Chapter 29 Mal
Mal
PAST
“Vae!”
She jumps and whirls around. “What’s wrong?”
I wrap my arms around her, holding her tight. “We really fucked up, Vae. Like, really badly.”
“How?” she asks.
“She thinks she’s pregnant. She says she went into heat, and we helped, and now we are the baby daddies.”
I hyperventilate.
“I cannot have a child! I can’t even get up on my own. You wake me up. I can’t cook. You do the washing and organise my life. I’m useless.”
“Wait, first things first. Who is she?”
“Lilly Waters, our girlfriend from two girlfriends ago.”
“Ah, yes, the one who called you all her daddies. Should have been a clue.”
My lips twitch despite myself. “Not helping, Vae.”
“Okay, as sickening as it is, tell me everything that happened, including the sex. Was there any hint of heat? Let’s go over all the things you said, saw, and did.”
PRESENT
The last week has been the happiest of my life. The easy way we are with each other is now so seamless that I can’t imagine how I could have thought I’d be happy without her.
I lean into bed, inhaling the scent of her slick on the pillow.
She really relaxed and came out of her shell towards the end, and her appetite is voracious.
She’s perfect for Deacon’s unhinged darkness.
She meets my playful exchanges with answering joy, and she’s the sensual seductress to Raynor’s erotic pleasures.
The conversations are easy, the tension and walls we all keep up are gone.
I can see my forever, and, for the first time, I step into it, happily.
She’s gone to get her things and pack up to come home. Just that sentence alone makes me giddy.
I clean the house to surprise her and carefully use the scent neutralizers in the rest of the house to get rid of any lingering female scents. I know it upsets her.
The doorbell chimes, and I abandon the vacuum. I answer the door with a smile, which falls from my face when I find Indy glaring at me in her huge, designer sunglasses. She looks perfect, as usual, I don’t think I’ve ever hated anyone more than I hate her right now for not being Vae.
“What do you want? We’re on our way out,” I snap the words out, almost spitting at her.
All the flaws she had are so bright and clear to me now. How she treated Raynor like he was less, how she demanded we pay for everything for her. She loved the parties and was always taking photos and uploading them to her social media account.
She’s vain, spoiled, and cruel. She doesn’t love; she leeches.
She lifts her chin, snatching her sunglasses off her face, her eyes glittering in a way that makes my stomach jolt. I frown even harder and start closing the door on her, but she pushes out an arm and slams it back, and I’m so taken aback by the move I don’t resist.
“We need to talk.” She pushes past me. I grab her arm, but she stops and turns to face me. “Get your hand off me, Malcolm.”
The sheer rage in her eyes has me nervous. I let go of her arm and trail after her as she stalks into the house. She’d be the kind of omega to cry rape. The kind of omega that you end up bonded to forever.
The thought gives me chills.
“The others will be out soon.” I hope they get home in time. I really do. Before Vae, especially before Vae. She would never forgive us for having Indy here.
I reach for Indy again but pause and lower my hand. She gives me a smug little smile that tells me she knows exactly what I’m thinking and that she’s got me by the balls.
“No, they won’t. They are gone for the day. Don’t lie to me.” She paces through the hallway, leading me into the kitchen, and sits down at the table, crosses her leg, and just stares at me.
It’s intense and annoying. I stay in the doorway and cross my arms defensively.
“You have two minutes or I’m calling the police.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Indy says. “Things would not go well.”
A bolt of foreboding goes through me. It’s an interesting word, foreboding. I remember Vae teaching me its meaning when I was a kid. A sense of doom or that something bad will happen. My mind flashes that memory up to me, and then I’m left feeling mildly sick.
“I knew you were lying,” Indy says with another sick smile. She drums her long nails on the table. I hate that sound.
I grit my teeth, trying to resist walking over to her, picking her up, and throwing her out of the house like trash.
“I knew you were fucking her.”
Her? Vae? I scowl.
“We weren’t-”
“Shut the fuck up, Mal.”
I have never, ever heard Indy speak like that, but it goes with the look I’m slowly starting to uncover. The sick bitch that exists underneath the surface is starting to show.
I glare at her. “Get out of my house.”
“Oh, I don’t think you want me to do that,” Indy says those words again, and I feel ill over it.
“And why not?” I snap, furious that she’s getting to me.
“Because I remember something about your precious Hook that you all seem to have forgotten.”
I freeze, panicking. What does she know? What could she possibly hurt Vae with?
I glare at her and ball my hands up, squeezing so I don’t grab her throat and squeeze the life from her. “If you hurt Vae-”
“She told your fans she wasn’t your girlfriend, and there is nothing she hates more than photos. You promised your fans there was nothing between you. That you were friends and only friends. You demanded privacy.”
She holds up her phone and plays the interview.
I break into a cold sweat. “So what?”
Internally, I’m screaming because I had missed it. I’d forgotten. How did I forget? We’re so much more than just Deacon and Mal. We’re Scented Scorpions, and our fans own a little bit of us, too.
What would they do if they found out?
Indy leans forward. “Let me just lay it all out there, everything I have. I’ve been keeping photos and proof all this time.
I’ve even got photos from a sex video, all the photos of parties.
Videos of you wasted. I’ve got hundreds of photos of you hugging her, kissing her, incriminating deceptive images showing your fans just how much you don’t care about them. ”
I can feel the blood slowly leaving my face. It would end our careers. The coach and Marilyn would tear up our contracts without even thinking about it.
What about the fans? I saw what happened to an alpha and his omega when the fans thought they’d been deceived. She left him because she couldn’t weather it, but they hounded her everywhere until she just disappeared.
I sway and catch the door frame.
“What do you want?” I whisper.
Indy uncrosses her legs and stands up. She glides towards me in that sexy walk I used to find irresistible. It’s terrifying.
“You’re going to break up with her and get rid of her.”
“No.”
There is no way. Absolutely not. We can sort this out, right? Vae will understand when everything goes viral, and she becomes…the Scented Scorpion pack whore.
I exhale and brush past Indy, putting more space between us because her perfume makes me sick.
“No!” I say more firmly.
“Fine, I’ll send this out to the world.” She shrugs a shoulder and casually brushes her hair behind her ear while she looks down at her phone.
I hesitate.
“Why? What’s the purpose?” I stress. “Why are you doing this? What do you even want?”
She’s got me, and we both know it.
“Oh, you’re going to come back to me. We’re not over yet.”
“Indy, what’s the point? We don’t love you; I’m pretty sure we don’t even like you.”
“I don’t need you to like or love me. You just need to be my boyfriends. I want to be a hockey omega. I earned it. For fuck’s sake, I attended the games, I cheered, I learned all the stats, I know everything about you two. I was the perfect girlfriend.”
“We’re not a damn career path,” I snap out and punch the fridge. She doesn’t so much as flinch.
“You are to me. You never spend your money; you have it all set aside. I want that.” She almost purrs the words.
“You want money?”
“I want you to spend your money on me, showing me off on your arm in designer gowns at all the awards ceremonies, in front of all the cameras.”
“You’re out of your mind!” I roar at her.
“I’m going to give you a couple of hours to talk to Deacon about it. I’m not interested in a wannabe musician, so Raynor can date your foster sister if he is so inclined. He’s not in this deal; it’s just you, me, and Deac.”
My hands shake as she moves towards me. I can’t even stop her as she presses against me, leaning up and pressing her lips to my cheek. Her scent makes me gag.
I think I’m going to be sick.
“How do I know you aren’t lying?” I whisper.
Her long fake eyelashes lower onto her cheeks and then lift, revealing her toxic soul. She pulls out a thick orange envelope, drops it on the table, and steps away from me, swinging her hips. She turns back at the doorway and bites her bottom lip, looking me up and down.
“I look forward to making up with you, lover.”
I seethe as she leaves. As soon as I hear her car pull away from the driveway, I upend the envelope. With shaking hands, I turn over the photos and flick through them one at a time, and though they are all innocent, to outsiders, the evidence will be damning.
Vae looks like she’s always been our girlfriend. There are photos of her asleep in my arms, Deacon’s arms, on the couch, in our beds. A kiss on her forehead, on her lips. Nothing sinister, but it looks bad. And then there’s the way we look at her.
I stare at her with my heart in my eyes. How did I not realise how I felt? It’s in all of our eyes in every photo. Our devotion and our feelings were plain to see.
I turn the last photo over, and I find a photo of me entwined with Vae in her bed; the sheet covers our bottom halves, but our legs are out under the sheets, twisted together, and I’ve got my face buried in her throat.
I look like I’m fucking her, and she’s holding me tight, her knuckles white. How the fuck did Indy get this?
I lower my head and scream.
Indy was recording us the entire time. There’s no way we can recover. Our careers would be over. In a heartbeat, in a second. We’d never find another team to work with.
But worse, Vae would be absolutely raked over the coals. The court of public opinion would assassinate her character. It would be she who suffers, not us. She would be the one who our fans aimed their arrows at.
I can’t bear the thought.
For two hours, I sit with the photos, with all the evidence. In every single scenario, it comes back to one horrible truth.
There’s no other option.
We’re getting back together with Indy.
When Mal and Raynor get home, we talk it through. They scream and rage, and, in the end, the three of us sit around the table with white faces.
Deacon picks up his phone and calls Marilyn. He’s calm, his voice even as he explains everything that’s happened.
“We will fix this,” he promises.
I don’t hear what she says, but Deacon flinches. “If it comes to it, we will retire from the team rather than allow bad press to come out.”
I freeze.
Would I?
Fuck yes. Of course, I would.
Vae is the single most important thing in my world. I’m not going to lose her when I’ve just found her.
“Okay. Now,” Deacon looks at me, and his voice trembles with the depth of his rage, “we’re getting back together with Indy.”
I pause, feeling my whole world shatter and crash around me.
“How are we going to tell Vae?”
Deacon growls and shows me a text message. “Indy is taking our choice from us. Looks like we’re throwing a party.”
Raynor gets up, and the chair slams into the fridge and breaks.
“If you guys so much as touch her willingly, I will kill you both.”
He storms out of the house and disappears.
“Are you ready for this? We need to make Vae think her heat meant nothing. It’s going to hurt her. It’s going to hurt us to hurt her, but we have to protect her from this. We need time, Mal. We cannot let Indy know how much she means to us or what we just did.”
I nod my head, but I’m not. Not even a little bit. I don’t want this.
Deacon picks up his phone and calls Indy.
She picks up on the third ring.
“Have you decided to do the right thing?”
Deacon doesn’t smile. He doesn’t react. “We’re having a party tonight; do you want to come over?”