Chapter 29
TWENTY-NINE
Tony
AFTER DROPPING KNOX off at the pack house and storming off afterward, I drove aimlessly around the city. I was wasting gas I couldn’t afford to waste, and probably risking an accident since only a fraction of my attention was on the road.
Heath and Jez were mated.
Even worse, the fact that Heath and Jez were mated was really none of my goddamned business. Because having a one-night stand with someone didn’t exactly give you a say over their future relationships.
Not that Heath and Jez had a relationship. That was the most fucked up part of this whole thing. They’d both been captured, drugged, and now they were tied together psychically for the rest of their lives.
From the little I’d seen, they hated each other’s guts. And, I mean... they had reason. All of which made my own reaction even stupider.
I spent longer than I’d have liked to admit thinking about how easy it would be to get on Interstate 55 and drive back to St. Louis. Well... except for the fact that I only had a third of a tank of gas, forty bucks in cash, and all of my stuff was back at my apartment.
Also, my mother still lived in St. Louis. As far as I knew, anyway.
That was the thing that finally sent me slinking back to my apartment. I didn’t think I was physically capable of looking her in the eye, knowing what had happened to her ‘missing’ husband.
‘Oh, hey Mom! Yeah, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?
By the way, your no-good alcoholic excuse for a man tracked me down in Chicago, barged into my home and tried to rape me again!
Yeah, funny how that works, isn’t it? Ha, ha.
So... a friend of mine bashed his head in and another friend of mine got rid of the body afterward!
No, sorry, I don’t know where he is now.
I guess the cops never found his corpse. Honestly, though? I didn’t ask.’
Yeah... no.
I pressed my lips together and let myself into the apartment, trying not to think about that fateful night a couple of weeks ago when Heath and I had fucked on my cramped, sagging mattress.
Had he been thinking about the dead body he’d smuggled out of here while I’d been choking on his cock?
I shook my head violently, trying to derail that train of thought.
Of course he hadn’t been. Hell, he probably had other people to do the actual hands-on corpse removal. Knox’s pack had people for everything.
I should know. I was one of them.
Angrily, I threw my keys on the side table by the couch. They clattered up against the base of the lamp that had replaced the one Jez used to kill my stepfather.
The box of THC gummies I’d intended to use to get to sleep was fucking empty, because of course it was. I paced restlessly around the living area, pissed off at myself for being pissed off at Heath.
Christ, this was ridiculous.
What the hell did I even have to be angry about? I wasn’t the one who’d been kidnapped. I wasn’t the one who’d been injected with drugs and ended up bonded to someone I despised.
You’re angry because now you have to accept the fact that there’s nothing between you and him, said a little voice that I wanted to hit.
“There was never anything between me and Heath,” I said aloud. “It was a fucking one-night stand—it didn’t mean anything!”
Jesus. I was losing it—talking to myself in an empty apartment. And now my hands were shaking again.
Was this, like, delayed PTSD or something? Because, in my defense, I had been traipsing around in a pedophile camp with armed alphas a few days ago. Maybe I was allowed to be a psychological basket case afterward?
I flopped down on the sofa, forgetting to avoid the place where more springs had broken a couple of weeks ago.
And... to be honest, the feeling of being half-swallowed by the cushions wasn’t the worst thing I’d felt today.
I let the decrepit couch embrace me, since there was no one else here to do it.
Once again, my thoughts drifted to St. Louis.
.. to the only people I’d ever really known in my life who seemed to have their shit completely together.
I hadn’t felt safe back then, exactly. I hadn’t been safe back then.
But for the first time, I’d gotten a glimpse of what emotional security was supposed to look like.
Extracting my phone from my pocket was more difficult than it might have been, because of the couch cushion situation. I stared at the screen, debating between calling and texting. But I needed to hear a sympathetic voice, as stupid as that sounded.
It was late, but not that late. I called up the contact number for the guy who’d whisked me off to relative safety as a fifteen-year-old runaway fleeing my abusive family.
On first meeting, Byron Harper came across as a vain, narcissistic alpha asshole. Which... okay. The ‘vain’ part and the ‘asshole’ part weren’t too far off the mark. Beneath that, though, he was the other side of my coin.
I’d had a terrible childhood, but I’d avoided getting sucked in to the ever-present gangs that dominated St. Louis’ east side.
He’d had a terrible childhood, and didn’t avoid the gangs.
But he’d survived when so many others hadn’t, and then he’d spent the next several years of his life trying to keep other kids from making the same mistakes he had.
The phone rang. I chewed the inside of my cheek, waiting to see if anyone would pick up.
“Tony?” The alpha’s rich voice rolled across the connection. “Hello. Haven’t heard from you in a while. Is everything okay?”
I winced, hating the fact that he assumed any call from me would be because something was wrong. Hating even more the fact that he was one-hundred percent correct about that assumption. In the background of the call, I could make out the sound of a baby wailing.
“Hey, Byron,” I said, forcing my tone to stay casual as I lied through my teeth. “Nah, everything’s fine. I just realized I hadn’t checked in lately. How are things with you guys?”
Byron’s pack had started with two other alphas and a male omega.
All four of them worked together at an inner-city youth center founded by the pack leader, Zalen Price.
Somehow, they’d picked up a second omega and a male beta along the way—a married couple who’d owned some kind of fancy restaurant in Soulard.
Since then, they’d added so many kids—or rather, pups—that I was embarrassed to admit I’d lost count.
Another angry shriek pierced the background crackle.
“Funny you should ask,” Byron said. “As it happens, we have pinkeye in the house, and I’m on toddler duty tonight.
” He paused. “Tell me something truthfully, Tony. Think back to the debonaire, roguishly handsome alpha you met five years ago. Did you ever think you’d find me changing baby diapers and administering antibiotic eyedrops to a squirming three-year-old? ”
I smiled despite myself. “Hmm... not really. You were definitely more on the ‘ooh, Daddy’ end of the spectrum than the ‘dad’ one.”
“Can I record that, so I can play it for the others the next time they ask me to take point on something that involves eyelid crusts?” he grumbled, as the unhappy wailing grew closer to the phone.
“Nope,” I told him, feeling unaccountably better after only a few sentences exchanged. “You were clearly born for this. You were just hiding it before.” I hesitated, still painfully aware of the emotions roiling inside my chest. “You know, I had such a massive crush on you back then.”
Silence settled over the connection, broken only by the toddler’s cries.
“I know,” Byron said, his tone softening. “I figured it was because not very many people had ever tried to help you, up to that point. And, of course, there was also the ‘debonaire and roguishly handsome’ thing.”
“Pretty much,” I agreed, thinking of Heath. “But you should know that you’re by far the nicest person I’ve ever crushed on.”
He snorted. “Sounds like you need to get out more. Oh, and call Bea one of these days, will you? She’d love to hear from you.”
Byron’s adoptive grandmother had let me stay in her house until I was old enough to get emancipated minor status through the courts. I was better at keeping in touch with her than I was with the others, mostly because Bea would blow up my phone if I left it too long without checking in.
“I will,” I said. “I should let you get back to your eyelid crusts, though. I just wanted to say hello.”
“Gee, thanks,” he replied. Then his voice sobered again. “You know, I can’t believe I’m spouting this kind of Hallmark card crap, but... there’s a pack out there somewhere for you, Tony—if you want it, I mean. You just have to be open to it when it shows up. Voice of experience speaking here.”
My throat tightened.
“I’ll keep it in mind.” I tried my best to keep the words light, and wasn’t sure how well I succeeded. “Anyway, tell everyone I said hi. Maybe I’ll come down and visit one of these days.”
Did my voice waver on the last word? Shit.
If it did, Byron was too engrossed in fussy toddlers to catch it. “Yeah, you should do that. I’ll pass it on to the others. Night, Tony.”
“G’night, Byron,” I rasped, and ended the call.
Eventually, I managed to get to sleep even without the edibles, because it had been a hell of a few days, and I was exhausted.
That lasted until four thirty-five a.m., according to my phone screen, when a call jangled me out of a hazy nightmare involving my stepfather chasing me through an endless corridor full of omegas trapped inside barred prison cells.
“Whu’ the fuck?” I gasped, flailing upright.
The phone continued ringing. I didn’t recognize the number. With questionable judgment of the newly awakened, I fumbled for it and accepted the call.
“Who’s this?” I demanded. “Why are you calling in the middle of the fucking night?”
“Tony?” Heath’s voice sounded scraped raw.
My breath caught.
“Sorry.” The alpha’s Irish accent was broader than usual; like he was drunk... or wrung out from several days of drug-induced, nonstop fucking. “I had to find out—you were with Gage at the silos. When I was—” He cut himself off. “Did I hurt you? Did I... do anything to you?”
The phantom sensation of an alpha sniffing up the side of my neck and burying his nose in my hair made me shiver.
“No,” I said shortly. “No, you didn’t do anything.” A sick laugh, devoid of humor, choked its way past my control. “Well, I mean... you didn’t do anything to me. But you mated Jez.”
“I don’t want to talk about that,” Heath said quickly, and I didn’t think I was imagining the hint of desperation behind the words.
My temper snapped, as interrupted sleep stripped away my inhibitions.
“You don’t want to talk about that?” I echoed in disbelief.
“Okay, how about we talk about the fact that I had to ‘keep an eye on you’ while you were balls-deep in my former friend, despite the fact that you’d been balls deep in me not so long ago? How about that?”
Heath swallowed audibly.
“Tony... I didn’t choose this,” he said hoarsely. “And neither did she. When we were together, you said it was casual... that it didn’t need to mean anything—”
Self-loathing at my own cowardice flooded my chest.
“I can’t do this anymore,” I choked out. “I’m done. I did not sign up for any of this crazy shit! Just... leave me alone, Heath. Don’t contact me again.”
“Tony—” Heath began.
I ended the call and powered the phone off, slamming it face-down on the bedside table. A horrible sense of wrongness at what I’d just done crept across me like an illness. Groaning, I flopped back on the mattress and dragged the pillow over my eyes.
There’s a pack out there somewhere for you, Tony. Byron’s words played back to me, over and over. You just have to be open to it when it shows up.
I would not cry.
I would not cry, goddamn it. I was nineteen years old, for fuck’s sake.
Maybe I should go back to St. Louis after all. It was a big place. I could avoid my mother if I tried hard enough. Or... there were other cities. Anyplace that wasn’t fucking Chicago, where I’d managed to fuck up my life yet again.
I was still curled on the bed in the fetal position with the pillow covering my head an hour later, when a knock sounded on the apartment door.
I jerked into a sitting position, because after what had happened with my stepdad, an unexpected knock at my door inevitably equaled an automatic adrenaline dump.
Creeping silently across the length of the apartment, I peered through the peephole. I wasn’t sure who I expected to see—Heath, or the police, or an empty hallway after a stupid teenage prank.
What I got was Gage, looking like he needed to sleep for approximately a solid week. I unlatched the locks and security chains, opening the door.
“What?” I demanded.
“Heath sent me.” Gage sounded as tired as he looked. “He said you didn’t want to see him.”
My shoulders slumped.
“Right,” I said, defeated. “I guess you’d better come in. Sit down. I’ll make coffee. I think we could both use it.”