Chapter 32 Raynor
Raynor
PAST
I walk into the kitchen, turn on the music, grab Vae, and dance her around the small table.
She lets out a peel of laughter I haven’t heard in too long. She’s too serious, I need to see her smile.
“Make us a cake.”
“What?” she says as I pull us to a stop.
“Let’s live wildly. Let’s eat cake and dance and drink wine.”
“Raynor-” she tries to protest, but I swing her off her feet and dance her into Deacon’s room, only to throw us both on top of him.
“Get off!”
“We love you, Deacon!”
Mal takes a running leap, squishing us to the bed and making Deacon cry out.
We ate cake. Danced. Ate pizza for dinner and got drunk. Just the four of us.
I raise my glass close to midnight. “Rest in peace, Maria.”
“Rest in peace,” Vae says softly. She reaches out and holds my hand tight.
PRESENT
“Where’s Vae? She didn’t come home last night. Or this morning. Where is she?”
After the party, Vae had disappeared, but she’s supposed to be here for the game; she promised. She would never miss their games.
Chills steal up and down my spine. Something’s wrong.
Mal shrugs and refuses to look at me. He’s withdrawn into himself ever since Indy came on the scene.
The photos that went up on social media today of her wearing an enormous diamond ring sent Mal into a rage I haven’t seen since he was a kid.
He almost destroyed the workout room right up until the coach came in and glared at him.
He’d pulled it together, but the team is wary of him, cautious.
“She said she’d be here,” he says flatly. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t show up, I wouldn’t.”
I glance around, but I can’t see her in her usual seat. She’s nowhere. And that’s scaring me.
“She’s probably late.”
Deacon runs his fingers through his hair. “How are we going to fix this, because I’m all for murder?”
“We can’t murder her.”
“It would be so good.”
“No murder!” I bark, causing another couple of the team to look up, alarmed. “Look, I have to get going, I’ve got that gig today, but I will meet you guys at home, and we can sit down with Vae and see if we can figure out a plan of action to kick this bitch to the curb.”
They nod, but they’re distracted. I take the car and head to my gig. I arrive early and introduce myself to the hosts.
I go to the side and start playing.
The couple are exchanging vows. Normally, things like this are boring, but, for the first time, I’m watching, and I can see Vae standing up there smiling at us.
Possibilities I didn’t realise I had are unfolding before my eyes, and maybe it’s because of her that I play better and with more heart than I normally do.
When the vow renewal rolls to a close, the couple come up to me.
“Thank you,” I say before they can speak. “It was an honour to be here.”
“You made our day so special,” the woman says with tears in her eyes. She looks at the beta, and that expression softens.
When they look at each other, they are the only two in the entire world.
That’s what I want.
With Vae; the realization hits me hard in the gut. I want that with Vae.
“If you’ll excuse me, I need to get going.”
They barely notice me.
Driving home takes hours. Well, it feels like hours. But I pull up in the drive around ten pm and rush into the house. It’s empty, the kind of empty you can feel, but…
Wait…
Wasn’t there a painting here?
I walk around spotting slight differences in the house. There’s a bowl that used to hold fruit gone from the kitchen table. The little cat magnet that Deacon made for Vae when we were kids is gone from the fridge.
I get a sinking, terrible, horrible feeling.
I run so fast I fall over, scrambling at the floor to regain my feet. I reach her door and throw it open.
The room is empty.
All the furniture is gone.
Every trace of Vae removed. It doesn’t even smell like her anymore.
“Vae?”
I call her phone over and over and over because I don’t know where to look. My hands shake and tears blind me as I try to call again. I walk around the house, checking everywhere, cataloguing the changes, hoping I’ll wake the fuck up because Vae's gone.
Oh, God.
With my head reeling, I go to my room, her nest. I open the door, and it’s like my soul is ripped open.
The room is torn apart. All the material has been shredded, the bed’s been destroyed, all her nesting material is cut up and thrown on the floor, the pillows are in piles of fluff.
The water feature is shattered, and her glass-mirrored chandelier is in pieces.
Nothing remains of the peaceful nest we’d built together.
This is an omega done, walking away, never to return.
I look at the time and rush out onto the porch to wait for Deacon and Mal. They arrive and climb out of the car, but I’m already rushing over. I shove Mal back into the side of the car.
He reacts by shoving me back and then stops.
“Raynor, what’s wrong? I can feel you through the bond, but you didn’t pick up your phone,” he says in annoyance.
“She’s gone!”
“What? What do you mean?” Mal laughs. “Good riddance to her.”
“She’s gone! Mal, she’s just fucking gone!” I howl the words, I scream the words.
Mal stiffens, his panic filling the bond as strong as mine.
I’m screaming, but I can’t calm down. She’s an omega who has just had her heat, but she’s my omega. She’s mine.
Oh, no…Vae is our scent match. Of course, she is.
“She’s ours. She’s meant to be ours. All this time, and we never realised. She’s our scent match! And she’s gone,” I roar, I drop to my knees in the driveway, doubling over.
Mal pulls me up.
“Tell me!” he shouts. “Tell me.”
“SHE’S GONE! Everything is gone, and her nest. The nest. Oh, God. Oh, my God, what have we done?”
Deacon shoves me back, and I realise I’ve been yelling into Mal’s face, and he’s gone a dangerous shade of pale.
“Stop, and calm down. Now how do you know she’s gone?”
“All her stuff is gone and the nest…oh, God, the nest.” I whimper the words, but I don’t feel good.
I take a step and collapse to my knees.
Deacon stares at me for a long minute and then runs for the house. He goes room to room and finally stops in the kitchen. Mal drags me in and shoves me into a chair. It’s never seemed so empty as it does now.
“Fine. That’s just fine. Well played, Vae.”
“What the fuck do you mean? We fucked up,” Mal hisses.
“Yeah, we did. But that just means we’ve got time.”
“Time?” Mal asks.
Deacon nods. “Yes, time.”
“To what?” I explode. “She’s gone. Her phone’s off; her socials are gone. We don’t know where she is.”
“But,” Deacon says calmly, “we know our Vae. We can use this time to get rid of Indy for good. Show Vae we are the alphas for her and get everything back so we can live as the pack we should always have been.”
“We’re going to find her?” I clarify.
“Of course, we’re going to find her. Vae belongs to us. She’s our scent match and our family, and no one is breaking us apart.”
The relief has me staggering to the wall to hold myself up.
“What are we going to do about Indy?”
“I think we need to expose her for the person she really is,” Mal says with a deep, cold rage. “I have an idea.”
It’s amazing how many steps there are in a plan to ruin someone and get the love of your life back. Frustratingly many.
First things first, we needed to clean the house up and fix it. We spend three days patching holes and painting walls. Mal goes shopping with a couple of the guys from the team and comes home with all this soft stuff that an omega would like for nesting.
I move all my belongings into the spare room, and we turn my old room into a bedroom for Vae, one that has no other omega scents.
There’s one room that is also lacking in scents, and we’ve earmarked it for Vae’s nest.
The yard comes next. We weed it, clean it up, and paint the newly straightened white picket fence. Everything looks new when we finish.
“Would she even want to live here?” Mal asks.
“Vae loves this house. She won’t want to leave.”
“Speaking of leaving. I think I might have found her.” Mal pulls up a review of a brand new cake store.
“Neverland?”
“Yeah.”
I laugh. “She hasn’t given up on us.”
“How do you figure?” Deacon grumbles, peering over my shoulder.
“Because she called her dream Neverland,” Mal whispers in awe. “She hasn’t given up!”
I smile back at him, then take his phone so I can get a better look.
“They love her food, especially the healthy options. Oh, I knew she could do it!”
I am so proud of her. All I want to do is hug her and hear all about it. She’s liable to stab us in the head.
I pack our bags.
It’s time to move out.
We have a girlfriend to woo.