30. Bennett
Bennett
S omething was wrong. I could tell from the moment that I woke up. I was usually the first to rise in this house and when I made my way down the stairs to the kitchen, Sidney was everywhere .
Her scent was so strong that it nearly brought me to my knees.
It was laced in the cloying sweetness of an omega in heat.
“Sidney, where are you?” I demanded, walking around and calling out her name.
When she didn’t answer, I ran up the stairs, pushing open her door to find her bed empty, her covers were twisted in a weird way like she had been thrashing about her bed all night.
There was a damp night shirt thrown on the floor.
The worst part was that when I looked around half of her things were gone.
I didn’t bother to be subtle as I ran down the hall, slamming my hand on the others’ doors.
All three of them stumbled out, Maverick the grumpiest of all.
“What the fuck, Bennett?” he demanded. Then his hazel eyes widened as he breathed in deep. His hand slammed against his chest, digging his fingers in as he breathed in the scent that had now crept up the stairs. Our entire house smelled like our omega.
And she was gone.
Sidney was in heat and she ran.
“Where is she?” he demanded. They knew from my reaction that she was gone, that something was off.
“Gone,” I said. “She packed some of her stuff and left.”
Taylor let out a whimper that shattered my heart. I reached out just as he started to collapse, pulling him to me and crushing him in a hug.
“We’re going to find her. I promise. Stay strong for me.”
He nodded against me, a small sob escaping.
“We’re going to go search downstairs to see if she left anything,” Leo said, grabbing Maverick to spur him into action. They headed down, giving me a moment with my shattered omega.
I swiped the tears trailing down Taylor’s cheeks. His blue eyes were shining even brighter with the moisture.
“Baby, listen to me. I’m going to find her. Do you trust me?”
“I do. But she…” he trailed off.
We’d all seen it. The random moments where Sidney had second guessed herself. She doubted us over and over again thanks to the demons of her past.
I thought we’d made a breakthrough, that things were settling after Taylor’s playful night with the Nerf guns.
Leo told us how great their date went yesterday. Sure, he didn’t tell us the details, but it was clear that they’d had sex and had solidified their relationship.
Yet, now here she was running.
What happened between us going to bed and then waking up to find her gone?
“Avery, we have to call Avery,” he said. “Maybe she ran there.”
“I guarantee she didn’t run to another pack while in heat, but let’s call her still. Maybe she has an idea.”
I ran into Maverick’s room, not bothering to ask before I searched out his phone. Pulling the charger from it, I pulled up his contact list, finding his sister and making the call. I put it on speaker so Taylor could hear too.
“Maverick, what’s wrong?” There was something in Avery’s voice, a tightness that told me she knew something was going on.
“Avery, this is Bennett.”
“One of the alphas… and if you’re calling me from Maverick’s phone,” she said with a sigh, the rest going unsaid.
“Do you know where she is?”
We were talking in vague half answers but she knew what I was talking about already and that did not settle my nerves at all.
“Don’t give up on her,” she begged. “Sidney’s been through a lot and she’s hurting.”
“What do you know?” Taylor begged. “Please tell me, Avery. I have to find her. She’s in heat. I can scent her, it’s everywhere here. She’s ours.”
Avery gasped on the other end of the line.
“Oh my god, no,” she groaned. “She’s not here and I don’t think she’d go back to the ranch. I’ll send Mason over there to check anyway, we’re closer.”
Avery yelled out to her pack, footsteps thundering in the background before she was barking out orders.
“I’ll call you back as soon as I know anything. I’m going to call Mama and anybody else I can get a hold of. We’ll find her. Just make sure you’re there for her when we do.”
“That’s all we want,” I promised.
“She had a dream last night,” Avery admitted. “She called me a few hours ago. It was one she has from time to time. It’s from the night her mom left. It plays over and over again in vivid detail. The rejection and her leaving. She said this one was different, though.”
I closed my eyes in defeat, knowing exactly what this dream entailed if she ran.
“What was different about this one?” I managed to choke out.
“You guys were there telling her that you didn’t want her. It was pretty much every insecurity she had, thrown right back in her face. I told her that it wasn’t true, that it was bullshit. I thought I’d talked her down. I even made her promise me she wouldn’t fucking run.”
“She ran anyway,” I said, my voice full of defeat. How could we keep her if she wouldn’t stay?
“She’s stubborn,” Avery said, pain in her voice. “I can’t imagine having a parent tell you that they don’t love you enough to stay and then another parent who couldn’t even give you a hug when you needed it. We tried our best to make her understand that not everyone was like that. We gave her what support we could.”
Avery trailed off and I knew where she was coming from. We had given her the same reassurances and it didn’t seem to matter.
“It doesn’t matter now anyway, we have to find her. I’m going to make some calls.”
“So are we. Let us know if you hear anything,” I said before ending the call.
I didn’t bother to drop Maverick’s phone back in his room, taking it with me as I put my hand in Taylor’s and pulled him down the stairs with me.
Maverick was pacing back and forth his hands gripping his hair so hard I was surprised it wasn’t coming out.
Leo looked stunned and hurt. My chest ached for him. All of us, really.
There was nothing like the high of a connection like theirs and then the low of realizing she’d walked away the night after.
“Fuck,” I cursed. “This is a disaster.”
Taylor let them know everything that we talked about with Avery.
Maverick was already moving, shoving his feet in his old work boots that were by the door and snatching his keys.
“I’m going to drive around, see what I can find.”
“Wait, I’m coming,” Leo said, running out after him, not bothering with shoes at all.
Taylor started to move, but I held him back.
“We have to be here in case she comes back. I know you want to go but we need to be able to leave at a moment’s notice. We’ll call around and keep in contact. And if she happens to come home, we’ll be here for her.”
It wasn’t just the fact that I was just afraid of losing Sidney that ate at me. It was the fact that there was an omega in heat out there somewhere, trying to get away from us. She was in danger.
We weren’t the alphas of old that would go into a rut, and Rockwood Valley was thankfully a small town, but an omega in heat was a vulnerable state.
Not every alpha could be trusted.
My chest tightened at the thought. I had to fight to keep from throwing up. I never wanted something like this to happen. I just wish she would have trusted us.
“If she would have just waited, I have a feeling she would have scented us,” Taylor said, his voice shaky and broken. I pulled my omega into my lap as I sat down on the couch, holding him close.
“I’m going to call my mom.”
It was still early, the sun barely peeking up over the horizon, but he didn’t hesitate to dial. I sat him on the cushion next to me.
I ran upstairs for my phone to give him a moment. He didn’t protest when I came back, shifting him back on top of my lap as he talked to his mom.
His sobs were breaking my heart even further.
“I don’t know where she is, Mom. She’s not here and she’s in heat and I’m worried.”
“I’ll call Uncle Grady. He always works the early shift. He’s already going to be up, sweetie. We’re going to find your omega, I promise. Hang in there, sweetheart. I love you.”
She hung up abruptly before he could say it back. He let out another soft sob before dialing Sidney’s number for the twelfth time.
Of course, there was no answer, but he left another voicemail.
“Call us, Sidney. I need to know you’re safe,” I tacked on before he ended the voicemail.
We both sat in silence for a second. My body ached with tension and despair. I knew my scent had to be just as burnt around the edges as my omega’s.
Was she ever truly going to trust us if her scent didn’t fully come in? I knew since that first time I slept with Sidney that she was mine. If she would stop to think about it, and put her demons to rest, she would realize that we were hers, too.
Fuck, this hurt.
It felt like an empty promise every time I reassured Taylor that we’d find her, when I wasn’t so positive myself anymore.
Sidney had thrown a wrench in every plan I had and then Taylor joined the mix. I embraced the chaos for them, ready to adjust everything I was to include them and our pack.
“I swear when I get my hands on that omega, I’m going to spank her ass until she remembers that we’re not going anywhere.”
“Oh, that would help,” Taylor sassed.
It was a lot better to hear him joking, than crying. Sidney had hurt us all, even if she didn’t intend to.
She had done to us exactly what she was afraid that we would do to her, and it didn’t feel good.
Despite Avery’s fears I knew none of us would hold it against her, but that didn’t mean we wouldn’t have to work through it when her heat was over.
Maverick’s phone rang and I snatched it from the table. Avery’s name was on the screen and I answered quickly.
“We found her, Bennett, but I don’t think you’re going to like what I have to say.”