Chapter 50
The shed was in worse shape than I'd originally thought, a fair bit of dust and debris tracked in by my pack mates collecting on the floor and along the lower shelves of the carefully labelled storage racks.
But, as much as it grossed me out—I'd had to double up on sets of gloves just to be able to stand wiping everything down—it was also sort of a relief.
It wasn't helpful of me to be irritable with Eva while she was going through something traumatic. Especially if she was actually pregnant and her hormones were changing.
But I couldn't fucking take it anymore. The constant barrage of emotions from the omega was like a choke chain demanding my action, and I wasn't used to the constant drag of need.
Maybe if we were bonded and I could understand what the fuck her problem was with me, specifically. I was getting desperate for any hint as to what it was I was actually supposed to be doing when it came to Eva, given my assumptions didn't seem to be working out for me the way I planned.
I thought she'd be really pleased that I'd gone to try and salvage her computer.
Or that I'd managed to get a few of her things from her place that weren't damaged.
Didn't she notice that I'd put a couple of her mugs into the cupboard alongside Marcus' obsessively modern white dishware?
He was going to hate seeing the mismatched novelties every day, but I was fairly certain it would make our omega smile, so it seemed a necessary evil.
The shop vacuum was so loud that it nearly covered my music entirely as it sucked up the dirt I'd swept into a pile in the middle of the room, moving onto the vacated spider webs I'd found in the rafters.
If they'd still been occupied, I happily would've left them alone. Arachnids, though not one of my favourite sub-species, had an important role to play in the ecosystem of the garage, like eating those bastard silverfish that kept getting into Marcus' camping gear.
When everything was adequately debris-free, I turned off the vacuum, the heavy vibrato of the opera recording I'd thrown on to help me regulate flooding the space again, forcing a rare smile to my face.
I'd just started my next task: organizing Marcus' seeding equipment for his herbs—god, he really was the only one of us who went outside, wasn't he?
— when something that didn't sound like the climax of Serenata do Adeus pierced through the relative calm that I'd managed to cobble together from the safety of the shed.
Assuming that the guys had come home early and started Eva, I didn't think much of it... Until I noticed the sunlight still peeking through the window on the far side of the shed.
Even if they'd skipped the panel, and there was a fat chance of that with it being Indigo's favorite movie and Marcus' favorite director, they shouldn't have been home until after dark.
I turned to my phone, pressing the screen in an effort to cut the music. Of course, with two pairs of rubber gloves, my phone did nothing, sitting there like I was a ghost.
"Helpful," I muttered, the sound, obviously a scream this time, making my ears prick.
The trouble with living with a bunch of people with kinks that usually involved screaming was that it was hard to tell what was for pleasure and what was for fun.
Still, with the break-in at Eva's... I was uneasy.
I took my gloves off, pausing the music and lifting the phone with a stroke upwards of my thumb to bring up the alerts I'd missed while I was on do not disturb. My heart fell out of my ass. I flung my phone onto the workbench, racing for the door.
"Eva?" I shouted as she screamed again, my skin feeling cold. "I'm coming! fight tesoro! fight!"
The handle of the door turned, but the door didn't budge; the pins of the lock jammed from the other side.
Panic and anger gripped me in equal parts as I wheeled, looking for another exit. The window was too small to force my shoulders through, and this was the only door. Something that, until now, I'd never considered as a problem.
Unluckily for whoever thought that they were going to pull a fast one over on me, I kept this shed immaculately organized—and I didn't give a fuck about how I got out.
Sheds could be replaced.
Omegas couldn't.
Especially not an omega carrying our fucking baby.
I yanked down Marcus' box of camping equipment labelled 'firewood and accessories', displacing a couple of silverfish in the process.
Bastards.
Luckily, what I was looking for was just under the lid.
I flipped the axe over in my hand, bashing the blade into the door handle.
And, when that didn't immediately yield the result I wanted, I hacked at the door until the opening was big enough for me to use the axe's handle to knock off the doorknob from the other side.
Tires squealed on the pavement, the following silence echoing in my ears like the final notes of an aria.
I slammed my shoulder into the ruined door, it coming loose without the doorknob to hold it in place, giving way so fast I stumbled a couple of paces into the snow piles around the door, unfamiliar boot tracks clear alongside mine as they headed towards the door.
"Eva!" I shouted, taking the back steps two at a time, tracking mud and wet onto the floor as I ran inside, through the kitchen, to find the front door ajar.
Rage filled me. Whoever the fuck thought they could touch what belonged to me, could take what was mine, was about to wake to a world of pain so hideous, they'd wish that they'd never so much as looked at my omega.
Standing alone in the entry, I screamed with anger, slamming the door so hard that the ornate glass panel embedded inside cracked. "Eva!"