Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
Kane
Groaning, I rolled over and touched my cell phone to see what time it was. It was nearly three in the morning, and the anxiety coming through the pack bond from Beck was nauseating.
Most days, our emotions didn’t seep into the bond, but they had several times in the past few days. We could usually control and block things from getting through, but when it came to this whole omega situation, emotions were strong.
I got up and shuffled to my door, my feet practically dragging from the half-asleep daze I was still in. It was doubtful the onslaught of emotion woke up Rio and Rylan, who both slept like fucking logs.
Why did Beck’s room have to be so far?
I grumbled as I went down the hall in the wing my room was in with Rio’s and Rylan’s and walked across a small sitting area none of us used at the top of the stairs.
Beck’s room was the primary suite, and he had the largest bed since sometimes we all slept together as a pack.
We hadn’t in a while, but maybe we needed to if Beck was starting in a downward spiral.
The door to his room was open, and I peered inside, finding the bed a mess but no Beck. I moved back down the hallway and stood at the top of the stairs, straining to hear if he was downstairs.
With a sigh, I slogged down the steps. I was glad we had the day off to recover from our game before we kicked it into high gear for the playoffs and hopefully the championship.
We’d made it into the playoffs the year before, but were knocked out of contention when Rylan dove to stop a thirty-pound ball from the opposing team from going into the hole and broke his arm.
I could still hear the bone snapping.
There was a light on in the kitchen, but with a quick glance in that direction, I found it empty. The couch was abandoned too. “Beck?”
“Come on, Kara. Open the door.” I barely picked up on his voice and turned toward the hallway where we had an office and a gamer room.
Beck was sitting on the floor next to the gamer room door, his head back against the wall. What had the asshole done now?
“What are you doing?” I stood in front of him, my hands on my hips.
“I don’t know.” He peered up at me and scrubbed his hands over his face. “We were making out in the kitchen, and I told her if she wanted me to stop, she needed to tell me, and then she ran off. She locked herself in here.”
“Did you try the door through the bathroom?” There was a bathroom connecting the office we used for meetings and the gamer room where we had computers and gaming systems. “There’s the key thing that will unlock the door.”
I reached for the small, metal key that unlocked all the interior doors that sat on top of the doorframe. Kind of pointless to have locks that could so easily be unlocked if you asked me.
“Of course I checked the bathroom door. It’s locked.” He pushed up off the floor and snatched the key away from me, putting it back. “We aren’t going to just barge in there.”
I put my ear against the door and heard a muffled whimper. “What the fuck did you do to her, man?”
“Nothing! We were both into it. At least, I thought she was.” He looked dejected as fuck, which was surprising considering his feelings on welcoming an omega in the first place.
I put my hand on his arm. “I heard that the omegas that end up at academies are all virgins and inexperienced unless they were sexually active before emerging. Think about it, dude... since they were sixteen, they’ve lived away from everyone else in their little bubbles.”
One of the things I hated most about our society was how omegas were treated like fragile little porcelain dolls that had to be locked away so the big bad alphas didn’t destroy their innocence.
It should have been the opposite. Alphas should be the ones to take scent blockers and rut suppressants to curb the need to take an omega and bond with them.
“I was in the moment and just... fuck!” He put his forehead against the door and banged it a few times with a growl. “Please, Kara. Open the door so we can talk.”
“Why don’t you go get some sleep? She’s clearly not going to come out of there right now.” I grabbed his shoulder and he let me lead him down the hall to the living room.
“My room is filled with her perfume. Those suppressants don’t work for shit,” he grumbled and shrugged off my hand. “I need to clean up the glass on the kitchen floor.”
I followed him and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Maybe that’s what scared her into hiding.”
“No. She got a sliver of it in her foot after she dropped it and I took it out.” He went to the pantry and grabbed a broom and dustpan. “It’s not like I came down here and expected to be swept away by her.”
“Pun intended?” I gestured to the broom and then began cleaning up the first aid kit next to the sink. “I wasn’t accusing you of anything, by the way. I’m just a little surprised you’re all worked up over her.”
“You and me both.”
After a few more hours of restless sleep, I finally got out of bed to start my day, hoping whatever had upset Kara was now forgotten. I’d managed to convince Beck to sleep in the guest room and wondered if he actually had or if he’d gone back to his post outside the locked door.
An upset omega was the last thing we needed when we were about to start heavy training for the playoffs.
What we needed was a sit down to get to know each other and lay out our expectations of one another.
In a way, this was like an arranged marriage, and it wasn’t like the love was going to be immediate.
I showered and dressed in my favorite pair of dark wash jeans that fit my muscular thighs and ass perfectly.
I paired them with a solid white Alpha Fit T-shirt.
Looking in my bathroom mirror at the Alpha Fit words across my chest, I still couldn’t believe we’d landed a deal with United Alpha Sports.
Not bothering with shoes, I headed downstairs to find Rylan eating a breakfast sandwich and drinking coffee at the kitchen island.
Out of the four of us, he was the youngest, and also the earliest riser.
It didn’t matter what day of the week it was or how late he was up the night before, he was up at six every day.
“No Kara yet?” I went directly to the coffee maker and poured myself a cup.
“She wasn’t on the couch when I got up.” Rylan popped the last bite of his sandwich in his mouth and jumped up. “I have a gaming date with my sis.”
“That’s where she’s locked herself. Something happened between her and Beck last night.
” I sipped my coffee as I walked out of the kitchen area and toward the room in question, Rylan right behind me.
“It sucks because the more I’ve thought about having an omega, the more I want it.
We don’t want to end up like one of those older packs that start to go a bit feral because they don’t have an omega to keep them grounded. ”
“True, but a lot of those packs are in the government or high up in society. But I agree, we are long overdue to have an omega. We should have done this back when we graduated.” Rylan passed me in the wide hallway and got to the door first. “Kara? Open up.” He tried the door and then knocked before putting his ear against it.
I rolled my eyes and grabbed the key from the doorframe. “We’re going to unlock the door. Beck isn’t with us.”
We needed to at least make sure she was okay.
It had to be a lot going from an academy where all the students were other omegas and most of the staff were female.
She didn’t know us at all besides the brief meeting we had, which wasn’t nearly long enough, and now she was just thrown in the middle of a pack of alphas.
There was something seriously fucked up about Omega Match.
Rylan unlocked the door and opened it slowly, light spilling into the pitch-black room.
There was a loveseat and four gaming chairs that reclined enough to sleep comfortably, but it wasn’t an ideal place to sleep.
It was dark, though, with black-out curtains, and was the farthest room away from any rooms that had noise.
The four desks that held our computers were all shoved into a corner, the height adjusted as high as possible, and there were dark sheets hanging to make what I guessed was a makeshift nest. It made sense she’d pick this room, but I wished we’d been there to get it set up properly.
Rylan pulled his phone from his pocket. “Fuck, my sister is calling. I was supposed to be on ten minutes ago.”
“Go talk to her. I don’t think you’ll be gaming today unless you plan on moving your shit somewhere else.” I stepped into the room, listening for any signs of omega duress but was met with silence. “Kara? It’s morning. Do you want to come out and get some breakfast?”
I put my coffee on the entertainment center that held more gaming shit. We worked hard, but during our downtime, we liked to play hard too, and for us, that was playing hours of video games.
She wasn’t answering or making any noise, but I could smell her perfume that had accumulated in the closed off room. It made me feel a certain way, and I had to remind myself that now was not the time to get turned on.
But it was definitely hard.
Shaking my head at my train of thought, I knelt next to the enclosed nest and lifted the sheet. She was in there but seemed to have every spare blanket and pillow in the house inside with her, including one from my bed.
One of her feet was sticking out, and I tried to stop myself, but since she wasn’t responding, I needed to make sure she was still breathing. It was a better alternative than diving into the blankets with her when we’d only met for a few minutes.
I ran a finger up the arch of her foot, careful not to touch the bandage. She inhaled a sharp breath, pulling her foot to safety. At least she was alive and hadn’t suffocated under all the shit she was buried under.
“You can’t stay in there forever. What’s wrong?” I crawled under the desks, sitting on the edge of one of the mattresses she must have ordered and had delivered. It was a special nesting one that was waterproof.
“Leave me alone.” The blankets moved like she was rolling over and away from me. “As soon as the Omega Match offices open, I’ll be leaving.”
Leaving? What the fuck had Beck done?
“I don’t understand.” I had been respectful, but now she said she was going to leave, I crawled across the mound of blankets until I got to where her head was and pulled the blankets away. “You can’t just decide after less than twenty-four hours to reject us.”
“I can. And it has been longer than that. You weren’t even here when I arrived.” Her back was to me and her hair was a mess in the bun it was in. I wanted to run my fingers through it and comfort her.
Wait.
“I thought you had curly hair.” We’d met a lot of omegas that day, but I could have sworn Kara had curls and her sister didn’t.
“That’s Kara.” Her voice cracked, and she blindly reached for the blankets, but I was quicker and pulled them away so she couldn’t hide under them again. “I tried to tell everyone it was a mistake, but they wouldn’t listen. Even your beta said you’d put me down.”
“Our beta? Brian is not our beta.” I was starting to get annoyed that people always referred to him as ours just because he was always around and made decisions when it came to Alphaball. He was our manager and coach, not a part of our pack.
“I opted out of matching, but the results came back and I matched to your pack.” She had her face buried in a pillow she was hugging, so it was hard to figure out what she was saying and make sense of it. “And I just thought... might as well give it a shot if they want me, but you wanted Kara.”
I wasn’t equipped this early in the morning to deal with something of this magnitude, and my coffee was on the other side of the room. “So, you’re...”
“Kayla.”
It honestly didn’t matter to me what her name was. She smelled like fucking heaven, and it wasn’t like we knew Kara. The only reason we’d let Brian submit our interest in Kara was because he said so.
“You told Brian you were Kayla? What did he say?”
“I messaged him and said there must have been a glitch because neither of us put your pack, and he said there wasn’t one. I just assumed you guys decided to pick me and then paid someone off at Omega Match to make it happen.” Her accusation shocked me a bit, and I was left speechless for a minute.
My silence must have pissed her off because she sat up suddenly, her face puffy from crying. I reached out to touch her cheek, and she flinched away from me. That hurt more than I expected it to.
“Let me fix you something to eat and then we can figure out everything.” I scooted out of the nest and, surprisingly, she followed.
I didn’t know what the hell was going on, but there was one person who could tell us.