Chapter 23
DAWN
They said it would take less than twenty minutes for the whole operation to be completed, and while it sounded like a short amount of time to end a nightmare, each second dragged on.
I wanted to close my eyes, so when I opened them again, it would all be over and my guys would be back in my arms. If anything happened to them…
Dread sat heavily in my gut.
I looked out in the direction of my old home. To the left was the woods and the cavern where I’d stored all my precious things. It was where I’d healed as much as I could before I escaped. I’d dragged my bleeding body across this very grassland toward town and safety.
It was a waking nightmare that I didn’t think I’d ever escape, let alone heal from, but here I was, alive and free from the wounds that had plagued me, both physical and emotional.
I rubbed my hand across my flat stomach, the large, raised scar still prominent even outside my clothes. Being back here was awful but bearable, mainly because of the guys. My Omega knew that while they walked the earth, I was safe. They’d never let any harm come to me.
They couldn’t protect me from the emotional pain of seeing my family again though. I’d been trying to steel myself against the memories.
Someone knocked on the window, and I breathed a sigh of relief. That was quicker than I expected, but when I turned toward the window, I screamed.
“Dawn? Is it you?”
Dread made my skin tight. “Stephen.”
He was holding a gun to the window, but I thought it was almost by habit more than a threat. “You’re dead.” Again, a statement, and not a threat.
Stephen might have been my husband, but he’d never been particularly bright. “Obviously not.”
He shook his head and tapped the gun against the glass. “Get out of the car.”
“No.” I’d promised Vance I wouldn’t leave the car, and I kept my promises.
The gun shook, but Stephen switched off the safety. “Get out of the car, Dawn.”
Sucking in a deep breath, I mentally apologized to Vance. Turns out he was right and this wasn’t safe, but in my defense, why the fuck would Stephen be out here in the middle of the night?
“What are you doing out here?” I asked gently as I climbed from the SUV. “Why aren’t you in bed asleep?”
Stephen looked confused about why I was asking. See? Not very bright. “The guy Alpha Derrick sold the pups to was murdered by a vampire, and Alpha has upped security just in case.”
Great. Fucking great. I led my mates into a trap.
Stephen’s eyes dropped to my stomach, my flat, empty stomach. “You’re alive. Is our baby…”
Pain stabbed me in the chest. “Still as dead as he was the moment you cut him from my body, you fucking asshole.” The searing ache in my chest was making me reckless.
“You killed us both. I was just unlucky enough to survive.” I reached out and shoved him.
His gun hand dropped, and he stumbled back a step, surprised.
I’d never really been a violent person, as it wasn’t in my nature.
The only time I’d ever gone feral had been the day when Alpha Derrick had almost killed me, and Stephen had tried to finish the job.
“Dawn,” he murmured softly, and I hated it. Once upon a time, that softness had been a balm, but he’d never protected me, and I knew that softness coated a cowardly heart.
“You fucking tried to murder me, and you killed our pup, and now I’ll never have another.
You destroyed everything for nothing, you and that fucking piece of shit Alpha who probably would have sold your baby anyway.
You are a fucking useless piece of shit, and I hate you, Stephen.
I hate you.” I was crying and raging, and I launched myself at the man who was meant to love and protect me but had been a failure.
He’d had a chance to help me but had stood by as I was beaten every single day.
When I was beaten mostly to death, he’d finished the fucking job.
I scratched at his face, throwing punch after punch at every part of him I could reach.
“I’m sorry, Omega,” he grumbled, and I almost believed him. I just didn’t care.
I screamed it at him. “I don’t care if you’re sorry. I don’t fucking care.”
A forearm came around his throat, and a gun pressed against his head. “Nor do I. Your death was written in the stars for her pain.”
Talbot’s face was a deadly mask of fury. “This is the man who was supposed to be your husband?” he asked me, but he knew the answer.
“Yes,” I whimpered as the fury leaked out of me.
Stephen didn’t struggle, and I saw the resignation leak into his limbs. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. Every night, when I close my eyes, I see your terror and—”
“Shut your fucking mouth,” Talbot growled. “She isn’t here to assuage your guilt. You can live with that fucking pain until your last breath.” He looked at me. “Walk toward the pack houses. The guys are on their way up the hill. They’ll find you.”
I looked down at Stephen who was now on his knees. “I don’t forgive you,” I told him, and then I turned and walked away.
Like Talbot had promised, Vance was running toward me, and when I was in his arms, I let out the sob that I’d been holding back.
The gunshot behind us made me jerk in his arms, but he murmured soft, reassuring things against my hair to appease the Omega, but she felt nothing. She had been brutalized too, and this was just the closing of a curtain on my former life.
Franklin was right behind Vance, and he wrapped his arms around us both but didn’t say anything.
“Let’s go, baby.” Vance carried me to the village where I’d been born. Every shadow, every face, held a bad memory, but there’d been good times too—people I’d loved and who had loved me.
I couldn’t see the Alpha anywhere, and I hoped he was dead. I tapped Vance’s chest so he would put me down.
Walking into the group of women, I felt like a ghost of the person I’d been. There were soft gasps and cries of relief as they hugged me, thanking the goddess for saving me. I couldn’t see my aunt though. “Where is Aunt Nita?”
The women were all beaten to shit. It was obvious without a focal point for his rage, Alpha Derrick had decided that all women were open season for his anger.
Aunt Vonn shook her head. “It was too much after the pups were… taken, and you were, we thought you were—” She choked on the words, tears rolling down her cheeks.
“She walked into the forest and never came back out. It took us days to find her.” She swallowed hard, her eyes glistening. “We buried her next to your mama.”
My mom died when I was three. Aunt Nita had raised me. Grief hit me like a wave, making my knees buckle until Vance caught me and lifted me again. “It’s okay, sweetheart.”
I licked my dry lips, turning my face into his chest until I could get my tears under control.
His energy wrapped around me like a suit of armor, and I breathed in his strength.
Finally, I tapped him to put me down again, and his arms flexed around me.
He didn’t want to let me go, but eventually, he put me down, keeping a reassuring hand on my spine.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to come back. I’m sorry I couldn’t—”
Aunt Vonn shook her head. “We thought you were dead, girl, and even if you weren’t, none of us would have resented you leaving this all behind. None of us wanted you to come back to this.” She pointed to her black eye. “You owe this pack nothing.”
There was a soft murmur of agreement, and I felt crushing grief.
Buenaventura appeared beside me, stooping low and bowing at the waist. “Little Omega, we’re going to execute the Alpha now. Is there anyone you think would seek retribution for his death, or anyone who has committed crimes as significant?”
I looked back at the women who’d always been pressed into the ground, the boots of the pack hierarchy on their throats. There’d been some good ones, but most of the wolves the Alpha had surrounded himself with were as rotten as he was, happy to profit off the suffering of the rest of us.
“I’ll come,” I told him.
Vente nodded his head, casting a strange look at Aunt Vonn. “Ma’am. We’ll get this over with, and then we’ll talk about options for the pack.”
Aunt Vonn nodded curtly, her eyes haunted and her face gaunt.
I followed Vance and Buenaventura to the area behind the sheds, and I saw eight of my former pack kneeling in the dirt.
Alpha Derrick was there, his face beaten, but not enough that he didn’t sneer when he saw me.
There were several of his close buddies, ones whose backhands I’d received multiple times in my life.
It didn’t look like Vance’s mercenary friends had been particularly gentle with them. There was only one guy I didn’t recognize.
“They were trying to do an exchange. We stepped in when they hauled a kid out of the back like a grocery delivery,” Vance murmured.
I looked down at these wolves who were meant to protect and care for their pack, and compared them to the family Vance had created up on Black Mountain. “They are all guilty.”
Benson stepped forward, and his Alpha pheromones punched out, dropping the men who were already on their knees to their bellies. Even my old Alpha struggled to stay upright, folding in half like origami.
“You’re all found guilty of the trafficking and abuse of your pack. As is our way, you may be imprisoned for the total of your life, or you can be executed here on your pack land so that your blood may nourish the soil in the hopes that something better will grow from your deaths.”
Unsurprisingly, the cowards that they were, they all chose death over incarceration.
Vente sighed heavily. “So be it. Alexander couldn’t make it today, for which you should all be very, very thankful,” he showed his teeth in what was probably meant to be a smile, but was chilling all the same.
“However, I’ve been tasked with ensuring that every ounce of valuable intel is removed from those tiny little brains, and I promise, it won’t be quick or pleasant. ”
Vance led me away, back toward Franklin and Talbot, to the women and men who’d been my family and my tormentors. I looked them over. In the three weeks I’d been gone, we’d lost four more of my previous pack. Only fifteen adults remained now that the guilty had chosen death.
They were in so much pain, and my Omega pheromones flooded out in response, calming the children and the crying females.
Some of the men held their families close, and I looked them over.
They hadn’t been strong betas and had been kicked around only a little less than I had.
Most of the male betas left, but some stayed to keep their families safe from our Alpha and his cronies.
Now they could be free, but none of them were strong enough to lead and keep what remained safe from encroaching packs.
Maybe we should just let them be subsumed into other packs and let the Truckee-Reno Pack die here tonight.
If I could have guaranteed that whatever pack took my former pack mates in would be good, then maybe I would have suggested it and done a dance on the ashes of my former life.
Unfortunately, not all packs were fair, and I couldn’t take that risk.
Benson seemed good, and my Omega natured knew that he and Maxi would provide good leadership until it was time for someone else to step up.
I flinched as a gunshot reverberated around the clearing and closed my eyes again. Both the demons of my past were buried in the ground now. I could move on.
Vance wrapped his arms around me, kissing my shoulder. “It’s over. We can go home now.”
I nodded, because this might have been where I was born, but it had never been home. My home was with Vance, Franklin, and Talbot. It was high above sea level, buried deep beneath a mountain. It was in the sweet laughter of the cubs that terrorized the den.
It wasn’t here, with the sound of the Truckee River still audible from miles away. It wasn’t in the sad, familiar faces that were so like mine.
Home was lost inside the caramel eyes of the bears who loved me.
“I’d like to go home.”