14. Roseland
Roseland
They look exactly like what they claim to be, but I don’t believe it for a second.
The guy adjusts his pack and whines to the female.
They are both alphas, but they are wearing suppressant patches and pretending to be betas.
It’s not an unheard-of thing; it’s just another part of the puzzle that doesn’t work.
“I just don’t know how we missed the road. You know what the wilderness needs?”
“What?” the female says with barely concealed impatience.
“Signs.”
She groans. “Adams, can you just shut up for five minutes? You are giving me a headache.”
They are supposed to be a newlywed couple, so why is she calling him Adams?
“Well, I mean, if there were signs, we wouldn’t have gotten lost. We would be sitting in our tent, naked, in a post-coital glow.”
“You glow. I get a kind of weak shimmer,” the female says. She scans the forest in a very paranoid manner.
“Sipping wine coolers and eating bougie cheese on fancy cardboard biscuits.”
“Now, that would get a glow.”
They continue with such inane conversation right out of the area. I linger, watching them.
“What do you think? Shall we kill them?”
I whirl, shoving Daega up against a tree.
“We don’t kill people,” I snarl, scanning the area to make sure he’s alone.
“You don’t.”
I lick my lips, trying not to be charmed and amused by this omega who has worked his way under my skin.
“Let’s wait and see.”
He breaks free of me and disappears.
“Pix! Damnit!”
I rush after the couple. Pix is already there, silently moving in a way I’ve never seen him move. I can’t deny that seeing him so confidently, so easily stalking them is unbearably hot.
I glare at him as I edge closer.
Pix opens the guy’s bag and steals what looks like a wallet. He disappears into the trees, and I rush in that direction, trying to find him.
He’s waiting for me, holding out a wallet. When I take it off him, I recognise it as police issue.
My blood turns to ice as I open it and find Special Agent Mariposa’s credentials.
“What’s wrong, Rose?”
“Interesting thing. I know Kathy Mariposa quite well, and this is not her.”
“Oh, really, well then. The question is who are they here for?” Pix whispers. “You, me, her, or them. Maybe all of us?”
I ignore him and rush after the couple, following at a distance. There are a few options for who they are after, but there are only two that concern me.
I need to find out which of the two it is.
Their car is hidden a couple of hundred feet off the property, but they don’t go to it, they go into the forest to a tent that’s set up.
I crouch and watch them long into the night. When they are asleep, I creep into their camp, steal their keys, then backtrack to the car and meticulously search it. The information packet is hidden in the seat. I pull the flash drive out, and use my torch to examine the two photos.
One of them is me.
Looks like they have finally caught up with me. I press my lips together, wondering what to do next.
I pocket the information and put everything back the way I found it before I go back to the camp. It takes me five minutes to put the keys back where I found them. Then I retreat to the tree line, chewing my lip and wondering what to do.
“Did you find what you needed?”
I hesitate before I hand the photo that isn’t of me to Pix. Instead, the horrific and traumatised blurry image of Merle stares out of it.
He shines a pen torch down on the photo, his lips press together.
“So, we’re not going to do anything?” he queries.
“There’s nothing to do. They won’t find us. They will leave.”
“They are after an omega who has been traumatised and is hiding. They aren’t going anywhere, Roseland, come on.”
I press my lips together, feeling sick. “If they go missing, we’ll bring down more; the forest will be flooded with people hunting her.”
That makes him stop. His dark eyes consider me in a way that makes me feel so very exposed.
I used to have conviction in right and wrong, now I have a stubborn resolve to hang on to this one reason for living. Keeping them safe.
Am I really sitting here discussing murder? Yes, to keep her safe. Yes, absolutely.
I look down at the photo that I can’t see in the dark.
Pix skates close to me, so close I can feel the heat of him pressed against my chest.
“You’re going to need to choose a side soon, Rosey. You can’t keep riding this crooked line of right and wrong. And you keep telling me the world is black and white, but there are a million shades of every colour in between. Be careful you don’t lose it all while you’re fighting to hold the line.”
I don’t tell him I already chose a side a long time ago or that I’m playing a precarious game that is so much bigger than they could imagine.
He fades into the trees and disappears. I feel it when he’s gone. It’s like an emptiness in the world.
For another few minutes, I stare at the tent, thinking about the fact that I could easily take care of this. I could make them disappear. But that would risk everything. Five minutes of peace could bring a lifetime of regret.
I shake my head, pushing the murderous temptation away and make my way back to the cabin. When I get there, I don’t go inside; I stand out in the moonlight.
They are changing me. Not twisting me up but pulling back curtains that I have had pulled across the parts of me I don’t want to face yet.
“Are you going to tell me how you know her?”
I sigh and cross to a stone bench and drop onto it. Sage wanders out of the dark and perches beside me, not leaving any space; no, his damn thick thigh is pressed to mine. His scent eases the tightness in my chest.
I want his presence to be distressing.
It’s never been distressing.
Not for one minute.
It’s been temptation itself.
“Is it not enough to ask you to trust me?”
He cocks his head to the side. “For me, yes. For the rest of them, well, they don’t know you like I know you, Aaron. So, give me something. How do you know her? How did she know you were stabbed?”
I snort a laugh and give in to the temptation, twisting until I’m facing him, and running my fingers through his hair until I’m cupping the base of his neck. “Isn’t it obvious? She was there.”
“How? Where? When? Why didn’t you tell me you almost died?”
I press my cheek to his.
“Don’t show me your eyes; they make me weak,” I whisper. I clear my throat and speak louder. “I didn’t tell you because you didn’t need to know. I was alive. About a year ago is when it happened. I saved her.”
I stop talking, falling into the memory, the shock and horror of finding her there. How I’d screamed inside.
“He came out of nowhere. We fought. I told her to run. I was dumb and got stabbed, she ran. It’s all very simple.”
“Except where has she been for the last year? How did no one know you were injured?”
“Daega knew. He stayed at the hospital with me, threatening anyone who looked at me the wrong way.”
Sage is quiet, then he pulls back so he can see my face.
“Okay, so you think that what happened to her-”
“Was the worst of the worst? Yes. I don’t know how bad it is, but it’s bad enough to destroy her psyche, to shatter her inner walls.
Look at her. Have you seen anyone that traumatised before?
Merle will never be able to accept us, Sage.
She can’t be a normal omega. She needs to be safe and away from the violence that we live with. ”
Sage blows out his cheeks. “I think we’re exactly what she needs.” He gets up and slaps a hand on my shoulder. “Come have dinner. I kept a plate warm for you.”
I stare up at him. Has anyone ever kept a plate warm for me? Has anyone cared where I was?
I feel like I’ve been fighting for a thousand years, I’m tired, and so, I don’t resist his siren’s call. He leads me inside and down into the bunker. In the kitchen, he hums a happy little ditty as he warms up my food before setting it and a glass of wine in front of me.
He sits down and rests his chin in one hand while he watches me.
“You’re not sleeping.”
I pause in my chewing before reluctantly shaking my head. “Spying on me now, Sage? I’m fine.”
“You look exhausted, Aaron. You need to take care of yourself.”
“I’m fine. You worry about keeping the zoo under control.”
Sage smiles faintly. “I’m going to need your help.”
“You’ll be fine without me.”
Sage closes his eyes, and he looks like he’s in so much pain that it hurts me. “When are you leaving?”
“In the morning. I’m going to get those agents out of here. As soon as we’re gone, go somewhere else for a while. I won’t tell anyone. I’ll just disappear.”
“Eat your food, Aaron,” Sage says wearily.
I stab the tortellini and look up at him, assessing his skill. He’s more capable than anyone I know. I might not trust his motives with me, but in this, I know there’s no one else I’d trust more to keep her safe.
Them safe.
I eat my food and go back to my room without another word. I need to pack.
It’s only just dawn when I get to their campsite.
“Shit!” I hiss.
The camp is destroyed; the tent is in shreds, but it’s clear as day to see the bodies that have been mutilated inside.
I take in all the details, looking for anything that could give away who did this.
I take a step back, then whirl and run back to the cabin. We don’t have long to fix this. Thirty minutes later, I stand in the exact same spot with Blaze, Sage, Rolly, and Pix.
“Not my style,” Blaze says. “I don’t blitz.”
“Me either,” Sage murmurs.
My eyes bulge as they just openly admit to what they are. It’s one thing to know it; it’s another thing to hear it.
“It’s not my MO either,” Pix says.
Rolly creeps through the wreckage. “It has a beautiful savagery to it. Like, really stunning. The anger in this person…they are a hunter. They had to have laid in wait to kill the male, over here.”
Rolly’s absolute infatuation with the scene only proves it’s not his handiwork either.
“I have three questions,” I say out loud. Blaze and Sage turn to look at me, not at all interested in the kill site.
“Yes?”
“Who did it? What were they after? Is she safe?”
The last question hits Blaze hard. He stops being so smugly amused and starts looking at the murders with the eyes of a predator.
“There’s no scent,” Pix murmurs as he crouches in front of the remains of the fire. “Someone using patches? How is there no scent?”
“Another interesting thing is the overkill,” Rolly whispers. “It’s so pretty.”
“Was it personal?” Sage asks me.
“No, there are no trophies taken; the bodies weren’t staged. I think this is just an outlet,” Blaze murmurs.
“A really, really aggressive outlet,” Pix says as he pulls the tent apart, letting us see the massacre that has happened inside.
“Right, enough about who did it. The problem is getting rid of it,” Sage says.
Pix hums. “I’m going to take their phones and the car for a drive. I’ll be back in a few days.”
“I’ll go with you!” I say quickly.
“No,” Blaze says quietly. “With this happening on our doorstep, we all need to quietly walk away for a moment, and I know the place to go.”
“Oh, and where is that?” I snarl suspiciously.
Sage smiles. “Am I calling my little cousin?”
“Yes, see if Bonnie will take us out to explore her little mountains. We’re going to do some family bonding.”
I stare at the pair of them like they are crazy because they are clearly insane. Certifiable. Two packs of serial killers walked into a forest…not a joke I want to hear the ending to.
Pix shakes his head. “This is not going to go the way you want it to go.”
They ignore him.
Rolly grabs the ankle of the male agent and drags him back towards the camp. “Go get the car; there’s a spot I found that we can dump them. No one will ever find them.”
Pix jogs off, and I watch as these alphas who are all killers erase the trained killers off the face of the Earth.
Within three hours, there isn’t a speck of blood, a scrap of a shoe, no sign at all that anything happened in the clearing.
I find myself impressed and slightly terrified by how efficient they are and how well they work together.
“Relax, Roseland,” Blaze says to me with a smile that makes me feel like stepping back. “You’re one of us.”
“That is not comforting at all.”
He smiles wider. “Isn’t it?”
I just stare at him as he laughs and leads the way back to the bunker.