Chapter 6 #2
“What the hell kind of drugs are these?” I mutter, pulling my shirt off and tossing it into the hamper.
“The kind that snuck up on me,” Cassidy explains, before sticking her toothbrush in her mouth.
I won’t understand anything she has to say from this point forward, so I’ll just have to wait until she’s done brushing her teeth.
Can you tell we’ve gone through this before?
That’s the most difficult thing about all of this. My beautiful, precious girl has been suffering, and I didn’t realize how badly. How the fuck does that happen?
I believed the smiles, the hugs, the easy lies that fell from her lips because I’m supposed to know her inside and out due to how long we’ve been together.
We fucked up so badly.
She’s been feeling alone and sad. We just left her alone in those feelings.
Ansel turns the water on in the shower to her favorite temperature, while I say goodbye to my skin. Cassie enjoys a disturbing warmth that turns her skin pink and rosy.
Once she spits and rinses, I begin to help her out of her clothes until Abbott takes over so I can finish stripping.
“You guys,” she mumbles. “I can shower by myself. Winter and Bellamy are alone.”
“The alarm is set now,” Abbott murmurs. “I turned it on from my phone as soon as I let the guys inside the house. We’ll know if anyone attempts to go in or out. Before you try to tell me that I’m keeping them against their will, you fucking know better, Baby Girl.”
“Ugh,” Cass grumbles.
God, she’s so cute, even when she feels like shit.
“They’re fine,” I say, maneuvering her into the large shower stall. I fucking love our shower.
Pulling the hair tie from her hair, I put it on my wrist so I can hold her as the water moves over us.
“I’m sorry,” I say to her, my emotions bubbling up as I breathe in her scent now that the heat helps to clear up my sinus passages. She always smells like lavender and blueberries, and it’s as familiar a scent as mine is.
We actually grew up in the same schools, and our parents went to the same hoity toity events. Her hugs are incredible, her smiles are my goddamned drug.
Her scent becomes more tart than usual and I groan as I kiss her throat.
“I mean it.”
The glass door opens again to admit Ansel and Abbott, and I feel more than hear her wracking sob.
“You…didn’t do anything,” she gasps.
“That’s the problem,” Abbott growls. “Somehow along the way, I turned sex into a weapon. You knew that Nina belonged to Pack Thornefield, but you really hit it off with her. A part of you is grieving something that won’t happen.”
“Nina is awesome,” Ansel adds. “I was bummed too. It affected you more because you took all the phone calls to make sure she was safe while we faked our courting.”
God, her mom was such a piece of work. She shouldn’t have been responsible for taking care of a cockroach, much less a human being.
She reached out to eligible packs looking for an omega in an effort to get Nina packed up.
It’s difficult to do that when Nina’s heart already belonged to someone else.
Fucking clitcicle.
“You got attached,” I murmur. “There’s nothing wrong with that, Precious. We left you in the sea of that emotion, and we were wrong.”
My blonde hair quickly gets in my eyes as the shower soaks it, and I flick my head back to force it back. Abbott’s gaze meets mine, fierce and knowing. Of all of us, he makes it his job to understand every cog in the wheel.
He has to be beating himself up too.
“Without you, we fall apart, Cass,” he rumbles. “Things just kept getting worse, and I kept telling myself that we’d give it time. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“This should be it,” she whispers. “We should be enough, right?”
“Not necessarily,” Ansel says, pulling her gently away so he can begin to wash her hair. His tanned skin glistens as water droplets fall on it, and his muscles bunch and release as he massages the shampoo into her hair. “Alphas are created for omegas, and we operate best in a pack.”
“As such,” Abbott continues, “it’s natural for it to feel as if there’s a hole when that space isn’t filled. Cass, did you know that alphas can go feral without an omega?”
Her green eyes open in shock, watching Abbott for any kind of teasing or deception as Ansel carefully tips her head back to rinse her hair. As the water begins to run down her face, her eyes snap tightly shut, but it doesn’t diffuse the tension any.
“Is that true?” I breathe. “I thought it could only happen to alphas who lost their omega, Abbott.”
“No. The balance of why alphas need omegas just as badly as its reciprocal energy is delicate,” he says.
“Cassidy has been unraveling. Something inside of her has been dragging her to these intimacy businesses, searching for not only the dopamine of being near an omega, but possibly also in search of our omegas.”
“Damn,” I breathe. The idea that her instincts have been pushing her to continue to go to different hug centers is a little wild.
“I never went to the same place twice,” she admits, stepping out of the water so that Ansel can condition and detangle her hair.
I take advantage of the free shower to turn down the fierce temperature to something that won’t flay the skin of my knot, and begin to wash up.
“I always thought it was due to not wanting to become a regular,” she adds. “I hid it because I was embarrassed.”
“I’ve seen you do much worse things,” I growl. “You were trying to fill a need inside of you, something you weren’t sure we’d understand.”
Hair washed, I dump some of Cassidy’s body wash into my hand, uncaring that it smells like lavender. I enjoy smelling like her.
“I’m sorry too,” Abbott says. “I check the tracker periodically, and I’ve seen you go into these places. I figured it was something you needed to get over Nina. It was a mistake not to ask you about it.”
“I didn’t want to talk, I just wanted to hide,” Cassidy whispers. “We all feel so disconnected. I don’t know how to fix it.”
“We do what anyone needs to do when things break,” Ansel murmurs, kissing her shoulder as I finish.
Abbott takes my place, sensing that Ansel isn’t ready for Cassidy to move.
“We have two new omegas that we are scent matched to. It’s not under the normal circumstances, and they’ve got to be more than a little scared,” Ansel says.
“They are,” Cass sighs. “I feel bad enough as it is that I ran upstairs when I got sick. I didn’t want to wake them. They have to have so many questions. I also can’t help but wonder how they ended up in Savannah.”
“All valid concerns,” Abbott rumbles. “So we date the three of you. We’ve always said that Pack Tremaine is a package deal. I’ve always meant that.”
“You’re our heart,” I say, stealing Cassidy away from Ansel to kiss her. My hand fists her hair as I angle her mouth, uncaring about the conditioner still in her hair.
“Shi is right,” Ansel says. “We all fall apart without you.”
Cassidy moans, and I can smell her pussy getting wet.
“I’m not saying no,” I growl against her lips. “You’re not feeling well enough for me to bury my cock inside your tight pussy.”
“Fuck, that isn’t helpful,” Abbott groans, squeezing his cock to relieve the pressure. “Tomorrow is a new day. Be prepared to wake up pinned to a goddamned wall and impaled on someone’s cock as soon as we can.”
“Also a very unhelpful visual,” Ansel complains, stealing Cass to rinse out her hair.
“I should sleep downstairs,” she says. “It’s a new place…”
“We’re all sleeping downstairs,” Abbott decides. “I guess I’ll have to wear clothes to bed.”
“Really?” Cassidy asks.
“Precious, we can’t sleep without you,” I say honestly, speaking for the pack. The couch is big enough that we can figure it out, but I need her legs tangled in mine. “The pollen is finally clearing itself out of my sinuses too. I should probably see if they’re my omegas too, huh?”
“They’re yours because you’re ours,” Abbott says simply.
I know it really is just that simple to him too.
Together, we get out of the shower, dry off, and help Cassidy get dressed because she’s not a hundred percent yet. Roofies can jump off a damn cliff. I hate how hard it’s hitting her.
If Winter and Bellamy are coming off a crazy cocktail of drugs, the next few days are going to mean we’ll all be busy keeping them as comfortable as possible.
Once Abbott, Ansel, and I have brushed our teeth, we’re ready for bed. It doesn’t matter that it’s still early, I’m exhausted. We also have no idea when the withdrawals will start to hit for Winter and Bellamy.
It’s better to get some sleep.
Pulling Cassidy into my arms, I hug her tightly just because I can.
“I love you,” I murmur.
Abbott comes over with Ansel to join us, turning Cass into the filling of our sandwich. She sniffles, and we give her the space to work through the pain of today. It’s been a goddamned rollercoaster, and she isn’t at her best.
“No more hiding, Precious,” I murmur against her hair.
“No more,” she promises.
Grabbing extra pillows and blankets, we all head downstairs to find that Winter and Bellamy are curled in a corner of the modular couch. Cassidy climbs up onto the cushions, and crawls until she can lay next to Bellamy. I follow suit, breathing deeply once my arms are wrapped around Cass.
The scent of candied apples and rum soaked cotton candy hits my senses like a hammer between my eyes, making my body shudder.
“Welcome to the chaos,” Cass murmurs.
“Damn,” I breathe. It’s as if my brain is rewiring itself to include Bellamy and Winter into the people that I’m created to protect.
I’ve never had this happen without having more of a connection to people.
“We can’t do anything without the other,” Abbott teases, laying behind me as his arm wraps around my chest.
“We’re codependent as fuck and I like it that way,” Ansel agrees, turning down the light before laying down behind Abbott.
“Life was getting boring anyway,” I tease, smiling as Cassidy’s feet rub against my legs. “All mine.”
“Forever,” Cassidy says sleepily.
I’m fucking counting on it.