20. Candice
Chapter 20
T he trip to the store was uneventful. It was kind of strange, we got all the stuff we needed for pizza, then Jacks suggested hitting the ice cream aisle to make a sundae bar to go with the pizza bar. But every time we would go to a different area, it would clear out. Nobody got close enough that they would be able to smell my omega scent, and with Jacks behind me, I always feel safe.
Shit, Jacks is like walking Prozac.
Hell, they all are. Every time I’m around one of the pack, I just feel my whole body unwind. All the tension, the anxiety, the panic, all slowly draining away like someone pulled a plug. I still worry a lot, about pretty much everything, but I haven’t had an actual panic attack since the vet's office. And even though it was only for a few hours earlier today, I can’t remember ever sleeping that well.
“So, are we going back to the pack house, or my place?” I look at Jacks. “I worry about leaving Iggy alone too long; she’s used to having someone around the house, and with Sunny gone…”
I trail off, words unsaid. Thankfully he knows about Sunny.
“What would make you most comfortable? I know we have more space at our place, but we already had breakfast there.” He brushes my hair back to rub his face against my forehead. I lean into him, while trying to do a pros and cons list in my head, but honestly, I am stumped. I want to go back to the pack house and sleep in the big cozy bed again with all of them. It felt so good to wake up surrounded by my alphas.
They can't be my alphas, not yet. We still need to talk.
“I want to come back to the pack house, but I feel really bad leaving Iggy alone anymore. I feel like a bad pet parent right now.”
He wraps me in his arms, pulling me close and resting his cheek on my head. “Don’t worry Little Lion, we can start bringing Iggy to the house soon. We want you to come stay with us, permanently. But we need to talk before then, you need to understand what you are getting into with us… me …before you agree to anything. I wish we had talked before you and Gabe–this morning.” He lets out a long sigh, still holding me close, and while his words do worry me, I have a hard time panicking with his arms around me, and my face pressed against his warm chest .
He pulls away and bundles me into the Jeep, and one coin toss later we’re headed to the pack house. Jacks asks me if I want to set Iggy’s home away from home up in my nest away from nest or somewhere else, but then we both agree that having an iguana watch us all having sex might be awkward.
We go back to the house, and put up the ice cream. We’re chopping veggies for pizza toppings when the truck pulls up with the rest of the pack–home from work. They all give me sidelong looks during dinner, but the pizza bar goes over really well, as does the ice-cream, and soon I am cuddled on the couch in Jacks’ lap, facing a frazzled looking Gabe across the coffee table. “Candice, we need to talk.”
Has any conversation ever gone well that started that way?
Yeah, I didn’t think so either.
I tense up and Jacks’ arms tighten around me. I don’t know if he knows what the hell is going on with his packmates either, but the worried looks they keep exchanging have me on edge even before those cursed words leave his mouth.
“What the fuck man, why would you even say it that way?” Xan is glaring at his pack lead.
Gabe looks confused for a moment. Before his eyes widen. “No, shit…about your car, we need to talk about your car. Fuck. Sorry. Candice, we pulled it into the garage today, it looks like somebody was actually trying to damage the axle. This wasn’t a hit-a-big-rock or an armadillo sort of situation.”
“No, you asked me if I hit something, I told you I hadn’t…you didn’t believe me? ”
Gabe stutters, clearly not ready to make it worse, but thankfully Xan is there. “Normally, if someone has a damaged axle, they run over something. They don’t always remember, but the car starts to wobble the worse the damage gets. Candice, I don’t know how you could not have noticed, just between your house and the clinic. It’s really bad. It looks like someone took a hammer to it. I mean, it's seriously beat to shit. I’m…well, we’re worried. Someone slashed your tires, and now this. We're worried somebody is trying to hurt you.”
The air leaks out of my lungs as Jacks’ grip grows tighter. Gabe leans forward, arms over his thighs.
“We really do need to talk. We’re worried about you staying at home alone, but we also can’t force you to stay here. We want to get to know you better, and to go at your own pace, but we also want to go with you to the police department and file a report on this. It goes beyond just vandalism…and someone would have had to have a lot more time and access to your car—more than it took to slash your tires.”
The sundae I had earlier curdles in my stomach. Why would someone do this to me? Nobody knows me. I’ve worked hard to make sure nobody knows me online. Plus I’ve only met my grouchy old neighbor, Mr. Sheldon, a couple times while I was out walking Iggy as he watered his flowers. I don’t talk to people, so who could be upset enough with me to do something like this?
I don’t realize I’m shaking until Jacks’ purr starts up. He is rocking back and forth, holding me in his lap, and whispering quiet nonsense against the top of my head.
Leo
I don’t want to take her home, but she insists, and we can’t very well keep her against her will.
I go inside with her to check the house, and then make sure the backdoor and deadbolt are locked. Then I wait until the front lock clicks into place before I’m comfortable getting back in the driver's seat of the truck.
None of us want her to go home, but she needs to feel in control of her life, and Jacks is acting erratic and needs us. I wasn’t sure if it was better or worse for her to be around him when he was like this. She’ll need to know eventually, but until we talk about his past, his sister, and everything–she doesn’t need to deal with that right now, she has enough going on.
I circle her block a few times, making sure nothing looks out of place each time I pass by, before driving home to talk more to Gabe and Xan. We’ll pick Candice up tomorrow at lunch, and take her to the police station. But they need to get photos of the damage, and we’re all feeling a bit strung out by the situation. It brings back too many memories.
We moved to Shreveport when I was 13, and Gabe was in my class. None of us had presented yet, but judging by Gabe’s size and my own, we were both going to be alphas. He was popular–and it’s no wonder, as he was a genuinely friendly person who just liked to talk to everyone. Even the new guy. We bonded over how hard it was to find size 14 sneakers, and he invited me over to his house a few times to hang out. In truth, size was about the only thing we had in common, but being an only child, and moving around a lot, I didn’t have any friends. But he didn’t seem to mind my lack of social grace, and allowed me to tag along often.
One day at his house, I met his neighbor, Jackson. He was three years younger, but a complete goofball. He and his older sister, Janey lived next door with their three dads. Their mom, an omega, had passed away when Jacks was two and he didn’t remember much about her.
Janey was in the year ahead of us, and it was crush at first sight. She had already presented as an omega herself, and I admit, I followed her around like a lost puppy. Turns out Gabe had been doing the same for a few years now. Jackson, of course, thought it was gross , since she was his sister, but while he was a tiny daredevil and a hellion, he was incredibly protective of Janey. She was his whole world, and he threatened me more than once to stay away from her.
We would often see him and Xander outside, trying and failing to play basketball in the driveway. Xan was smaller but insanely smart, everyone thought he would be Jacks’ beta. Gabe often called him over for help with homework, despite the age and grade difference, and I liked him right off the bat. He never bothered Janey, so he was safe as far as Jacks was concerned. Plus he surmised that at almost five years his senior, she would have no interest in him.
We tried to play two on two a few times with them at basketball…but neither of us really liked playing. Xan could barely make a basket, and Jacks was so busy running himself in circles that eventually we gave up. Still, just being near the three of them made me feel lighter and it seemed the feeling was mutual. By the time we were in high school, we had already agreed that we would be a pack afterwards.
We were Juniors when everything went to hell. Gabe and I were finalizing our college plans, me to veterinary school, him to technical college. Jacks and Xan were both freshmen, and we were all inseparable. We had finally stopped following Janey around. She was still beautiful, but if Jacks was part of our pack, that wouldn't work. Besides, while she was sweet, she was now more like a sister to all of us.
We had been hanging out playing video games when she called. Summer was about to start and she had been invited to a graduation party. She shouldn’t have been drinking, but at least she was responsible enough to call Jacks for a ride. She told him she didn’t want to call the dads because they would be mad at her since she was underage. So, the four of us piled into Jacks’ beater and away we went. It took us about half an hour to get there—the party was out by the lake, a bunch of drunk idiot kids doing drunk idiot kid stuff.
The police and ambulance were already there when we arrived.
Janey had been waiting for us outside. In theory, it was safer than risking passing out around a bunch of drunk idiots, but apparently someone found her half nodding off, waiting by the road, a small defenseless omega. Not as defenseless as she seemed, they were able to retrieve blood and skin samples from her nails where she had scratched and bitten hard enough to draw blood. Some of the blood was hers, apparently alphas don’t like being denied, and they hit her, hard and repeatedly.
Not that they needed samples, really. The guy was still there, bleeding from several deep scratches from the face and chest where she tried to escape as he….
He was her ex–a college guy she had dated briefly, but broke up with a couple months ago. Apparently he had been stalking her, found out where she was going to be. He came out himself to “talk.” Try to get her to take him back. She wasn’t taking anybody back now. He hit her too hard.
No summer vacation, no college, no future pack or family.
No Janey.
When Jacks saw the blood and semen he lost it–completely off the deep end. It took three officers to pull him off. I’m not ashamed to admit, we were no help. Xan was the only one of us who was able to maintain any composure and he was wrapped around Jacks in the back of the cruiser, rocking them both and purring as hard as he could for his best friend.
We tried, at first, but…the longer we were there the harder it was to hold back. There was a mess to clean up, police all over, the ambulance’s lights continued to strobe as they cleaned the guy up. Stitching his chest and face up from Janey, and suturing his eyebrow from where Jacks attacked him. They said they needed to stop the bleeding before he could be taken to jail.
Why the fuck should he get patched up and sent on his way when he had snuffed out the bright light that was our sister? I saw Gabe move first, he was built like a big, lumbering bear. He pushed aside the barricade and started towards the ambulance, but the police from earlier were watching, and after Jacks they were better prepared.
They bundled Gabe into another patrol car, but they were so busy with him that they didn’t notice me. I circled around, behind the car–through the crowd of drunken gawkers, staring at the white sheet that covered our sister. Around the front of the ambulance. They didn’t see me lift the scalpel from the EMT cart. They finally saw when I jammed it into the guy's eye socket, and he started screaming.
But by then the damage was done…just like Janey. I couldn't kill him, there would be no coming back from that, but I could deal with an assault charge. Temporary insanity at seeing my pack sister’s corpse, at hearing the devastated screams of my brother–yeah, I am pretty sure I could swing the insanity plea.
I got slammed to the ground, but I wasn’t fighting. I’d done what I needed to do. I'm not sure where the extra police came from, but they were on me then. Looking up I could see the EMT was staring down at me, horrified. Fair enough, I’m not proud of my actions, but this fuck shouldn’t get to walk away with nothing but a few scratches.
Jacks was screaming again in the back of the cruiser with Xan still clinging to him like a koala, Gabe was throwing himself against the inside door. I couldn’t see them well from where I lay pinned to the ground. But I could hear it all. Two people were sitting on my back, to keep me from moving, cold metal around my wrist. I didn’t struggle, I knew I would get caught, but I couldn’t just sit there. There’s movement to the side and something slams into the back of my head.
When I came to in the hospital, my pack brothers were in the room with me. Apparently one of the beta officers got a little too overzealous with a baton and nearly cracked my skull. I was being held for observation due to the possibility of a concussion.
My family came the next morning to bring me home. Mom was crying—I don’t know if it was because of me or Janey.
Her funeral was the following week, the last week of school. None of us bothered to finish the semester. It all seemed so unimportant by then, and Jacks couldn’t be around people. He blamed himself too much. If he had just gotten there sooner. If we hadn’t finished the kart race before leaving.
There were less than five minutes between her phone call and his car pulling out of the driveway, we went straight to pick her up, we all know that there is no real way we could have gotten there in time.
But Jacks still blamed himself. He retreated, just disappeared into his own mind. His dads were no better, so they couldn’t really be there for Jacks either–but we were. Xan stayed at his house most days, sleeping over. If his parents had a problem with it, I never heard. He made sure that Jacks ate, slept, and showered. Gabe and I were there when we could be, but I had to deal with police and court stuff, and Gabe was my support. Thankfully I was still underage enough to be treated as a juvenile, so I didn’t go to jail.
By the end of summer most things had returned to normal. Everyone else seems to have moved on, forgotten about her. But Jacks had lost a lot of weight, despite all of Xan’s attempts. We went back to school, but he kept getting into fights. Finally, he broke a classmate’s arm, and was expelled. The guy deserved it. He had decided to be a dumbass and talk shit about Janey.
Jacks didn’t bother with any sort of school after that. His dads were essentially gone, they didn’t talk to him–or anybody else for that matter. So we took him to stay at Gabe’s house. Gabe’s parents were cool, and it was right next door anyway. But Jacks was broken.
The guy who killed Janey, that fucking murdering rapist. He was 19 and he only served a few years in prison.
”Shouldn’t have his life ruined over one mistake.” was the defense.
Life went on for everyone else. Not for Jacks, he was just stuck. And not for the rest of us, who were still with Jacks. He was, for all intents and purposes, our baby brother, we wouldn’t leave him behind.