41. Cross-Country #2
His voice silences everyone. I slowly stand up.
“Dad.”
We lock eyes. I know he wants me to play my part, but I don’t yield.
We stare at each other. What a playing field to meet on again. We haven’t spoken since I left the Boudreaux pack, left my job at his police department, and left town to start my private detective work.
He sighs. Resigned. Then turns to his officers. “Get everyone out of here. Take them out front until we are done here.”
The officers lead the Boudreauxs out the house. It takes some convincing, but they leave.
“What’s going on here?” he asks again. Same tone.
“I already gave them a thirty-day notice. I paid the severance in full with penalty. I need my house back.”
His jaw ticks.
“Who’s the omega?”
A growl grows in my throat.
“I’m Kelya.”
“She’s mine,” I say.
“She doesn’t smell like yours.”
The growl emerges low and forceful. It turns into my influence, telling him to back up. Chief Racine doesn’t budge.
“I killed my alpha. Tony won’t let me kill the rest of them.” Kelya sighs and lays her head back, sounding remiss. “So, we’ve traveled all the way here, even though all I want to do is wrap my hands around their throats and snuff the life out of them.”
She’s so cute.
“You killed…”
“Dad. She’s suffering from Bond Annihilation, but I have a way to end this.
I just need a safe place for Kelya and I.
” His stern face gives away nothing. He’s known around here as unforgiving towards anyone he doesn’t consider part of his inner circle.
I haven’t been part of that for a long time.
The Boudreaux Alphas are all in his police department.
He’d protect them with his life if needed.
He’s made it clear I’m no longer under his protection.
“I need my house. The Boudreauxs need to leave now.”
My influence, being out already, buzzes in the air. Kelya moans. She likes the feel of it, pressing against her, demanding she submit to me.
“Don’t do it,” my dad says, no longer using his cop-voice, but his seldom used dad-voice. Don’t do it, he says. Of course he knows what I’m going to do. Of course he does. I’m repeating history.
“She’s mine already—“
“They don’t stay.” He cuts me off. My mouth hangs open. My dad doesn’t talk about what happened with my mom. Ever. He looks at my omega with guilt and shame. His scent reveals everything. He’s recalling the suppressed memories. “We are lone alphas. Omegas and bloodhounds don’t work.”
“Tony,” Kelya says. When I look down, I see her nose bleeding down her upper lip.
She can’t be away from her nest, and she won’t be normal until her bond with the Livingstons is severed.
I can help her.
I know I can.
“Dad, it’s going to be ok. Sometimes people don’t stay. But sometimes they do. I’ve already decided—if Kelya leaves, I go with her. If my whole life is spent chasing her around from continent to continent, I think I’ll be happy. She’s mine, but I’m hers first.”
Kelya reaches up and grabs my hand.
She’s going to be ok soon.
It’s all going to be ok.
“Tony, please. Think this through. A bloodhound bite isn’t…” I haven’t heard him like this since I was a kid. He’s scared. It scares me. “Alpha bites…our bonds…”
“So it’s true?”
“A bite from a bloodhound is catastrophic.”
“Can it really sever any bonds she has?”
Alphas form packs by biting multiple people, and their alphas can bite people and bring them into a pack. Like a daisy chain. Those bites are called silver bonds. Indistinguishable from a regular bond, just not done by the pack lead.
But bloodhounds don’t have a fancy name for our bites. If we did, maybe we’d call it the doomsday bite.
“A bloodhound’s bite doesn’t form packs; it destroys them. I don’t want this for you. I thought you were going to join Emmanuelle. I saw the contract. No one would bite you, and you wouldn’t bite them. You’d get heats, friendship, pack life…everything an alpha needs. What happened?”
My mother left, and my dad has felt her ever since. He craves her scent. Cherries jubilee. Everyday is a study in torture. My whole life has been under the umbrella of his painful bond. She’s no better off, I imagine, than him. My mother can’t bond with anyone.
And yet, she left all the same. She wanted a pack. She didn’t want a life with us.
“Dad, I only want her. Kelya. Only her. Forever. She smells like prickly pear.”
“Tony…” This time both my dad and Kelya plead with me.
I kneel back down in front of her. My delicious smelling omega. My omega is hurting. She can’t endure her bonds. Her solution is to kill her alphas.
She has an unnatural bond with her nest and can’t be away from it this long.
There’s only one solution.
“Sweet Rosette.” I take her face in my hands. “I have a proposal.”
She whimpers.
“Take my bond. A bite from a bloodhound might be what you need. It will sever any existing bond and only leave mine. You won’t want to kill the alphas, and I think…I think it will cure your Nest Waning Syndrome.”
“Then what will happen?”
“Then you’re never shaking me off your tail, Notorious Omega.
Little thief. Run away. Go anywhere you want, and I’ll be right behind you.
I’ll have an entire log-book dedicated to your every movement.
I’ll fill every page. I’ll crawl into bed next to you, wherever you lay your body at night.
I’m the shadow casting from your heels. I’m the man behind the lense. You lead the way, and I follow.”
Her pupils are blown, and her mouth is soft.
“Tony, if you aren’t standing nearby with your lighter spinning and your nostrils flaring, I don’t know what I’d do with myself.
Even if it doesn’t work. I want this. With you.
I’d already decided to choose you over my bonds.
It’s you I want, even if all it leads to is death, because every moment we have together will be worth it. ”
I knew she was mine.
I take the hem of the dark blue shirt she’s wearing and pull it up to wipe her bloody nose. My dad sees the red ropes underneath and makes a surprised noise.
“Dad, those people out there aren’t coming back. A newly bonded bloodhound won’t stand for any alphas nearby. Take what you can of theirs and get out.”
“Please.” His voice cracks. “Don’t do this.”
“No! I came back home because I needed a safe place for us. Also…you’re the only goddamned bloodhound I know. I needed to know if it was true that my bite can sever her old bonds. Now that I know, I’m doing this. If things go bad, call Matty Walker. Tell her everything.”
I pull Kelya off the couch and into my lap. She folds into me. She needs my touch.
With heavy breathing, my dad finally says, “Give me ten minutes to get their belongings.”
For ten minutes, Kelya and I hold each other in the middle of the living room. Officers come in and escort the alphas to stuff things into suitcases and laundry baskets and get it out of the house. Emmanuelle never comes back inside. She’s held in the back of a cruiser for being unruly.
Once everyone is out, my dad comes back one last time. He chooses his words carefully. “For what it’s worth, having you made life bearable. I want things to work out for you. I truly do, Tony. Your happiness is mine.”
I look up in time to see his retreating form. I hear the front door close shortly after.
It’s just us now.
Kelya and I.
Alone.
“You still want to kill them?” I ask.
“Desperately. I don’t want to eat or sleep. I need them gone. Out of my head.”
“Do you want my bite more?”
She squirms.
I go to get the key from my pocket and find it missing. The handcuffs fall to the rug.
“How long did you have the key?”
“A while.”
“So you left them on for weird, kinky sex reasons?”
She shrugs.
I should have guessed she could get out of them, considering she had put on one of my shirts from my bag in the back seat. She couldn't have done that in cuffs.
Her wrists are worn and red. I bring them up to my mouth and lick her skin. She tastes like prickly pear. It’s everywhere. I bet her cunt will be just as sweet.
I remove her shirt. No one should wear ropes for this long. Especially omegas who have sensitive skin. I have her lean against me as I untie her.
Almost like a present.
Soon she’s naked in my lap.
I fold my arms around her and sigh.
My omega.
Mine.
“You better do it now, Alpha. I feel spread thin across the surface of the Earth. I need my nest or…that’s it.”
I’ve thought about where I want to bite her. Most female omegas don’t get bit on their neck, as a cultural thing. Probably because they’ll end up being bit by all their alphas in a strong healthy pack. Four or five bites on one’s neck is a lot. Plus, it’s aggressive. Obvious.
But this is a bite from a bloodhound.
The Livingston mark is dark and angry on her shoulder, and mine should be higher than theirs. So, I open my jaws wide and set my sharp teeth against her throat. She whimpers and wiggles.
I pull back.
“Be still.”
“I’m trying.”
Then, suddenly, her eyes slide back into her skull, and her body falls limp.
Fuck.
I quickly open my mouth against her throat and bite down. An electric pulse piles through my body and hers. I gasp against the blood pouring into my mouth.
A bite can be nothing more than a bite, or it can be a question. This is a question.
The answer doesn’t come.
I lay her back and bite harder.
Mine! She’s mine!
It isn’t working. She’s slipping. I growl into the bite. Come on, Sweet Rosette. Take it. It’s yours. I’m yours.
This time it doesn’t feel like electricity at all, but instead connecting the earth to the heavens above in a soul crushing lightning strike.
She screams.
The answer comes.
Yes.
More lightning strikes around us, cutting us off from anyone and anything. For a split second, I feel her other bonds. Even the one with Ash. I especially feel the unnatural one with the nest.
It’s too much for us. It should just be us.
I sever all of them in one fraction of a second with my will alone.
Then I collapse backwards, bringing Kelya with me.