Chapter 16
The pin Cameo dropped led to a part of town that I wouldn't exactly call desirable, so it wasn't much of a surprise that Eva had her window busted.
Well, it was maybe a little strange, given that her car was obviously a shit box. Even parked in the middle of this sketchy gravel lot, it didn’t look nice enough to have anything valuable inside.
At the very least, I sincerely doubted a girl who had duct-taped her bumper back on wasn’t leaving stacks of cash or valuable electronics easily accessible in the back seat.
It was lucky that it was early enough in the day that I could step out, before the staff would need me to be on and present while we fired ticket after ticket during our fully booked dinner service.
That was the problem with restaurants. Days off were few and far between, mostly relegated to Mondays when the restaurant was closed, and Tuesday afternoons, once ordering and menu planning were squared away for the week.
But, for things like this… a man made time.
An alpha, I guessed… made time.
The smell of menthol cigarettes and stale urine hung in the air as I climbed out of my SUV, and I almost smiled to think of the way Cameo would've cringed to step out of his car and onto the gravel of the parking lot. He always got this… look on his face when he hated something but didn't want to talk about it. Or thought it was beneath complaining about. Something between an old woman spying a teenager wearing short shorts and someone who’d just discovered they’d stepped in dogshit.
Glass littered the ground around Eva's car, crunching under my thick-soled shoes as I picked my way around papers haphazardly tossed around the car.
The folio that they’d come from was left open, additional pages spilling out amongst items of little consequence that’d been left on her backseat.
I hoped, perhaps a little foolishly, that the emptied energy drink cans and fast food wrappers were left behind by the degenerate who’d broken in.
The way someone kept their car was generally an indicator of their housekeeping…
and it would be a shame for an omega as lovely as Eva to live like a wild animal.
No order. Just chaos.
The remaining belongings seemed without any real rhyme or reason other than that she'd happened to have her gym bag in the back when they’d smashed her windows.
They’d left behind her shoes and the bag itself, which I picked up, putting my hands into the pockets to check if anything had been left behind.
Something was… off. strange about the scene.
I was just trying to work out exactly what was troubling me when Cameo pulled in, opening the door to his car with a flood of Eva's scent so strong that I worried I was going to grind the case of her wireless earpods into dust with the way my hand clenched into a fist.
"You fucked her?" I asked roughly, annoyance and jealousy dripping from my tone as I pulled out the little square box.
It was possible that they’d simply missed them, tucked away in one of the many outside pockets of the duffel, but… that didn’t feel likely. If I had to guess, these headphones were probably worth more than the entire car—and they weren’t particularly nice.
Cameo looked affronted, the expression sorely undercut by a chuckle. "She was crying."
I clicked my tongue, looking over my packmate coolly. "Like that would stop you?"
"It really, really, did," he muttered, a disappointed note to his voice. "But I'll have my turn soon enough."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"I believe I've found the mother of our child," the alpha said smugly, entirely ignoring the whisper of a bark in my tone.
"What? You think she'll agree? Why?"
Hope threatened to bloom, but I stomped it out like a flower first pressing through the soil. No omega like that would agree to act as a surrogate for my relative freakshow of a pack. Sure, I loved them, and I was as much a part of the problem as Cameo—if you asked Joon, I was probably worse.
"Made her an offer she'd be an idiot to refuse. Did you find anything?"
"I don't know what you want me looking for," I admitted, sensing that was the most Cameo was going to share about his big plan to make Eva the mother of our child.
I hadn't stopped thinking about her since the Packtacular, and the idea of having her within my reach again was intoxicating. Thrilling in a way that until now, I’d all but ignored. In the wake of everything that’d happened with Mindy… it was easier not to want an omega at all.
Especially not one like Eva.
Her eyes, her scent, the warm feel of her mouth wrapped around my cock—it was impossible to forget.
And then there was Joon…
"Anything," Cameo said tersely, opening the front door and feeding his arm through the seats and the wall of the car to open the back. "They didn't take her cash," he noted, nodding to the cup holder of coins in the centre console.
"Weird for a break-in," I commented as Cameo sifted through the mess the vandal had made of Eva's back seat. "I figured it would be like… petty crime stuff? But they didn’t take her headphones either."
I stepped closer, and my phone vibrated in my pocket. Worrying that my unscheduled detour had already taken longer than I intended, I pulled it free. But it wasn’t my sous asking where the hell I was; an unfamiliar notification bannered the top of my screen.
Airtag nearby
My brows furrowed, a prickling, irritated feeling settling into my bones.
Cameo wasn't the type of guy who lost things, and I wasn't someone with any use for a tracking device either. The typical phone, keys, and wallet pat-down was sufficient for me.
So… where…?
"Does Eva use AirTags for her stuff?" I asked.
Cameo stilled, the rustle of paper pausing with him. "What makes you say that?"
"I just got an alert for one," I explained, showing him my screen.
Cameo cursed. "This is what I get for listening to Charlie and getting a fucking Android. Help me find it."
"You don't want to call her and ask?"
"I don't want her to freak out," he muttered, running his tattooed hands along the floor of the car and under the seats with a wince.
I took the outside, opting for the dirtier job for Cameo's benefit more than anything, feeling along the wheel wells while suppressing a sigh.
There was almost something nice about seeing Cameo care about someone else’s feelings. A rarity, even with us.
Sure, I'd seen glimpses of it with Joon, too, but… his quickness to come to Eva’s rescue when she needed help. And more, keeping her even partially in the dark in order to spare her anxiety until we had all the facts…something was different there.
Like an alpha protecting his omega.
The prickle continued as I opened the hood of her car to continue my search, the slow realization that I was experiencing something similar making me feel anxious.
I made it a point to avoid hoping for an omega for our pack. Even after Joon had agreed to move in. He didn’t want a bond anyway; nothing was stopping him from walking right back out that door with his tablet and teeth-marked stylus, never to be heard from again.
We hunted for a while, Cameo huffing occasionally with either irritation or disgust, I wasn't sure. But even as the sun started to slip behind the low buildings, we never managed to find the tracker.
"I'm sending that piece of shit to the junk yard," Cameo swore, using some cleansing wipes from his glovebox to wipe his hands thoroughly. "She needs something more reliable anyway."
"You can't just get a woman a brand new car?" I said incredulously. “Besides, what stops them from putting another one in the new car?”
"It's a courting gift," Cameo said, as though this was remotely normal behaviour. “And as for the tracker issue… I’ll sort it.”
It was pointless to ask how exactly he planned on doing that.
The problem with being best friends with a tech genius when the most school you’ve done was learning how to properly spatchcock a chicken was that when he really got into the technical speak, he might as well have been speaking a foreign language, like those dramas Joon watched in the evenings.
"She hasn't agreed to anything yet, Cam, you can't just—"
"She will, though," he interrupted, and the confidence in his voice made me wonder again if he'd fucked her before dropping her off.
"You can't be certain of that.”
"Call it manifestation then, stronzo," the alpha said with a shrug that made his leather jacket creak around his shoulders. “Is it really too difficult for you to imagine that I just understand women better than you do?"
I scoffed.
There was about as much of a chance that he'd wear a hot pink powersuit as there was that Cameo understood anyone, much less a woman, better than I did.
And, there it was. Pushing out of the earth again.
Pesky, cloying, hope.
Eva was beautiful, delightfully submissive, and, if Joon's jealous ranting was to be believed, smart.
Those were good qualities, the types of things you'd check off on a form if we'd begun looking for a surrogate the typical way.
But we weren't a typical pack, and the idea of picking the mother of our baby from a stack of file folders felt a bit soulless.
Besides, we needed someone who understood our pack's unique… quirks.
Artificial insemination wasn't off the table, for example, but it certainly created a lack of mystery when it came to who the father was.
In my ideal situation… I saw it as more fluid. That we'd all make efforts to create the little life that we'd raise together.
The hole in our pack left by Mindy filled at last.
"You're hoping I'm right, I know you are," Cameo continued, leaning against his car with his arms crossed. "And when I am, I expect first dibs."
I snorted, shoving as many of Eva's belongings into her gym bag as would fit. "If she agrees, you can fuck her in front of me on the kitchen table."
I straightened up, closing the door, no matter how futile it was with a busted window, just in time to catch the excited glint in Cameo's eyes. "On the island."
Internally, I cringed. I wasn't half the germaphobe that my friend was, but the kitchen was my domain. I liked my stuff to be in its place. The surfaces to be sanitary…
"Fine," I said, pretty sure that a woman like Eva wouldn't be swayed by a couple of expensive gifts. "I'll even make pina coladas."
Cameo turned his nose up, sticking his tongue out in a way that could only be described as childish. "Coconut is disgusting. Strawberry daiquiris would be better."
"Whatever," I laughed. "It's not going to happen anyway. You heading out?"
"I'll wait for the tow truck," Cameo said. "I'll see you at home."
I got into my car, waving to my packmate as I pulled out of the lot to head back to the restaurant.
She wouldn't say yes, I knew she wouldn't. But I risked being late to dinner service to stop at the grocer to get the ingredients for the daiquiris anyway… just in case.