Twenty-Five
Wonderful. My omega is laughing at me, laughing so hard in fact, that her face is turning colors. “It’s not that funny,” I mumble, pulling off the highway with her and half the pack in the car.
The rest are in a different car, because we’ve finally admitted to ourselves how uncomfortable it is to jam everybody into one SUV.
“You thought I was Winslow’s ghost, haunting you? Come on, that’s the funniest shit I’ve ever heard!”
She starts giggling again, and just when I think she’s got it under control, Edric pipes in from the back seat. “We told him he was crazy. To his face. Then I went home and said a prayer of protection because ghosts are fucking terrifying.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, laugh at the alpha for being convinced that his ex was haunting him from beyond the grave.”
“Didn’t actually need the permission, but okay,” Fable chokes out before finally getting herself settled, being way too dramatic about wiping tears from her eyes.
“Oh gods, I needed that laugh. To be honest, I’d have probably thought the same thing.
Winslow would be a scary ghost.” I reach over and drape a hand on her knee when she shivers.
When we finally pull into the driveway of Fable’s childhood home, I shut off the engine, and the car goes quiet because the house in front of us still feels haunted.
“If the wards are still active, we’re going to town and finding someone that can help us. It’s ridiculous that my sister was so absolutely crazy that she paid in advance to keep them up for the sole purpose of keeping me in, even if something happened to her. How did you guys get in before?”
“I don’t know if it was a coincidence or not, but I got my blood on the door accidentally, and they let me in,” Anderson says before slipping out of the car.
I contemplate this. Vampiric door checks out.
“I’ve been digging through documents,” Moon tells us as he walks up behind us all to stand at the door.
“It took some sleuthing, because she went about it in a weird way, but I figured there had to be some sort of paper trail linking at least her payment to the establishment of the wards. You don’t set up wards as strong as these without lots of cash or collateral exchanging hands. ”
We wait for the other car to unload, then they’re all standing on the steps of the porch next to us, ready to have the hard conversation.
Fable is a little restless, chewing on her lip and looking around a bit shifty-eyed, taking in what was her home for her entire life, up until very recently.
“Was I right? Did my sister give me to that pack as payment for wards? She probably keyed them in, didn’t she?
If you guys hadn’t gotten me out, they’d have gotten in, and I’d be stuck in there with them. ”
Moon winces and folds her into his arms, tucking her head against his chest. “Essentially, yes. They’ve got somebody in their pack that does wards, and they’re strong because they sort of do them in an illegal way.”
Monet kicks the door, testing the wards.
Without skin contact the effects aren’t so pronounced, but I can see that a wave of revulsion still hits him.
“What doesn’t make sense to me though, is why we were given the house, why Winslow’s will left the ‘ward’ of the house to us, as undefined as it was, if she already had an arrangement with that other bullshit pack.
Why not just leave us out of it completely and keep us in the dark? ”
“Because we didn’t have the fucking clout you guys do to legally claim Winslow as our omega, and we knew from the get go that she was a beta, so we never would have agreed to that.
Legally, she could only leave the house to a direct heir or her pack, and you guys were the closest thing to that.
Thanks for dropping our property off, now get off our porch. ”
In the open doorway stands a very pissed off alpha, staring at Fable like she’s a big, juicy cut of beef.
As a pack, we get her in the middle of us, on alert.
I already had my thumb hovering in my pocket over an emergency call in case something wild went down, so I put the call through now, hoping like hell nobody hears the operator pickup.
I just need to make sure they know what’s going on so they can track the call and get to us.
“You’re not taking our omega. Fable, how badly do you want this house? Because it looks like it’s got some squatters.” I’m trying to stay calm, trying to figure a way out of this.
“Step away from the omega. We’ve got two guns pointed right at your pack, and unless you stop trying to take what was promised to us, we’re taking you down so it’s a nonissue.”
Yeah, that should get some law enforcers here quick.
Still, no one moves, because like hell are we going to just hand Fable over. It doesn’t take much searching to find two windows on the second floor that are partially open with guns pointed out of them, right at my pack.
Frozen terror is pulsing through my veins and unless we figure out a way to stop them, somebody is going to do something stupid.
I don’t even know this guy’s name yet, but I’m already sick of him.
Unfortunately for all of us, he isn’t done monologuing.
“It’s fun, isn’t it? Losing something you thought was going to be yours?
Look. Moon, you said we could have her, so we’re going to have her.
Come on sweetheart, you really going to let these idiots get shot just to avoid us? We ain’t that bad.”
He reaches forward to get to Fable, moving slow like he thinks he’s not even going to meet resistance.
The only place safe from the angle of the guns is right where the clown is standing, I just don’t know if we can yank him out and rush inside fast enough that the alphas upstairs with guns won’t shoot us.
Stay here though, and the risk is even higher.
“What was your name?” I try to position myself closer, try to get this guy to keep talking, while subtly pushing some of my packmates toward the door. We move slowly, making it look like we’re just shifting our weight instead of entering the house.
“Zach. No hard feelings man, okay? We got this omega in a contract, did the work for her, so she’s ours fair and square.
I know she’s a pretty one, but hey, good news is, the bond is fresh still so you’ll probably figure out a way to live without her.
Bitches like Winslow aren’t too rare, just find a hot beta that is determined to bag some alphas and you’ll be golden. ”
Every word this asshole spews is like toxic sludge in my gut, and Fable is shaking like a leaf, afraid to cling to us, afraid to do anything.
She’s frozen with indecision, repulsed by the alpha in front of us, but also wanting to protect us.
I know she’s weighing her options, trying to figure out how to keep us safe.
But it’s not her job to keep us safe. It’s our job to keep her safe.
We didn’t do that the first time we came here. We made things worse for her, let her nearly starve to death because we couldn’t be bothered to care about anything other than ourselves. Everything about my pack has changed since that day; now we have something worth living for.
I’ll be damned if I lose it all because of a pack of alphas that don’t know when to stop.
I catch Edric’s eyes, whose breathing is intense and fists are clenched, and I know he’s on a countdown to losing control.
He may like to garden now, but that’s only because he needed something peaceful to focus on after he spent years in illegal fighting rings.
He’s changed, but a man can only change so much.
I see his fingers twitch, count to two, and then I make my move.
Edric swings out and punches Zach right across the face, making him ragdoll down the steps, and the rest of us take the opening, leaping across the doorway into safety and pulling our omega with us.
A few shots ring out on the porch, but we’re only safe for as long as it takes the alphas with the guns upstairs to meet us down here, or for Zach to get back inside.
“With me,” Fable whispers, pulling us into the entryway closet. It’s only big enough for a few of us to fit in at a time, but she’s in the back, fumbling with the wall, prying open a trapdoor that leads to her wall hideouts.
She practically jumps inside, knowing we won’t go until she’s safe, and I jam myself in, praying the rest of the guys get into place before we have guns aimed at us again.
At least this internal hallway is wider than the one we had to break her out of initially.
We wouldn’t have fit if they were all uniform.
When Moon makes it inside, he pulls the door back into place, and we’re all left cramped and squatting in a narrow space far too close to the front door. The wards seem to be fighting Zach a little, so at least we have that going for us.
I follow Fable as she pulls me the direction she wants to lead us, and under the loud stomping of graceless alphas thundering down the stairs, I can hear the faint sound of my pack crawling through the walls, too scared to turn and double check everything.
If I look backwards, we’ll get caught, and I can’t let that happen. That’s how it feels, anyway.
We crawl for a while, over beams and around corners, at some point she leads us vertically and I’m worried we won’t even fit through the narrow chimney-like shaft, but there’s a rudimentary ladder nailed to the wall we can use, so we just squeeze through, hoping we’ll all make it.
There’s not much room to breathe or move here, and the walls are creaking with the added weight.
We start going one at a time so it doesn’t collapse, until we get to our destination.
I’m breathing hard from the climbing and the terror of the threats, marveling at my omega whom I can barely see in the dark, but is saving all of us from something horrific.