Chapter 48
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
ASTER
I woke to the smell of wrong.
My head throbbed, a dull ache pulsing behind my eyes, and for a moment I couldn't remember where I was or how I'd gotten here.
The surface beneath me was soft — a bed, my foggy brain supplied, with sheets that felt like silk against my skin — but everything smelled like chemicals and that cloying cologne that made my stomach turn and my hindbrain scream danger.
Not cedar. Not pine. Not earth or sunshine.
Wrong. Everything was wrong.
Memory returned in a sickening wave. The road.
The black truck with its tinted windows.
Easton's cold smile as he blocked my path.
The blow that had split my lip and sent stars exploding behind my eyes.
His threats whispered hot against my ear, his blood dripping onto my face, his hands pinning me to the gravel.
I sat up too fast, my vision swimming, bile rising in my throat.
The room spun around me — expensive furniture in dark woods, heavy velvet curtains blocking out the light, crystal vases filled with flowers that smelled too sweet and too artificial.
A door across the room, solid oak from the look of it, probably locked.
My ankle screamed when I tried to move it, swollen and throbbing from where I'd twisted it during the struggle, the pain shooting up my leg in nauseating waves.
A cage. A gilded, expensive cage with silk sheets and crystal chandeliers, but a cage nonetheless.
I forced myself to breathe. To think. To assess.
The windows were tall, flanked by those heavy curtains.
I dragged myself across the bed, ignoring the agony in my ankle, and yanked the fabric aside.
Bars. Decorative wrought iron, painted to match the window frame, but bars all the same.
Beyond them, I could see manicured gardens stretching toward a distant fence line, guards walking the perimeter in crisp uniforms.
No escape that way.
"Ah, you're awake." Easton's voice came from somewhere to my left, and I whipped my head toward the sound, a snarl already building in my chest, my lip curling back from my teeth.
He was sitting in an armchair by a cold fireplace, one leg crossed over the other, a crystal tumbler of amber liquid in his hand.
The scratches I'd left on his face had been cleaned and bandaged, white strips standing out against his tan skin like badges of shame.
His suit was different — fresh, unwrinkled, expensive as everything else in this room.
"I was starting to worry. You've been out for hours. "
"Where am I?" My voice came out rough, scraped raw from screaming, but I forced steel into it anyway, my eyes scanning the room for exits, for weapons, for anything I could use.
A fireplace poker by the hearth. A heavy vase on the mantle.
The lamp on the bedside table with its solid brass base. "What do you want?"
"You're at my home. Branston Ranch." He gestured with his glass, the ice clinking softly, his dark eyes watching me over the rim with an intensity that made my skin crawl, his lips curving into that predatory smile I'd come to hate.
He looked relaxed, comfortable, like a man entertaining a guest rather than holding a prisoner.
"The main house. Guest wing. I thought you'd be more comfortable here than in one of the outbuildings. "
"How considerate." The words dripped with venom, my hands fisting in the silk sheets, my scent going sharp and bitter with fear and fury intertwined. "You kidnap me, threaten my pack, and then give me a nice room. I'm overwhelmed by your generosity."
"Sarcasm." He smiled like I'd done something amusing, something charming, his eyes crinkling at the corners. "I like that. Shows spirit." He took a sip of his drink, savoring it, making me wait. "As for what I want... I thought that was obvious by now."
"You're insane." I pressed myself against the headboard, putting as much distance between us as possible, my eyes darting to that fireplace poker, calculating the distance, the angle, whether I could reach it before he reached me. "They'll come for me. All of them. And when they find you—"
"When they find me, what?" He laughed, the sound echoing off the high ceilings, bouncing around the cavernous room like mocking applause, his head tilting back to expose the column of his throat.
"They'll call the sheriff? My cousin Marcus?
" He took another sip of his drink, his eyes never leaving my face, his posture deliberately relaxed, confident.
"They'll try to fight me? Four ranch hands against my security team — twenty men, all former military, all very well paid to do exactly what I say?
" Another laugh, darker this time, his fingers tightening on the glass until his knuckles went white.
"I've been planning this for a long time, little Omega.
Did you really think I didn't account for every variable? "
"Why?" The word burst out of me, raw and demanding, my nails digging into the expensive bedding. "Why are you doing this? What did Reid ever do to you? What did any of them do?"
Something flickered across Easton's face — a crack in the polished veneer, a glimpse of something ugly and wounded beneath the sophisticated mask.
He set down his glass on the side table, the crystal ringing against the wood, and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his dark eyes boring into mine with sudden intensity.
"You want to know why?" His voice was softer now, almost conversational, but there was a razor edge beneath the silk that made me want to shrink back, that made every instinct I had scream danger. "Fine. Let me tell you a story."
He stood, and I tensed, ready to fight, ready to claw and bite and scream if he came any closer.
But he just walked to the window, pulling back the heavy curtain to look out at his manicured kingdom, his broad shoulders silhouetted against the gray afternoon light, his reflection ghostly in the glass.
"My father built Branston Ranch from nothing.
" His voice was distant now, lost in memory, his fingers tracing patterns on the window like he was drawing maps only he could see.
"Started with a hundred acres and a dream when he was twenty-two years old.
Worked his fingers to the bone for forty years — up before dawn, in bed after midnight, never a vacation, never a day off.
By the time I was born, we were the second-largest operation in the county.
" He paused, his jaw tightening, a muscle jumping beneath the skin, his reflection twisting with something bitter and old.
"Second largest. Do you know what was first? "
"Longhorn." The word tasted like ash on my tongue, heavy and bitter.
"Longhorn." He confirmed, turning back to face me, his eyes glittering with something old and wounded and dangerous, his lips twisting into a grimace that was almost a snarl.
"The Caldwell family. Reid's grandfather, then his father, now him.
Three generations of men sitting on that prime land, that perfect grazing territory, that water access that should have been ours by rights. "
"Should have been yours?" I couldn't keep the disbelief from my voice, my brow furrowing as I stared at him, trying to understand the twisted logic that had led to this moment, to me trapped in this room with a madman. "It's their land. Their family built it. They've been there for—"
"My father tried to buy that land for thirty years.
" Easton moved closer, his steps slow and deliberate, his eyes fixed on mine, his scent washing over me in waves that made my Omega recoil, that made my hindbrain scream wrong wrong wrong.
"Made offer after offer. Fair prices, generous terms, everything a reasonable man could want.
And every single time, the Caldwells turned him down.
" His voice hardened, something ugly and festering creeping into the cultured tones.
"They looked down on him. Treated him like dirt beneath their boots.
Like we were nothing. Like forty years of work meant nothing because our name wasn't Caldwell. "
"So this is about... wounded pride?" I couldn't help the incredulous laugh that escaped me, sharp and bitter as bile. "You're destroying lives, threatening people, kidnapping me — because your daddy's feelings got hurt fifty years ago?"
He moved fast — faster than I expected, faster than a man his size should be able to move — crossing the distance between us in three long strides.
I scrambled backward, a snarl ripping from my throat, my hands coming up to defend myself, but he stopped at the edge of the bed, looming over me, his chest heaving with barely contained fury, his scent going sharp and acrid with rage.
"You don't understand." The words came out low and dangerous, his dark eyes blazing, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides like he was fighting the urge to wrap them around my throat.
"My father died believing he was a failure.
Died thinking he'd never be good enough, never be respected, never be anything more than second best. He had a heart attack at sixty-three — worked himself into an early grave trying to build something that could compete with Longhorn.
" His voice cracked, just slightly, a hairline fracture in the mask before it hardened again into something cold and cruel.
"I was twenty-two when he died. Same age he was when he started.
And I stood at his grave and promised him I would finish what he started.
That I would take Longhorn and everything the Caldwells built and make it mine.
That I would make them pay for every slight, every dismissal, every time they made him feel small. "