6. Archer
Archer
W hat in the world is that noise? I check the clock on my desk and see it’s almost three in the morning. Usually, it isn’t this goddamn loud this late at night.
I get up from my desk, leaving the paperwork I was working on, and head into the hall, following the noise down to Chase’s room.
“What the fuck’re you doing man?” Chase yawns, scrubbing a hand down his face to wake himself up.
I turn in surprise to see Madden in Chase’s walk-in closet, digging through messy piles of clothing.
“I’m looking for women’s clothing and I know you have some,” Madden says. “Go back to sleep if you’re not gonna be helpful.”
“You know I have women’s clothing, huh? Are you trying to say I’m hiding a secret drag queen hobby or something?” Chase teases.
Well, this definitely wasn’t what I was expecting when I heard all the noise going on.
“Fucking hell, Chase, why the fuck is this the only shit you have!” Madden growls, pulling out a handful of thin scraps of lace .
“You know why,” Chase yawns, rolling over. “The women that leave them aren’t the type to wear granny panties. Sorry to disappoint.”
“Do you care to explain why you’re looking for women’s clothing?” I ask, leaning against the doorframe.
Madden’s lips purse as if he’s trying to figure out what to tell me.
“We found an omega,” Kane says from behind me. “We think she’s our scent match.”
“Holy shit, no way!” Chase says, sitting up in his bed, all the remaining sleepiness in his expression gone.
“What do you mean by think?” I ask, cautious, considering the intense looks on Madden and Kane’s face.
“She’s obviously been through some shit, she’s hurt and stuff,” Madden mumbles. “But Kane asked her if she felt the connection between us and she said she didn’t know what we were talking about.”
I don’t miss the way Madden’s expression crumbles at that and my heart fucking breaks for him. He hasn’t gotten drunk in a while, but the last time he did, he confessed to dreaming about meeting our scent match omega and her loving him just like she would love the rest of us.
Anger starts rising up my chest at the thought of this omega fighting her biology.
What omega would be stupid enough to do that?
Finding a scent match is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Not even the higher class families that make sure to marry for power would deny a scent match, but this omega would?
“Wait, where did you find this omega?” Chase asks.
“She was in one of the industrial train cars of this most recent shipment,” Kane answers with a deep sigh before running a hand through his beard.
“You’re being serious?” Chase asks. “But it’s fucking freezing outside! You found her in a train car?”
“Yeah,” Madden says, shuffling his weight from side to side and staring at his feet, a tiny scrap of lace still clenched in his fist. “She’s in my room right now. We thought we could have someone come here and see her.”
“I’ll call my sister,” Chase says, rolling over and grabbing his phone from the nightstand.
His sister is a doctor. She’s also an omega that specializes in treating omegas, the only omega doctor in the entire city.
I can see why Kane and Madden thought it would be a good idea to bring her here, but still.
We rarely ever have omegas over to our house.
Even Chase, who’s the most active out of the four of us, always fucks them in his car or at their places.
I turn and head down the hall towards Madden’s room. If the omega who is denying our scent match is going to be in our house, I need to see what she’s like. My mind flashes to all the other omegas I’ve met at my father’s galas and I wince.
“Where’re you going!” Madden says, chasing after me.
“To meet the omega you guys have brought into our home.”
“Wait! She—She doesn’t—just calm down first, man!”
I don’t listen.
I need to set expectations for her. I’m not going to send her out into the cold, but I don’t know her plans.
And all the omegas I’ve met always have plans, most of them having to do with my pack falling apart for their benefit.
And if she’s truly our scent match, she has more power than any of the other omegas that have tried to tear us apart.
When I open Madden’s bedroom door, the first thing that hits me is this omega’s scent. Her perfume is like peppermint candy, flowing into my lungs and hitting me like a drug. It’s just as sweet as I’ve always imagined.
No. It’s sweeter.
Like a lot of other alphas out there, I’ve also dreamt of what meeting my scent match would be like. But I’m more than aware that fairytale-like dreams are just that: fairytales.
And as I finally shake myself out of the haze her perfume has put me in, I can see that the reality of meeting my pack’s scent match is as far from fantasy as possible.
The little omega is stripped bare. Her pretty pink pussy and her skin as pale as the snow are all on display as she lays on Madden’s bed, ass up, presenting herself to us.
“What the fuck is going on here,” I growl. What is this omega thinking, presenting herself to us when she doesn’t want to acknowledge the scent match between all of us?
I’m a fucking bastard because I can’t tear my eyes away from her.
Disgust hits me when I see that her pale skin is mottled with bruises.
There’s even what looks like a distinct bootprint on her side.
A growl rises in my chest at the thought of someone stomping on this omega in front of me hard enough to leave a bootprint.
Whoever the fuck did that to her will need to count their days, because the moment any one of us finds them, they’ll be six feet below the fucking ground.
Her sweet peppermint perfume twists in the air, turning acrid and bitter, her fear obvious.
“Holy fuck,” Madden hisses under his breath from behind me. He seems to be just as frozen as I am.
She shifts from her position, trembling in terror as she slides to the floor, turning to face the doorway.
She still takes up a ridiculous position, her knees still spread and her hands crossed behind her back.
I see even more of the bruises on her body, along with the bloody scrapes all along her legs.
“I—I—I’m sorry alpha,” she says, her golden hair hanging over her face like a curtain. “Wh—what did I do wrong? I—I promise I’ll do better.”
Holy shit. What the fuck has happened to this omega?
Madden finally moves from where he was frozen, pushing past me. “Fucking hell, you—you didn’t do anything wrong, I was just trying to find you some clothes,” he tells her, his voice strained with this horrified desperation .
Her gaze darts to the red lacy thong Madden still has clutched in his fists because he’s a goddamn idiot and she nods in understanding.
“Fuck, no—this—it’s not what it looks like.” He tosses the underwear out into the hallway and scrubs a hand down his face.
“Whoa, flying panties,” Chase says, turning the corner. “I called my sister, she’ll be here as soon as she?—”
He freezes in his tracks the moment he sees and scents the omega kneeling at the foot of Madden’s bed.
“Holy shit,” he whispers.
Holy shit is right.
She seems to stiffen even more at the sight of Chase. God, this is a complete shit show.