Chapter 24 Presley
Presley
The helicopter blades sliced through the heavy London air, the steady thrum-thrum-thrum vibrating deep in my bones. The rhythmic pulse matched the frantic beating of my heart.
Through the headset, the static hissed, a white-noise barrier between me and the world I was leaving behind.
I leaned my head against the cool glass of the window, watching the sprawling gray of the city shrink into a miniature model. Buildings became toys. Cars turned into ants. I was free from the cage up here.
The Thames snaked below us, a dirty ribbon cutting through gray. I traced its path with my eyes, following it until it disappeared into the horizon. Somewhere down there, Hastings was pacing. Etienne was probably breaking something.
And I was running away in a helicopter because apparently, that was my life now.
"You're doing that thing again," Fritz's voice crackled through my ears, warm and far too perceptive.
I didn't turn. "What thing?"
"The thing where you try to shiver right out of your skin." A large, warm hand settled on my knee. He didn't squeeze, didn't demand attention. He just anchored me.
I finally looked at him. Fritz looked entirely too comfortable in a multi-million-pound aircraft.
He'd shed his suit jacket, his sleeves rolled up to reveal forearms that were thick and dusted with golden hair.
His tie was gone, the top two buttons of his shirt undone.
He looked like he belonged here, in this bubble of luxury suspended in the air.
The cabin was a sanctuary of scent. Without the suffocating dominance of Hastings's cedarwood and leather pressing against me through the bond, I could finally taste the air again.
Fritz smelled calming, of rain-slicked pavement and a hint of vanilla. It was like stepping out of a sweltering room into a crisp autumn breeze.
He reached into a leather bag at his feet and pulled out a small, foil-wrapped package and a tablet. "I put together a playlist. Mostly 90s pop, because you strike me as a woman who needs a bit of Britney when her world is ending.”
“Is it ending?”
“It can be fixed. And these are the sea-salt brownies you liked from the café last week."
I stared at the brownie in his outstretched hand. "You remembered that?"
"I remember everything about you, Liebling." He pressed it into my palm. "Eat. You barely touched your toast this morning."
I took the brownie, the rich chocolate scent momentarily grounding me. My fingers worked at the foil, the crinkling sound loud in the enclosed space. "You're too good at this, Fritz."
"At what? Being a legendary wingman for my own pack?
" He leaned back in his seat, his eyes dancing with that familiar, easy mischief.
"He's a mess, Liebling. I know Henry. He’ll be currently pacing the length of the study.
I left him trying to calculate the exact percentage of 'sorry' he needs to be to make you smile again.
He's got a spreadsheet open. I'm almost certain there's a pie chart involved. "
Despite everything, I felt my lips twitch. "A pie chart."
"Colour-coded. With footnotes."
"And Etienne?"
“He’ll come around.”
I bit into the brownie. The salt and chocolate combination burst across my tongue, sweet and savory and somehow exactly what I needed. I chewed slowly, letting the sugar work its way into my system.
Fritz watched me eat with a smile. Maybe it was a relief that I was actually consuming something other than panic.
"Do you think he should have waited," I said quietly, once I'd swallowed.
"He should have. But the man has spent his whole life thinking he was a glitch in the system.
Four scents, Presley. Do you know how rare that is?
One in every ten million alphas and the probability of finding an omega is much worse.
He's spent thirty-five years believing he'd never find a match.
That he was fundamentally incompatible with the universe. "
I looked down at the half-eaten brownie in my hand. "And then he found me."
"And then he found you." Fritz's voice softened. "He didn't just see an omega, Liebling. He saw a miracle. He didn't rein in the need because he didn't think he could survive another second without knowing you were his."
“And you’re okay with him claiming me like he did?”
“I trust him. He’s my pack mate. He chose me, he found Etienne. And perhaps he knew you were out there.”
The bond pulsed in my chest, a warm throb that felt like Hastings was pressing his hand over my heart. I touched the claiming mark on my neck, the raised skin tender under my fingertips.
Through the bond, I still felt his guilt and fear, but underneath it all there was a fierce, possessive satisfaction that he'd marked me. That I was his.
"Will it ever stop?" I asked. "The feeling of him?"
"No." Fritz's hand squeezed my knee. "But you’ll get used to it. It’ll become background noise. Like breathing. And then myself and Etienne will claim you, just as you think you have it under control."
I grinned at him, then bit my lip as I looked out of the window.
This was nice, better than nice and I wasn't sure I wanted it to be background noise. Right now, it was too big, too overwhelming. Like Hastings had crawled inside my chest and set up camp. One day, it could be all three of my alphas.
At least, I think they’re mine.
Outside the window, the gray had turned to green as the rolling moors of North Yorkshire rose to meet us. The landscape turned wild as stone walls cut through fields like scars. Sheep dotted the hills, white specks against green.
My shoulders relaxed for the first time in days.
"We're almost there," Fritz said.
I finished the brownie, licking chocolate from my thumb. "Thank you. For bringing me. For not making me explain."
"You don't need to explain. Sometimes you just need space." He tilted his head, studying me. "But you're coming back, ja?"
"Yes."
"Good." His smile was genuine, warm. "Because Etienne might actually murder Henry if you don't, and I quite like having both of them alive.
The roar of the blades sent a murder of crows shrieking into the gray sky.
It was nice to see I wasn't the only thing in North Yorkshire currently being startled out of my wits.
If three alphas were a 'pack' and crows were a 'murder,' I wondered what the collective noun was for one omega and her three spectacularly bad decisions. A catastrophe, probably.
“Ready,” Fritz mouthed as the helicopter touched ground.
I nodded.
As the blades slowed to a whine, I saw a familiar figure standing by the gate to the field.
Maeve.
She was wrapped in a cardigan that looked like it had been knitted by a frantic grandmother, her arms crossed over her chest as she stared at the helicopter like it was an alien spacecraft.
Her black hair whipped around her face in the downdraft, and even from here, I saw the skeptical set of her jaw.
I pulled off the headset and hopped out, my boots hitting the damp peat. The smell of wet earth hit me immediately. It was a world away from the polished marble and heavy scents of London.
For a second, I just breathed it all in.
The wind cut through my jeans. I'd forgotten how the North Yorkshire air bit. How it made your eyes water and your nose run and your lungs feel clean.
"Look at you," Maeve called out, her Irish lilt cutting through the wind. "Miss Fancy Pants arriving in her whirly-bird. I suppose you're too good for a bus now?"
I ran to her, throwing my arms around her. She smelled of laundry detergent and her body soap. It was the smell of home.
"I missed you," I said into her shoulder.
"I can see that. You look like you've been through a hedge backwards," she muttered, though she squeezed me back hard enough to make my ribs ache.
Her hands found my shoulders, pushing me back so she could look at me properly.
Her eyes flicked to the mark on my neck, and her expression went flat. "So he really did it."
"He did."
"Bastard."
Her eyes moved past me to Fritz, who was hopping out of the cabin, looking entirely too handsome for a damp field. His shoes were going to be ruined. Probably cost more than my caravan.
“Is that him?”
“No.”
"So who's the golden boy?" Maeve asked, her voice cool.
"Fritz," I said, pulling back. "He's part of the pack."
Maeve's face went flat. "Right. An alpha. Lovely."
Fritz approached with an easy smile, his hand extended. "Maeve, I presume. Presley's told me a lot about you."
Maeve looked at his hand like it might bite her. After a long, uncomfortable moment, she shook it once, quick and perfunctory.
"Has she now," Maeve said. "Well, I hope she told you I don't trust alphas as far as I can throw them. And seeing as you're built like a brick shithouse, that's not very far."
Fritz's smile didn't waver. "And so you shouldn’t."
Maeve’s mouth opened and then closed.
She took my hand and we walked toward my caravan, the small, silver bullet of a home looking smaller than I remembered.
It sat in the shadow of the stone wall, looking lonely.
The window box with the frozen pansies was still there, the flowers now completely dead.
Brown and brittle and clinging to the stems out of sheer stubbornness.
I led the way inside, my hand on the flimsy door handle. I had to lift and twist at the same time, the trick I'd perfected over years of living here. The door swung open with a creak that needed oil.
The familiar scent of old wood and lavender greeted me. It smelled smaller than I remembered. Cramped. The kitchenette with its two-ring hob. The table that folded down from the wall. The bed at the back that doubled as storage.
This had been my whole world for two years.
Now it felt like a shoebox.
"Mr. Cheddar?" I called out.
A soft meow came from the bed. That’s when I saw the ginger loaf of fur curled up right in the center of my duvet, his tail wrapped around his nose. My heart melted.