6. Saint
Chapter six
Saint
I pace in our bedroom and glance over as Crow snuggles into Hunter, completely unworried by my sudden anxiety.
I’m not wrong.
I’m seeing things we shouldn’t be seeing. This is not me being paranoid.
“She’s shooting heart eyes at us,” I snarl.
“Nah, man, she’s just grateful. We’re making her heat special, and she appreciates it. It’s nothing more,” Crow purrs and kisses Hunter’s chest.
The way they aren’t taking this seriously makes me want to scream.
“She is catching feelings. She is the ultimate case. You heard her. She left home for love.” I’m throwing my hands around, talking with my arms louder than I am with my words, but there is a thread of soul deep panic coming from the memory of how she looked at us, and I can’t understand why they aren’t taking this more seriously.
“So, she’s a romantic. But she knows what kind of alphas we are. She knows we aren’t the ones. We are a stop on the road. A stepping stone on the garden path,” Crow murmurs and then goes back to kissing a trail down Hunter’s chest.
I stalk away from them, let out a snarl, and spin back around, facing the bed, glaring at the silent Hunter in deep accusation. “And doesn’t it bother you that she smells that good? Dare I ask if either of you has noticed, how. Damn. Good. She. Smells?”
“Of course, it bothers us,” Hunter snaps, sitting up and narrowing his eyes on me. “It occurs to me she could very well be our omega. But we made an oath.”
I scoff. “She’s falling in love with us, you two numbskulls. She doesn’t know or realise we aren’t available, and the longer this goes on, the more dangerous it’s going to become. Bethany is an omega in heat. She is an emotional bomb waiting to go boom.”
Crow finally starts paying attention to me and brushes his hair back while he tracks my movements.
“And what happens if we explain it to her tomorrow, and she goes into her true heat? You know how dangerous omegas can be in their heats, we’ve all seen the reports on the news. Savage, unpredictable, merciless. No, I’m not risking either of you,” Crow says, and though it makes me feel warm inside, I can’t shake this feeling of wrongness.
I pace again, losing track of how many laps I do while I play over every moment.
“She smells so damn good,” I mutter. “Can’t keep our hands off her. We told her, didn’t we tell her?” I turn but find the other two asleep.
I let out a frustrated snarl, but I don’t want to wake them. With one last grumble, I leave the room. In the kitchen, I pull out the brandy and splash some into a glass. I walk through the silent house until I get to the backyard, which is really just an overgrown courtyard but one of my favourite places in the whole world.
I should be at peace, but it’s like something inside won’t let me. The frustration and drive to take that omega versus the memories that keep slamming into my skull, throwing image after image of pain from the past, are keeping me moving in a desperate drive to escape and stay.
It takes me a moment to spot her curled up on my swing chair. My head tells me to walk away, to leave her there, but I find myself walking over to her and sitting down beside her. Maybe if I face the beast I’m afraid of, I will steal away its power.
“Somewhere out there, my family is under the same stars that we’re under. And I hope they are as happy as I am. That’s all I can ask for,” she murmurs with a sigh. She hasn’t looked my way, and I take the time to really study her face.
Her voice is soft, thoughtful. I find myself captivated by the sound of her. She’s not the evil, love-obsessed villain I’m painting her to be. Not when she’s like this.
“Why not ring your dad, explain? Surely, they would forgive you?”
“And go home to a farm in the middle of nowhere where I wouldn’t have found my scent matches?” She shakes her head. “It would have been death by a thousand paper cuts.”
I sit back and shake my head. “Love is an overrated emotion that exists only as a construct to torment those who claim to have it.”
She whirls on me so fast she sets the swing moving.
“How can you say that when you have Hunter and Crow?”
“That’s different,” I say defensively. “It’s not love-”
“No, it’s not different at all. You have the love that people spent their entire lives dreaming about. Do you know how rare it is?”
“It’s a bond, its brotherhood, its-”
“Love. I can’t believe I’m hearing this. How can an alpha in love be telling me he doesn’t believe in love?”
“Love is something that people wield as an excuse to do cruel and unusual things. It is an excuse for unacceptable behaviour and ill deeds. In a society such as ours, if you say you did it out of love, you are forgiven or punished less. It’s obscene.”
She’s watching me intently, her expression shuttered. She seems older somehow, like a primordial goddess expressing her displeasure. “It’s the motivation that provides miracles, amazing strength, and acts so good they move the world. Love is why we do what we do. It drives all of us.”
I shake my head and chuckle. Obviously, there’s no arguing with her. “I just don’t understand how you can be where we found you and still believe.”
“How can I not? Everything was going wrong, and then an act of love saved me.”
Good grief, she is worse than I thought.
“That’s not love,” I argue without hesitation, feeling triumphant.
“You created that bar with love. Saint, you work with Crow and Hunter with love. You are secure in who you are, in your happiness, in your life, enough to rescue a poor omega down on her luck because your heart is open and strong, because you have so much love in your life. How is that not love, Alpha?”
I open my mouth, but I have nothing.
In the shadows behind us, I catch Hunter’s scent, but he quietly retreats, and I look up at the moon instead.
“My mother left me in a market. She told me to stay and walked away. The last thing she said to me was that she loved me.”
Bethany turns towards me and puts a hand on my knee. “I am so sorry. That is an awful, awful thing to do to a child.”
“How is that love?” I ask her, refusing to acknowledge the pity in her eyes.
She scrunches her face up, and then sighs. “My mother got my father to help her with IVF. When I was two, she drove me to the farm and left me with my dad. He never wanted kids. He had no intention of having a child of his own, especially since he had an omega. Sometimes, I think about my mother and what she was like, and I think she must have been struggling. Maybe things were so bad that this was the best option. Because I was dressed nicely. I had my favourite toy. It didn’t matter that she never rang the doorbell, and I had to wait until someone woke up before I was found. Whatever was going on inside her was worse. And she must have loved me in her own way.”
I stare at her, my heart contracting. She knows how I feel. She understands. But she sees it wrong. Love left us alone. Love abandoned us. Love is the weapon our mothers used as an excuse to leave us behind.
“I’ve seen people do some desperate, desperate things to save the people they love. Things that look cruel. I saw a woman lie to her son so he wouldn’t see her pass from the illness that was eating her. A mother killed the father of her child to protect the girl. A boy of thirteen smiled and told everyone he’d eaten because his family was starving. I could tell you a million stories. So sad. But a million stories that would disprove your love is just a construct theory.”
I slide my hand down over her fingers. “Love is simply what people label the deeds they do. It’s not real. It doesn’t exist.” How can she believe this?
“Yes, it does. It can heal. It can be glorious. My family had that love. My dad and his pack. They had that once in a lifetime connection. It’s selfless and kind. It’s sacrifice and raw.”
She looks up at the moon, and she is suddenly so beautiful. Her hair glows in the light, the white strands catching the moonbeams and turning to white fire. My chest clenches, and I look away, tensing, unwilling to accept the draw this omega has over me.
“Are you looking forward to this heat?” I ask instead.
“Yes, thanks to you guys. I am. I was terrified. What if I ended up with some bad alphas? What if I didn’t find anyone? So many what-ifs, but there you were, and here we are. I am saved.” She exhales and her smile fades. “It's almost perfect.”
I want to take that sadness from her face. I want the smile back, but I’m confused by my own reaction.
“What would make it perfect?”
“Bringing home a pack to meet my family. Showing them I was right. Seeing Kelly and Raider again. I would love to catch up with Locke, Lia, and Ryn, my cousins. You’d like Locke. He’s a famous musician. Have you heard of Derision?”
I blink at her. “Your cousin is The Locke Raines?”
She laughs. “Yeah. He’s pretty amazing. Ryn is better, though. I don’t know what happened to her. She was always so sad as a little girl, like she had the world on her shoulders. Lia is beautiful. She’s like a female version of Locke. Those two would get into so much trouble together.”
“You have a big family.”
She closes her eyes, and I can feel the pain in her. “I do. I have an amazing family. Kelly was so protective of all of us. Raider has a terrible temper, but he is the sweetest boy alive. Aunt Auggie hugs everyone who walks into the house. Uncle Charles is always laughing. Sol strums his guitar in the corner with a mystery smile, and my dad,” she stops, choking on tears. “My dad is the kind of man who learned how to sew so he could make me a dress. I never wanted for anything because of him. He loves me so much, they all do.”
“Go home, forget about love, scent matches, and all this nonsense.”
“I can’t, Saint. They have that love. The way you feel about Crow and Hunter. That love you deny exists. I can’t go back without it.”
“What if you never find it?”
She stands up, moving more fully into the moonlight, staring up at the moon with an anguished face. “Then I’ll never go home.”
“Why not?” I say, frustrated. I stand up and move until I’m right behind her.
“Because if I’d have gone home, if I’d talked to them just once…I wouldn’t have had the courage to leave the farm again, and I would never have found what I’m looking for.”
I wrap my arms around her, hating the loneliness in her. Wishing I could take it all away.
“I can go back home now, though,” she says so quietly, I’m not sure if I heard it or not.
I sit on the edge of the bed and watch the sunrise. Hunter is sitting up silently, staring at the wall opposite the bed, while Crow is curled up, glaring at a spot just to my left.
“So, we were wrong,” Crow says.
“You heard everything?” I ask.
“Yes, we heard everything.”
“She thinks she’s in love with us,” I accuse. “She thinks we’re going to go home to mummy and daddy and play happy pack families.”
“You can’t fall in love this fast,” Hunter whispers. “It's crazy. It’s been a day.”
Crow punches the pillow. “We made an oath. We only agreed to do this to help her through her heat.”
“And that is still an issue. But imagine just how in love she thinks she’s going to be after we knot her. I think we’ve really fucked up here,” I murmur, rubbing my hands with my face. Suddenly, I feel so tired, so old.
“It won’t be that bad,” Hunter protests. “We’ll talk to her, after the heat, when she’s safe, and we are.”
“She’s going to be expecting bonding bites, Hunter!” Crow says and sits up. “Fuck, why does every good deed turn out to bite us in the ass?”
“Bonding bites,” I murmur. I feel queasy and giddy at the same time, and I have to be honest that I’m starting to chub up a bit. The idea of marking that unmarred omega with my bond, my mark. Being the pack that owns her, feeling her inside us, the idea makes me sick with need. Or just sick. I’m obviously confused and sleep-deprived.
“So what are we doing, like, some kind of spare the bond type thing? Just not bite her, no matter what? What if we want to?” Hunter growls. “What if our instincts try to force us?”
“We are more than our instincts,” I say to them over my shoulder. “We can control ourselves.”
Crow grunts. “Sometimes we can control ourselves.”
I shake my head, instantly remembering when Crow’s designation hit, and he launched himself at Hunter and tried to bond him there and then. Fuck, it was funny. There he was, thin and outweighed by both me and Hunter, and chopping his damn teeth at us like a zombie.
To be fair, we were drunk when it happened, and a sharp blow to the stomach was enough to calm him down.
“She loves love. She believes in it. Bethany wants to take us home to her farm and introduce us to her family,” Crow whispers and shudders dramatically.
We all sit to digest that horrifying information.
“We aren’t the kinds of alphas you take home to your mother,” Hunter’s soft growl hurts, but I don’t know why. Do I want to be the kind of alpha an omega could proudly take home?
“Not her mother, but close enough,” I say absently. “Her dad will hate us. Most people do.”
I lay back in the bed and put my hand over my eyes as if I can block out everything that’s happened. “She’s really, really beautiful, though, and when she talks, I want to make her happy. I could almost believe in the fairy tale she’s spinning.”
Hunter grunts. “She’s our scent match, I’m sure of it. Our instincts are going to drive us to make her ours.”
“We have to resist,” Crow says quietly. “Love doesn’t exist like it does in those fairy tales. It will destroy everything. She will hate us, eventually. In time.”
I hate the bitterness in Crow’s voice, but our story is one of love and loss.
We grew up with only each other to depend on. Just us.
Everyone else who said they loved us let us down. Everyone else who said they loved us left. Love is pain and disappointment. It’s being left behind. It’s being beaten and starved. Love is agony and betrayal.
No, thanks. They can keep their love.
But then I think of the way her face shone in the moonlight and the desire in her expression. And I admit to myself that, in the darkest parts of me, I want to give her what makes her smile. I want to believe.
If that makes her happy and chases away the sorrow, I want to be the one to give it to her.
I sit up and head to the shower. I need to see her.
Maybe in the light of day, I can convince myself that I’m wrong and she’s not making impossible demands.