Chapter 27 Ben
Chapter twenty-seven
Ben
Trey’s and Bertram’s house was on fire.
When I woke with the certainty that something was wrong at Trey’s, I hadn’t known what. I just knew that it was bad.
Seeing Trey’s house engulfed in flames, windows exploding, and huge pieces of timber falling to the ground, thick, black smoke pouring into the open air, I was physically sick. As soon as I got the car door open, I staggered a few feet and threw up on the cold ground.
Colt had called the fire department the moment we saw the glow, and the dispatcher had told him trucks had already been sent out. We stood helplessly, watching the destruction as sirens filled the night, growing louder until we could see the lights of the big trucks approaching.
Neighbors stood in their yards watching in horror.
“Let’s have a look around back. Ben, stay here,” Angus said.
“Be careful!” I yelled at the three alphas. Shaking, I stood, transfixed, until a shout pulled me out of my shock and I turned. When I saw Trey hurrying toward me with the baby in his arms, I almost collapsed in relief.
“Are you okay?” I asked, grabbing him by the shoulders. Bertie was screaming, his little face red and arms flailing. He wore only his one-piece sleeper, and Trey was in a T-shirt and thin pajama pants. They must have had to jump out of their beds and leave the house without anything.
Trey nodded, then fell into a fit of coughing.
Shrugging out of my jacket, I helped him put it on, then zipped Bertie into it with him. Almost immediately, the baby’s sobs quieted and he started sucking on his tiny hand.
“How did you know?” Trey asked, watching the fire trucks pulling into the yard with an ambulance close behind.
“I had a bad feeling. Where’s Bert?”
“With the neighbor. Around back, I think.” Trey looked worriedly that way. “I hope they’re okay.”
When a couple of paramedics approached, I told them Trey had been in the house, and they took him and Bertie to the ambulance to be checked out. The blaze was out of control. Firefighters dragging hoses directed them at the flames, but the damage had been done.
Cold and scared, I went to sit with Trey to wait, sending a quick text to David that there was a fire but everyone was safe.
Eventually, Angus, Maddox, and Colt returned with Bert. Under the onslaught of the huge fire hoses, the house was smoldering, smoke billowing into the sky. I was dismayed to see there was barely anything left of the foundation.
Bertram, Trey, and the baby all received oxygen, as they had breathed in a lot of smoke before escaping the house. Bertram had a bad burn on his arm that a paramedic treated.
“Follow us back to our house,” Angus told them when the ambulance and fire trucks began to pull out. “We’ve got plenty of room for you.”
“The neighbors offered to put us up tonight,” Bert said, tone unsure.
“Well, I’m offering to put you up for a lot longer than that. Come on.”
“Thanks, Angus,” Bert mumbled, clearly overcome.
“No thanks needed when I know you’d do the same for me. Now, let’s get going; it’s cold. Ben, where’s your jacket? Oh.” He saw that I’d given it to Trey to wear and slipped out of his own. “Put this on.”
“I’ll ride with them,” I told Angus when I got the jacket zipped. “I want to be with Trey.”
Obviously agitated by all that had happened, Angus didn’t look happy about that, but he didn’t say anything.
Climbing into the backseat of their Range Rover, I waited for Trey to get situated beside me with the baby, who was asleep against Trey’s chest, still inside my coat.
I pulled my phone out to text David we were coming so he could get one of the guest rooms ready for them and was surprised to see that he’d texted me.
David: All the omegas from the Borders’ are here. They showed up at the door with Laura. Elliott woke them up freaking out about Trey.
As I stared out into the dark night, I wondered how Elliott could have possibly known what was going on. Did the omegas have a police scanner in their quarters?
David met us at the door and immediately pulled Trey into his arms.
“Careful of Bertie,” Trey said.
“I thought you said the omegas were here?” I asked.
“When I told them what your text said, Laura took them home.” David looked at Trey. “Come on, I’ve put the portable crib in the guest room for him. Then we’ll get you cleaned up.”
I followed them down the hall.
In the light of the room, I could see that Trey’s face and hands were covered in a dusting of black soot.
“I’ll get him a pair of my pajamas,” I said, and ran back to my room to find some. When I returned, I passed through the kitchen where our alphas were having coffee and talking. I helped Trey change into my pajamas and then David and I lay down with him on the bed.
I slept an hour or so but woke up wanting all the pillows on my bed around me.
Slipping out of the room, I walked the shortest way to our wing, which was through the kitchen.
The house was quiet, and when I looked out the window, I saw the sun hadn’t risen yet.
I was willing to bet that Colt, Angus, and Maddox hadn’t gone to bed at all and were already out doing the morning feeds.
As Bertram hadn’t been in the room when I woke up, I was sure he was helping them.
Realizing it was useless to get back in bed for only an hour or two, I decided to make breakfast.
As I was cracking eggs into a pan, David joined me, yawning.
“You can sleep in,” I said.
David shook his head. “I can’t sleep well.” He turned on the oven and began buttering bread for toast. “How did you know they were in danger?” he asked me. “And how did Elliott know?”
“I can’t speak for Elliott, but I just woke up suddenly sure that something was wrong and knowing it was about Trey.” I shrugged. “I don’t know anything more than that.” I was anxious to talk to Elliott, though.
David and I stuck close to Trey all day. When the news got around that he and Bertram had lost their house in a fire and were staying with us, neighbors came to see them, bringing clothes and essentials.
Angus, Maddox, and Colt insisted that Bert, Trey, and the baby stay at our house as long as they needed to, which we all knew would be through the winter. It was too late in the year to do anything about the house.
In fact, it was flurrying by late afternoon when Laura pulled her Honda Pilot in front of the house. All seven omegas tumbled out and, when we opened the front door, they hurried in to hug Trey.
“We wanted to come earlier, but Laura wouldn’t let us,” Ren said.
“Well, excuse the animals for having to eat and be cared for,” Laura said teasingly.
“We wanted to see you,” Riku said to Trey. “We did our chores as fast as we could.”
“Thanks for coming,” Trey said, blushing almost as red as his hair.
When Colt came in from the mudroom, he stood surveying the ten of us piled up on the couch together.
“You could spread out a little,” he said.
I shook my head. “No. We need to be touching like this.” I didn’t know why, only that it was true. When I looked at the others, they all nodded.
Looking at Laura, who was seated in a chair scrolling through her phone, he raised a brow. “Omega bonding?”
Laura nodded.
“I just wish Jackson was here,” Trey said. “It’s like we’re incomplete.”
“I feel that way, too,” David said.
“I feel that way and have only met him on the phone,” Keane put in.
I wanted to ask Elliott about his experience last night, but something held me back.
I waited until a couple of hours later when everyone had broken off into groups, Ren and Riku with David and Trey in the nursery, Camp and Zeke playing a game of Scrabble by the fire with Maddox and Angus, and Colt and Laura going through a couple of books with Keane and Solomon.
“Elliott, come in my room a minute,” I said. He followed me, and when we got in there, I invited him to sit on the bed with me.
“David said you came over last night with the others because you felt something was wrong. Tell me about it.”
Elliott chewed on the edge of his bottom lip a moment before answering. Glancing at the door, as though to make sure no one was listening, he said, “I sometimes sense when something is wrong.”
“You do?” I asked.
Elliott nodded. “It’s happened a few times. It happened the night I was kidnapped, but I didn’t understand what it meant and was too late to do anything about it.” He looked down at his hands. “If I had, I might have been able to save my father.”
Sadness broke over me. “I’m sorry. I heard about that.”
“What did you hear?” he asked, looking up.
I hesitated. “That they killed your families.”
“They killed my alpha father, but not my omega father. I don’t know what they did with him.”
That was a different kind of hell. Poor Elliott.
After a moment, he said, “David told us you guys went over to Trey’s last night because you also thought something was wrong. What did he mean?”
“Same as you, I guess,” I said. “I just woke up and knew.”
“Had that ever happened before?”
I thought about it. “Not waking up like that, but one time I told Gleesa—that’s the beta woman David, Jackson, and I lived with growing up—that she needed to check the electrical socket.
It looked fine from the outside, but it turned out there was a wiring problem that would have started a fire if she hadn’t gotten it fixed.
I wouldn’t have blamed her if she hadn’t listened to me—I was just a kid, and because we were unregistered omegas hiding out there, she had to put us all in the attic while the electrician was there.
Other than that, I can’t think of anything.
Well, wait.” I remembered something. “When I was on the run, I was getting ready to go to sleep under a bunch of papers in an alleyway when I had this sudden feeling that I needed to get out of there. I had barely turned the corner when I heard police sirens.”
I’d never thought anything of those two incidents, but in light of what happened the night before, they seemed meaningful.