slowly pacing through the kitchen. Alpha anger rising still.
Brea looked between Caine and me. “Lin—”
“You don’t just go back to being the new tenants downstairs,” I said between clenched teeth.
“My bite may not be on your necks, but my heart fucking beats for you, Brea. And Taryn. Same as it does for Caine and Brooks.” I turned around, a burning behind my eyes and inside my ribcage.
“Whether it’s date nights and rooftop drinks or protecting what’s ours, you’re pack, Brea. The both of you.”
A single tear fell down her cheek. She gave a jerky nod, quickly rearranging her strong alpha mask. “Okay. Then where can we go?”
“I don’t trust the heat centers,” Caine said, brows furrowed. “Too easily bought.”
“Anywhere in the city leaves us exposed,” Brooks said.
Brea paced absently, chewing her lip as she thought. “What about Falcon Peak? Valley View? Do you know anyone there who could help?”
“No one I’d trust basically with our lives,” I said, wracking my brain. “We have family in Matamir and Hilledale, but we’d have to get on a plane, and I’d prefer there be as little of a paper trail where we’re going as possible.”
Taryn sat up. “We could ask Vikki?”
“No.” Caine’s reply was stern, unyielding.
She sat up further, gearing up for a face-off. “Vikki’s done nothing but help us. We’d have no clue we were still in trouble witho—”
“ No .”
Taryn looked to her alpha, a Can you talk reason into this idiot? look in her eye.
I sat up with a jolt.
My family may be out of reach. Brooks’s too. Brea’s was clearly a nonstarter, and Taryn had no one to speak of.
But Caine.
“I know where we can go.”
Caine
Lin’s eyes stuck on me, a rare hesitance in his face.
Brooks darted over to him. “Where?”
Lin swallowed. “The Greysmoke cabin.”
My mind stuttered over the name, not having heard it or even thought about it in so long. The Greysmoke Mountains stretched for five hundred miles. Tons of cabins littered the area. He couldn’t mean that cabin.
Except he still hadn’t dragged his attention off me.
No one else filled the suddenly tense silence, so Lin carried on. “It’s a bit of a drive, but it’s secluded. It’s on protected Greysmoke land, and only a handful of people ever got permission to build there before they discontinued the permits back in the fifties.”
“So there shouldn’t be anyone around for miles and miles,” Brea murmured, mostly to herself.
Lin gave a small nod. “Theoretically, anyway.”
“This sounds like a A-plus option to me,” Taryn said, her brow furrowed. “Why are you both shitting yourselves right now?”
My fists curled tightly enough for my knuckles to crack.
Lin swallowed. “Because Caine’s family used to own it. It…” He swallowed again. My knuckles cracked. “It fell out of the family.”
Everyone’s eyes slid to me. Decades-long shame and bitterness licked up the back of my neck like rising flames.
My stomach churned as memories I’d spent most of my life pushing into the deepest corners of my mind pushed against the boundaries I’d put up against them.
Old hurts, old angers boiling and bubbling closer to the surface.
My eyes met Brea’s, her bright green eyes looking at me with such…assurance. Acceptance. Encouragement. I hadn’t even talked about this with her. But at her side, I knew I could.
I kept her gaze. “When—”
My voice cracked. I swallowed. Tried again.
“My family used to go to that cabin in the fall when I was growing up. My great-granddad passed it to my granddad who passed it to my dad. Who was supposed to pass it to me.”
Green shimmers anchored me.
“Except when I was nine, he decided to blow my mother’s brains out instead.
I went to my first foster home, he went into prison, and four years later had his own brains beaten out by some other inmate.
” I gave a casual shrug that came nowhere close to how I actually felt in that moment. “Damn near poetic.”
“Caine…” Taryn’s eyes shone with sorrow.
I kept my focus on Brea. The strength I needed in moments of weakness. “The cabin was sold along with the rest of my family’s estate. Some was put into a trust for my maintenance. Most of it, the state kept.” I looked to Lin. “There’s no telling if it’s even still standing, let alone empty.”
Lin shuffled nervously. I didn’t think I’ve ever seen Lin shuffle nervously. “It’s standing. And empty.”
My heart squeezed. “How…?”
A look of determination took over his features.
“It came across my desk some years ago. I thought maybe, one day, you may want to go back.” He took a deep breath.
“A management company keeps it in good repair and clear of squatters. I bought it under a tertiary shell corp. I won’t say it can’t be connected to us, but it’s not an immediate link. ”
The room fell silent, everyone exchanging heavy looks with everyone else.
“You… bought… the Greysmoke cabin?”
Lin didn’t move. Didn’t tense or stand up straighter. Only impassively replied, “I did.”
“You own it ? Right now?”
“Yes.”
My emotions had no clue what to fucking do. Wring his neck, hug him, cry, run, punch a wall, suck my thumb. I pinballed among a hundred different options.
Taryn’s touch on my neck snapped my attention to her. The golden specks in her eyes almost glowed as she looked up at me, all softness and gentleness.
I was putty for this omega.
That cabin was the scene of the worst moments of my life. The destruction of my first family. The gateway down a road that led to depravity and suffering and death.
But my family had been happy there before. For years, we had.
All our scents had finally coalesced in the apartment, fitting together to create an, honestly, intoxicating aroma. New pack. New family.
If that cabin could keep this family safe, just for a little while, then it was a godsend. For years, I had been the one needing the help and protection of others. Now was my time to protect them.
I cupped Taryn’s cheek in my hand. “Pack up, omega,” I said before putting a kiss on the crown of her head. “We’re heading to the mountains.”