29. The Plan
The Plan
I t took everything in me to let Jackson walk out the door with my omega. I wanted to punch the smarmy asshole in the face and take her and run. But that would only result in more problems for all of us. We needed to sort our pack out, get everyone on the same page, and go get our girl.
River had come back when we were ready to leave. He'd been out making arrangements to get his truck towed, but he joined us in the SUV that still smelled faintly of spiced apples for the drive home.
"Pack meeting," I said when we walked through the door.
"Not today," River said. "I'm ordering Chinese food, we're going to eat a good meal and then get a good night's sleep."
"Do you think she's having a good night's sleep? And a good meal?" Kade challenged.
"No, I don't. But I also don't think it's any of our business."
"You don't mean that," Archer said. "And if you do . . . then you're not the man I thought you were."
We all stood in the dim living room, facing off. I could feel the tension between us. Three of us wanted nothing more than to go get our omega, but River . . . River was just too stubborn to see that she was meant for us.
"Archer, order the food," I said, taking over the situation. I was pissed at River, too, but fighting wasn't going to get us to where we needed to be. Not yet anyway.
Kade shifted uneasily and I turned to him. "Go ahead and unpack and shower. Food will be here when you're done."
He gave River a look and then nodded. "Fine." Then to Archer, as he headed upstairs, "Don't forget lemon chicken."
"What? You're suddenly the pack leader now?" River challenged, fire in his eyes.
"I'm your second in command. That means I take over when you're incapacitated," I reminded him.
"I'm not fucking incapacitated."
"Your pack doesn't trust you. It's the same result." I shrugged and gestured to the sofa. "Sit. I'll grab some beers."
"I need a shower and food," he muttered stubbornly.
"Food's coming. Shower can wait."
He bared his teeth at me, but headed for the couch when I left the room to grab the beers.
Archer looked up from his phone. "You good with him?"
"Yeah." I popped the tops off the beers and returned to the living room where River was brooding.
He took the bottle I handed him and drank deeply before straightening up and setting his drink down. "I'm the leader for a reason, you know. You all chose me because I make sound decisions under duress."
"But you hate omegas," I pointed out gently. "That makes you a liability in a situation like this."
"She's the liability. She caught you all up in her web," he snapped. "None of you had any self-control around her and now even Kade thinks he's in love."
I snorted. "Pretty sure he doesn't. That man wouldn't know love if it bit his ass."
"You know what I mean." He threw back another swig of beer.
"I think you want her, too."
"Of course I do! Who wouldn't? She's cute and sweet and stubborn and hot . . ." He rubbed a hand over his eyes. "But we can't. We've built this pack on a strict no omega rule. We can't just change that, not for some manipulative bitch."
With a sigh, I sank down in my favorite armchair and studied him. "We've been friends for a long time and you've detested omegas since I first met you. I get it. You've been hurt."
"Exactly. Nothing's changing because some little omega swings her hips and smells like fucking candy."
"But I think if you really stop to think about it, you'll realize that she wasn't manipulating anyone." I stared at him until he dropped his eyes and started picking at the label on his beer bottle. "She didn't want us either, but we kind of grew on her."
"In her," he threw out with a smirk that faded almost as soon as it appeared.
"River. She's not the enemy."
"She's an omega. And we can't have her anyway, she belongs to the center."
"No, your director gave you permission to claim her."
"She wanted me to use her like a tool to get off," he snarled. "There was nothing remotely okay about that offer."
"Are you mad about that?"
"You can't treat people, even omegas, like toys or possessions."
I smiled. He was getting there.
"So, you don't want to treat her like a possession. But that's exactly what could happen with another pack," I pointed out.
River looked miserably at me. "She's not going to a pack, Orion. Laura told me that omegas with heatshock in their medical history are undesireable to packs."
His announcement hit me like a boulder to the chest. "She's going to the heat dens?"
"That's what Laura said."
"And you let them take her." I couldn't keep the cold fury from my voice. "Knowing where she was headed."
"I didn't know what to do."
There was a hollow place inside me, knowing that not only was Quinn not getting a pack that deserved her, but she was going to the heat dens she'd been so afraid of. And it was our fault. If we'd tended to her when her heat first started, she never would have entered heatshock.
"Fuck."
"She's in a cell in the basement," Kade called out, thundering down the stairs, laptop in hand.
"I thought you were showering," River said, as surprised as I was to see him still in the same clothes. Kade never wore his travel clothes in the house.
"I was about to, but then I remembered I installed the security system in the center and I left myself a backdoor."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because it's what I always do." He tilted his head, not understanding why I would question his methods.
"Anyway. I started going through the feeds and I found her.
They took her downstairs to the basement.
It's supposed to be for feral omegas, but obviously she's not feral. They're punishing her for running."
He set the laptop on the coffee table and showed us the screen. There was nightvision turned on, because the cell must be dark. It was a tiny space, with just enough room to walk past the bed ledge to the corner the camera was in, supposedly where a toilet was located.
Quinn sat on the bed, with something dark under her, knees pulled up to her chest, resting her head on her knees. She was completely naked and I knew for a fact that room was concrete.
"She must be freezing. They didn't even give her a blanket or clothes?" I stood up, ready to march into the center right now and tear everyone apart until they turned my omega over to me.
"Fuck." River was staring horrified at the screen. "She told me it was bad, but I didn't believe her. I've worked with them for years. How many omegas have I sent to that fate?"
"This is just a holding cell," Kade told him. "She'll eventually be released to a pack."
"No, she won't." I told him what River had said earlier.
Kade went silent and still, his ice blue eyes focused on nothing above River's head. We waited, knowing that this was his method of processing things.
Archer came into the room, his mouth open to say something, but he shut it when he saw Kade. Instead, he moved to sit on the opposite end of the sofa from River.
Finally, Kade moved again. He dropped to the floor to sit in front of the laptop and started tapping madly. Rooms flashed by on the screen until he reached a classroom. Then he sped the footage backwards to a class in session.
"You didn't believe the marks on her body," he said too calmly.
"That's where they came from." We watched in horror as a beta guard lashed out with his electric shock stick and zapped an omega who had raised her hand.
She jerked and fell off her chair and the guard shocked her again, laughing.
Then someone else must have made a noise, because he spun and shocked that woman too.
"She was telling the truth." River looked devastated.
"We all trusted her, but you couldn't." Archer leaned back, letting his head fall against the cushions. "This is so much worse than I imagined."
"The number of burns on her body . . . this must have happened every day she was there," River choked out.
"So, you still want to leave her there?" I challenged.
He raised stricken eyes to mine. "No."
"Good, then we're going to get her first thing in the morning. You're going to call Laura and let her know."