Chapter 5 Riley
Riley
I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop at any moment, bracing myself for the impact.
The fact that Mathew is an Omega is now all over the internet. People everywhere are talking about it.
Within ‘our’ circles, people seem to mostly try to downplay the influence and power he has. Pretending like accidentally letting his name slip wouldn’t make half of them shit their pants and pray to whatever deity they worship for protection.
But in ‘other’ circles, people are focused on totally different things, mostly his looks.
There’s a group of people out there who are talking crap about him, that he’s ‘too muscular’ and ‘too big’ for an Omega, that he’s ‘ugly’ because he’s so tall.
While there’s another group —luckily much louder— who are drooling all over him because of those exact same features.
It’s interesting to watch, but also gives me uncomfortable feelings. Because that’s my Omega they’re talking about. That’s my Omega they’re ogling. He’s mine!
I’m reading all the reactions to try and distract myself from the constant feeling of doom, from waiting for the Hearts to do something. From waiting for the Hearts to reveal who he was before he was Mathew Page, when he was still ‘Michael, King of Hearts’.
Many people won’t care that he was underage, that he was forced into the work, that he didn’t have a choice. They’ll only see that he worked at a brothel and see that as enough reason to hate him, to reject him.
All the while, for the people who run the brothel and those who frequent it, there are no repercussions at all, while they’re the ones at fault.
But the Hearts have been quiet so far. Maybe Mathew’s threat to them still works.
Because if they reveal his past, his story will show people that they can break away from the Hearts, and the Hearts don’t want that. It will show that the Hearts aren’t as all-powerful as they like to pretend they are. It will hurt Mathew, but could hurt the Hearts even worse.
Our intentions to take down the brothel haven’t changed, but we might need to adapt the plans now this is all over the internet.
We’ve carefully been working with some smaller organisations and groups of people, to try and build a network that can help the kids when they’ve been taken from the Hearts. To provide places to sleep, places to heal, new identities. Anything to get them a new start in life.
Most of those people haven’t responded negatively, many have actually responded really positively. Though, that might be because Vera and Luca have taken most of that on. So, they’ve been dealing with a headstrong Omega and a soft Beta the whole time.
But we’ll have to be careful for a while. Until we can be sure that nobody is going to rat us out to the Hearts. Until we can be sure that we’re not going to be betrayed.
And that is if all this attention doesn’t spook the Hearts and makes them nervous enough to change the security or potentially close down the brothel entirely.
They won’t want to close it, because it makes them a lot of money and it will also spook too many of their ‘customers’, but if they feel nervous enough, they might do it.
That would mean that the kids who are there right now will be spread over all the other brothels, and they might even end up in places we have no idea of. It means they’ll get hidden even deeper in the system and makes it much harder to get them out.
Right now, we can only wait. Wait to see what the Hearts will do, wait for things to die down and wait for more information so that we can slowly build our plans to take the brothel down.
I’m not that good with waiting.
‘You want company?’ Vera’s message lights up my phone.
‘Sure.’ I’m in my room, in the closet, hoping that the quiet and calm will help my mind to stay on task and not spin all over the place.
It hasn’t worked, not entirely.
Instead of reading horrible articles and people being mean, I’ve been scrolling social media to read all the comments where people are drooling all over my pack mates. More positive, but just as bad for my brain.
I agree with every compliment they give them, but also hate that anyone is talking about my pack mates in that way at all. It’s... complicated.
The door to my room opens, and a few moments later, Vera slowly opens the door to my closet. She looks at me, her eyes unreadable, before she slides right under the blankets, curling up against me closely, letting her sweet honey pheromones out.
“Everyone doing okay?” I’ve been up here for a while, but when I left the office, everyone was working hard and we didn’t know much yet.
“Not much has changed. It appears that the photographer shared the pics with some close people first, many of who started sharing them around, before she started selling the pics. At this point, we just presume everyone has seen them, makes things simpler.” She lets out a long breath as she nuzzles against my side more.
“Are you okay?” The articles exposed all of us, it wasn’t just Mathew in those pictures.
“If anyone is mean to Mathew, I’ll just have to get rid of them.” The venom in her voice makes me shiver.
Yeah, that’s definitely not an empty threat.
It makes me so proud of my cute Omega, how protective she is of her pack members, how willing she is to protect them, what she’s willing to do for them.
I chuckle, kissing the top of her head. “I was wondering how you were doing.”
She looks up at me, surprised. “Oh. I’m fine. Now I know that Mathew is safe, I’m fine.”
I’m not entirely sure that I believe her, but this will have to do for now.
She leans her head against my shoulder, taking my hand between two of hers, slowly sliding her fingers along mine. “Everything has changed now. We knew this was going to happen. We didn’t know when or how, but we knew it was going to happen at some point.” She lets out a tired chuckle.
“It’s a bit hard for Mathew to hide his belly when we wears slim fit suits all the time, and he couldn’t just hide from the world for months on end. People were going to figure it out either way. The timing is just bad.”
I close my hand, catching hers, holding her.
“The only time you have some control over things like this is if you reveal it yourself, but even that’s not a given.
Even that can be done when you don’t want to, if you’re forced into a corner if you want some control over the discourse.
” I lean my head against hers. “Luckily, we’ve all got each other and a great team to work with. So I’m sure that things will work out.”
“And if it doesn’t, we’ll just have to make sure that it does.” She snuggles in closer. “But I think that things have been hard enough for one day. Sleep is important too.”
“That too.” I wrap my arm around her so she’s fully fitted against me, and then give her a soft kiss. “Let’s get some sleep first.”
I feel like the others are probably working until deep into the night, but they know where to find us. So, I’m not leaving this little nest with my sweet Omega unless I have to. Not now.
It’s still dark outside, so I have no idea what the time is, but there are strange footsteps outside the house and someone is trying to sneak into my room. At my side, Vera seems to have woken up too, as I feel her hand go to the knives that she knows I keep hidden in here.
As quietly as possible, so that the intruder doesn’t notice it, I slide one of the knives to Vera’s hand as I take one of the others for myself.
The intruder is coming closer and closer to the closet, no other sounds but their breathing and their quiet footsteps. I don’t notice any pheromones, but no intruder would be dumb enough to spread their pheromones around when they’re going to attack someone.
When the intruder seems to hesitate for a moment, Vera kicks open one of the doors of the closet and jumps out. I’m only a fraction of a second behind her, following her every step, making use of the difference in our heights to grab the intruder.
The intruder seems surprised by us, not even trying to defend themselves as we tackle them to the floor.
He lets out a surprised burst of air. “Fuck!”
Mathew!
What the fuck?!
I feel around, finding the switch from one of the lights in the room, and the low glow shows Mathew on his back on the floor, Vera sitting on his legs, both looking very confused.
“Why are you sneaking around?” Vera slides next to him, her fingers carefully moving over him. “Are you hurt?”
Mathew sits up, rubbing the back of his head and then his ass. “I might have a few bruises, but I don’t think there’s any real damage.”
“What were you doing?” I scoot over to them, feeling the back of his head and then methodically slide my hands down his back to make sure he’s really fine.
“I was trying to check on you two, but didn’t want to disturb you.” He smiles sheepishly. “Next time, I should probably just turn the lights on and disturb you...”
Vera pulls a face, her voice quiet. “Probably.”
“I guess you’re lucky I’ve got a thick carpet in my room.” Now I’m sure he’s telling the truth that he’s not hurt, I wrap my arms around him, pulling him close, putting my nose against his neck to get even a sliver of his wisteria pheromones.
Vera sits between his legs, looking at him with worry in her eyes. “Why did you want to check on us? Is something going on?”
He nods, looking down, his body tense. “People have been trying to hack our security feeds. They shouldn’t have gotten through, but I’m not taking any risks. I wanted to quickly check on you, make sure you were okay, without waking you up.”
Hacking the security feeds?
“Anything we can do?” I have no idea how long we’ve slept, but I’m too wound up now to go back to sleep.
“Not really. Timothy and the others are working on it. Derrick has doubled the security around the house, just to be safe. But there’s not really much the rest of us can do but wait.” He leans back against me, relaxing, his breathing slow.
“Maybe we should move to the bedroom and sleep?” Vera stands up, holding out her hand to Mathew.
He laughs, but accepts her hand and stands up too. Then they both look at me, holding out their hands.
I shake my head as I wave them off. “You two go to sleep. I’m going to clean up here and then get some more work done.”
The two Omegas look at me for a few moments, then lean in and hug me between them.
“Don’t stay up too late.” Vera’s voice is soft. Then her lips are on my cheek, Mathew’s on my other cheek.
“You too.” I grin at them, knowing that there’s about a fifty-fifty chance they’ll have sex for the rest of the night instead of them going to sleep. “Sweet dreams.”
I watch the two Omegas leave my bedroom, hand in hand, looking so cute. While I’d love to join them, I’ve got way too much adrenaline rushing through my body right now. Going back to sleep is not an option.
Time to get some more work done.