Chapter 21
Preston
Prison sucked.
I wasn’t even in prison; I was in a convict firefighting camp. The state of California allowed convicts with good behavior to take part in a program where they stayed at a minimum-security facility and were trained to support the LAFD.
According to my paperwork, I’d been in prison for several drug-related charges before my approval for the convict firefighter program. The facility I transferred from stated I was a model prisoner and a good influence.
It almost made me laugh, considering one of my closest friends wrote the thing. When I’d taken this job, I knew I was going to be away from my pack for a while, but I hadn't foreseen the fateful situation with the blonde at the bar.
Hailey.
I’d bonded with an omega and then had to flee. The moment I pulled out of her and ran, I felt like the lowest of the low. It was horrible.
As soon as I’d been able to contact my pack, I’d begged them to find her, only I didn't have much information or time to explain what’d happened.
Being apart from her had been brutal, and I could only imagine how much she was suffering. If Nolan and Wilder had been able to find her, she might have been doing slightly better than me, though.
For weeks, I’d felt like a complete ass wrapped inside a decaying burrito of self-loathing and rusty nails.
All I could do was go through the motions and continue my work.
Work that my pack mates knew nothing about.
Sucks. Everything just sucks.
Lying in my bunk, I stared at the wooden ceiling. As far as prison facilities went, the convict firefighter camp was actually pretty damn nice. Sure, there were guards, but they were fairly relaxed, which, from what I knew about prisons, was a real one-eighty.
Still, they carried guns, and if I attempted to leave the premises, they would shoot me without question.
“Manville! You’ve got a visitor,” the warden shouted.
Sitting up, I looked at him, my brow cocked as I hesitated to move. Who the hell would be visiting me? No one knew I was here.
Manville wasn’t even my real name, as if that weren’t obvious enough.
It was a cover. Preston Manville was a low-level drug dealer who did some firefighting in the military before being arrested.
The perfect candidate for a program that served to help low-level offenders turn their lives around and make them useful to the community.
I walked over to the warden, who was standing by the door to the cabin. Visitation was monitored but also far more private than any other prison I’d seen. Not that I had seen a great deal of prisons.
But in my line of work, you heard plenty.
We were allowed to meet any visitors on wooden benches outside, where we could get a modicum of privacy, but also, we were being watched by security guards at all times.
When I stepped outside and noticed a familiar alpha standing next to one of the benches, my heart went into overdrive.
Nolan.
Though I had sent him to town to find Hailey, I didn’t expect him to attempt to track me down, given he knew I had done undercover work once or twice. I even had a fake name in Camp Bower.
“What are you doing here?” I asked in a low voice as I approached the bench, glancing around to see if any of the security guards could overhear us. “You can’t be here.”
“I'm just a lawyer visiting a potential client,” he said in a clipped voice, but I could see by the tightness in his jaw and the rage in his eyes that he was not happy with me.
I didn't blame him one bit, of course. I’d also be extremely pissed off in his place, especially since I knew he didn’t have all the details. My stomach churned as I walked up to the bench.
“Go,” I hissed, sitting down and attempting to keep my body language casual. I didn’t want anyone to see my stress, to let on that anything was amiss. The warden, Edward Haskins, was a nasty man, and I didn’t want to get on his bad side, especially when he was the one I needed to be sucking up to.
“No can do, Manville.” He hissed my fake name, glaring at me with a look I was rarely on this end of. “Whatever the hell is going on in here, you need to end it.”
“I can’t,” I said with a shake of my head.
Nolan growled, running a hand through his hair. “Look, everything has gone to hell. I don't know all the details as to why you’re in this fucking prison, but you’re needed out there. Please tell me you’re not in here for real criminal reasons.”
“Of course not!” I leaned forward. “Did you find her?”
He nodded. “Yeah, asshole, and she's doing way worse than you are.”
My stomach sank, regret pinging in my head. “A-are you sure?”
His stoic look told me everything I needed to know. Nolan might have looked calm to everyone else, but I knew him, knew how his rage simmered in the background.
Sagging, I kept my voice especially quiet. “I…I really fucked up, huh?”
Nolan nodded, eyes cutting through me. “You did. We found her. She’s pregnant, Pres.”
If my heart had dropped into my stomach when I heard she wasn’t doing well, it was fully out of my body now.
Pregnant. My mate’s pregnant.
All rational thought temporarily escaped me. Prisons and work were irrelevant. If my mate was pregnant and she needed me, I had to be there.
Only, there was no out.
“Fuck. I can't get out of here for several more weeks,” I said in a strangled voice. There was no way I could explain how deep I was.
Nolan shrugged, cocking his head as his sarcastic sympathy smacked me. “I assumed as much. But I thought you deserved to know, and… Well, she's doing a bit better now.”
“Better?”
Nolan tilted his head to the side, sighing so hard it was almost funny. Almost. “She found another alpha to bond.”
“Wait. What?!” I silently cursed, knowing that had been too loud.
Nolan nodded. “Hailey assumed it was the separation sickness, and to a degree, it is. But she went to the doctor because she was getting worse by the day. She needed another mate to see her through. So, in stubborn omega fashion, instead of coming to us, she bonded with a friend of hers. Some firefighter named Merrick. I guess she’s liked him for a while. ”
The news that our omega had bonded with someone that wasn't in our pack hit me like a physical blow. My chest was already feeling hollow from not having her near, and it started to tighten painfully.
“I don’t—W-what?”
“You heard me,” Nolan said with a small growl. “I don't know what's led you here, but you need to wrap this up. You need to be home with us and Hailey and Merrick and figure out what’s best for this child.”
“I'm going to be a dad…” I whispered, reality spinning and choking me, even as the thought lit something inside me that ached all the more to get the fuck out of here.
“We all are,” Nolan countered, clearly beyond pissed at me.
“What's this new guy like?”
Nolan crossed his arms with a begrudging look.
“He seems like an overall decent alpha. As I said, he's a firefighter, and from what I can tell, he and Hailey have had a thing for each other for a while.
When we went to see her, she freaked out, didn't trust us.
She told him everything, and they decided to bond.
He wanted to protect her. Now he's acting like her guard dog.”
As much as I hated that there was an unknown pack member I’d never met, I was kind of pleased that he was at least as dedicated to protecting my omega as I was.
“Which station is this guy from?”
Nolan frowned, shrugging. “I’m not sure. Sixteen or Seventeen? We discussed it the other night while playing twenty questions.”
“You played twenty questions?” I raised my brows at him, thrown for a loop again.
“It was Wilder's suggestion. And…it was actually a good one because we needed to find out as much as we could about each other. It's weird as hell having a pack member you know next to nothing about. I can only imagine how hard it was for Hailey to have a bonded alpha she knew nothing about.”
All these emotions crowding my chest were warring with one another. Part of me wanted to be angry at this unknown alpha. Part of me was thankful.
Mostly, I was mad at myself.
I refused to refer to what Hailey and I did as a “fuck up,” but at the same time, I had put her in a such a vulnerable position, and I hated myself for that.
“We came to the conclusion that you need to come home. Now.”
“I can’t.” I shook my head, hating myself even more. “Please. Please believe me when I say it shouldn’t be much longer. You know I wouldn't be staying here if it wasn't a life-or-death situation.”
I was pretty sure I had found out the information I was sent to discover…but I needed to be sure before pulling the proverbial trigger.
“I know. I never thought anything would be able to keep you away from your omega or future child, so I had to assume this was serious, but…Preston, you need to sort this out. It’s not getting better or easier, and there’s only so much we can do when you’re not in the picture.
Hailey… Let’s just say she has justifiable feelings about you right now, and they’re not good. ”
“Goddamn it.” I slumped, pinching the bridge of my nose until it hurt. “Will you guys look after her?”
“You know we will. Well, as much as the new guy will allow. As much as I hate to admit it, the bonding has helped Hailey a lot. She's nowhere near as sick anymore.”
“Good. That’s good. Please tell her I’ll be out soon, and I’ll explain everything to her then.”
“You need to explain it to all of us.” Nolan shot me a pointed look, and I winced. “Never again, Preston. You hear me?”
“Never again,” I agreed, nodding solemnly. “This was a favor to a friend, and I will never take a job like this again. I want to be home with our family.”
“Good.” Nolan stood up, taking a step or two away from the bench before he turned and pointed at me. “And the next time you talk to this ‘friend’ of yours, you tell him he fucking owes us.”
After Nolan left, I returned to my bunk. Edward—the warden—was watching me, and I couldn’t afford to slip up. One wrong move, and he would have me removed from the camp without even thinking about it.