Twenty-Two
TWENTY-TWO
Emiel
EVEN AFTER ALL THESE years, a disturbance in the middle of the night was enough to wake me up instantly. Too many times, it meant that very bad things were coming my way. But this wasn’t the subtle sound of drunken footsteps in the hallway, or the clink of a bottle falling to the floor.
Somewhere below me in the house, Luca was screaming.
It wasn’t the first time I’d heard him scream. Both he and Mia had screamed in the heat nest—with pleasure, I hoped. But this? This was an altogether different kind of noise.
Princess mewed in distress, leaping down from the bed.
“It’s all right, girl,” I said automatically, though of course I had no way of knowing that. One thing I did know—if anyone had broken into the house, it would have woken me up long before the scream did. It probably would have woken Princess, too.
I was already on my feet, grabbing my phone off the charger in case someone needed to call nine-one-one. Hardly any light filtered through the attic bedroom’s dormer windows. It was the kind of late that was almost early, and based on the sounds of people stumbling around downstairs, everyone else in the house had been fast asleep, too.
The light in the second-floor hallway was on. Zalen and Byron had beaten me to Luca’s closed door. Princess, put off by too much crackling alpha energy in too small a space, scampered back to the stairway, probably hiding just out of sight.
Mia chose that moment to stagger up the stairs from the first floor, earning herself a startled feline hiss. She still looked half asleep, and her sweet scent was curdled with worry.
“What’s happening?” she rasped. “I heard—”
Another sharp cry cut her off. It subsided into a low moan; the kind a wounded animal might make.
“Nightmares, I think,” Zalen said grimly. “It’s been a long time since he’s had them like this. I don’t know what could have...” He trailed off, his eyes fixed on the closed door of Luca’s nest.
“He went to that counseling place today to sign up,” I said without thinking. “Well, yesterday now, I guess.”
Byron scowled at me. “It was just to fill out paperwork, wasn’t it? Why would that give him nightmares?”
Mia shoved between him and Zalen and knocked on the door. “Luca? Are you awake? We need to know if you’re all right!”
There was a long stretch of silence. I couldn’t even hear Luca breathing through the door.
Mia shot me a worried look. Then she grasped the doorknob and tried to turn it. It barely jiggled—locked from the inside.
At that, I heard a sharp intake of breath from the bedroom.
“G... go away!” The words were choked, probably by tears.
“Luca! I need to know you’re okay!” Mia called back, sounding close to tears herself.
“He’s not okay,” I said, even though it felt like stating the obvious. “If he was okay, he wouldn’t’ve been screaming.”
“Leave me alone!” Luca cried, the words wavering dangerously. “Go away and leave me the fuck alone! I don’t want you here, any of you !”
He choked again, and the sound descended into rough sobbing.
I turned to Zalen and Byron. “You and you. Leave,” I said.
Zalen’s expression turned tight and unhappy. Byron’s turned outraged.
“I need to be sure he’s physically okay,” Zalen said.
“Yeah,” I told him. “I’m gonna do that. But you and him need to leave.” I flicked a glance at Byron, whose fists were clenched at his sides. “Mia, you need to stay.”
“The door’s locked,” Byron said between clenched teeth. “What are you going to do, break it down?”
“Nah,” I told him. “Luca and me, we’ve got an understanding about this kind of shit. He’s not the only one that can pick a crappy bedroom door lock.”
Predictably, Zalen had his emotions under better control.
“Why do you want us to leave?” he asked.
“’Cause he needs someone who understands what happened to him,” I said. “Well, that and an omega who can cuddle him without reminding him too much of it.”
Byron’s lips pulled back in a snarl. It was a dominance move—at least, it would be for anyone who didn’t know he was a coward. I ignored it.
“What happened ,” he hissed, hopefully quiet enough not to be heard through the wall, “was that he was stuck as the sex toy of a bunch of sadists .”
“Yeah,” I agreed.
I saw the moment that understanding dawned. Byron’s face went slack; Zalen’s went carefully neutral. I’d never told them about my past before. I’d never told anyone , until Mia and Luca.
“You’ll take care of both of them?” Zalen asked, his tone low and even.
And this kind of thing was why Zalen was our leader even though I was physically stronger. Just one simple question. No prying. No second-guessing.
“Course I will,” I said. “Mia, you got a hairpin on you or something?”
She looked at me for a moment, wide-eyed. Then she seemed to blink herself back to full awareness. “No, it’s the middle of the night. I didn’t stop to do my hair. I can get you a wire clothes hanger, though?”
“That’ll work,” I told her.
She nodded and hared off, properly awake now. Alone with the others, I eyed Byron, gauging if he was going to cause trouble. He shook his head in disgust.
“Christ. Why is the world such a dumpster fire?” he muttered. “Go on. But if I find out you scared him worse, I swear I’ll—”
“Byron,” Zalen said quietly.
Byron cut himself off with a noise of frustration.
“Luca needs you, too, asshole,” I told Byron, because I knew what they got up to in Byron’s bedroom sometimes, and it was true. Luca did need that. “Just not right now.”
Byron stared at me for a long moment, surprising me with how well he was able to hold eye contact without flinching. Then he broke away, turning on his heel. He stalked off, muttering something too low to hear.
Zalen let out a slow breath. “If you need anything, let me know. Or send Mia to tell me. I’ll be awake, obviously.”
I nodded, and it didn’t escape me that he was apparently okay with me being alone in Luca’s room with him, even when Luca was this upset.
Mia hurried back to the door, coat hanger in hand. Zalen squeezed her shoulder in reassurance and left, throwing us a single backward glance as he did. As soon as both he and Byron were gone, Princess slunk down from her hiding place and joined us.
“The others left,” I called through the door. “It’s just me and Mia. And Princess, too. I’m pickin’ your lock now.”
“I said go away !” Luca yelled.
“Probably shouldn’t’ve started us down this road in the first place if you didn’t want to keep driving,” I told him, straightening a length of wire and bending the very tip into a small hook.
Mia stood nearby, hugging herself as she looked on unhappily.
The lock probably would’ve been easier with proper tools, but these little interior doorknobs were just plain shitty. Raking the tumblers didn’t work, but getting the hook inside the mechanism and spinning it in a spiral popped it right open.
I grasped the knob and pushed the door in. It was dark inside except for a few fairy lights tacked up around the edges of the ceiling.
“We just need to know you’re all right,” Mia said, worry making the words pile up on top of each other. “You were screaming.”
“Course he’s not all right,” I said, because seriously ? “We’re comin’ in, Luca, but I’ll stay over here by the door.”
I sank down to sit on the floor with my back resting against the wall. It was the same place I’d sat when Mia had sent me up here to check on Luca after he ran out of the meeting with Nat. As she had then, Princess trotted into the room, crossing the sea of cushions and blankets to rub against Luca’s leg.
“Oh, Luca,” Mia said sadly.
He was huddled in the far corner, his body turned half away as though he couldn’t bear to look at us... or as though he was hoping that hiding his face would somehow magically keep us from seeing him.
“I don’t want you here,” he said again, the weak protest delivered in a wavering voice. Princess butted up against him, meowing, and he hunched up tighter before bursting into tears.
“Go on,” I told Mia. “He needs you. Princess ain’t enough to help him on her own tonight.”
Mia made a pained noise and stumbled across the nest to him. An alpha couldn’t’ve done it; after what must have been playing like a movie inside Luca’s head, it had to be her.
She fell to her knees in front of him, taking his shoulders in her small hands. Luca froze, trembling, the seconds ticking by like heartbeats. Then he made an awful keening noise and collapsed into her, clutching at her back and burying his head against her chest.
“Can you talk to us?” she asked, when his hitching breaths began to quiet. “You scared me, Luca. I thought you were hurt.”
He is hurt , I thought. We’re all hurt .
Sometimes it felt like Mia was the only light in the entire damned house.
Luca stilled against her. “This was supposed to be the past... but I can’t get away from it. Not ever.” He swallowed hard. “And now everyone else is moving on without me.”
“What?” Mia said. “No! Luca, no one’s going anywhere without you.”
But Luca only made a harsh, self-deprecating noise. “Yes, they are. Mia, everyone’s falling in love with you! You could mate them. Have a life together. You could have the life that I’m too broken to have.”
Now it was Mia’s turn to freeze. “Luca, what are you...? What do you mean, mate them ? I... I’m married! No one here wants to mate me!”
My pulse sped up as the words hit me like a right hook. Luca pushed away from her embrace, just far enough that he could look at her in the dim light.
“Are you blind?” he asked, bewildered. “Of course they want to mate you.” Then his green eyes moved to me, almost accusingly. “ Isn’t that right , Emiel.”