Chapter 8 Dax
The beta had my mind tangled in questions. Everything about him made me want to make him mine. That was such a strange reaction for me. I hated everyone. Not to mention he was bonded to the omega I had become obsessed with the last few weeks. Out of the corner of my eye I studied the beta, his lanky build didn’t say anything of the deadly person who occupied the body. His dead eyes had been more of an attraction than a deterrent. I liked that we had a matching set. Then there was the way I reacted to him on top of me. The weight of him had my cock achingly hard. Rubbing himself against me had made my knot start to form. That was another first. Maybe if I could stand her alpha, I had found my pack. That was something I thought I would never have. I had long ago given up on the idea of ever having one.
Who would want a serial killer as part of their pack?
No one was safe from me, I loved to kill almost as much as I loved watching the surviving bonded grieve. Especially when I had the pleasure of interviewing the survivors. That was my own secret joy. The grief and pain they felt made me feel alive. There was a sense of accomplishment knowing that I was responsible for that. I was the worst person they could bring into their pack. Into their home. Especially when their omega was in heat. At her most vulnerable. What was he thinking?
“Where am I headed?” I was testing the waters here, seeing how he would react to my pushing at him.
“You know full well that I’m taking you to my house, so quit with the bullshit.”
That was an opening. “Why?”
“You want access to my omega.”
“That was a statement.”
“Fine, we do this the hard way.”
I sighed. “What’s this?”
“You’re going to drive to my house and on the way, you are going to tell me everything about you.”
“Do you really want to know how I grew up in a tiny town in Oklahoma where the only attraction was a casino?”
“The first omega you went after?”
I scoffed at that. “Easy, my mother.”
“The first alpha you killed?”
“My dad.”
“First pack?” It was like he already knew the answers to his own questions. How he had done in a few days what the cops hadn’t managed to do in three decades, I didn’t know.
“My parents, although I did miss one. Seeing a pattern here?”
He huffed. “Fine. Tell me how you chose your victims.”
“Which ones?”
“The omegas. That seems the most pertinent.”
“By scent.”
He shook his head. “We are going to be driving for a while if you aren’t more candid with me.”
“I hunt by scent, not unlike wolves.”
“Or dogs,” he added under his voice.
“Yes, dogs. Regardless, when I smell most omegas, I have this overwhelming urge to remove the source of that scent from the world. So, I study them. Learn everything about their packs. Their schedules, what doors or windows they leave open, when the omega was completely vulnerable.”
He nodded. “I was just guessing.”
“That was one hell of a guess.”
“Calliope attracts a certain type of man.” He seemed to be searching for the right way to put it.
“Dangerous.”
“I was thinking more deadly.” He was nearly laughing when he said that. “But yeah, dangerous is a good way to put it.”
“Well, I certainly fit the bill.”
“How many people have you killed?”
That was certainly not the question I was expecting the beta to ask. “How many have you killed? I’d wager my number is higher.”
“It probably is, considering you’re about twenty years older than I am.”
“I’m only forty-five,” I scoffed.
“Sixteen years. But you’ve got twenty on Calliope.”
I thought about that for a moment. I preferred my partners younger, but not that much younger. “So, what’s your kill count?”
“As of earlier this week, it’s thirty.”
That made me look at him more seriously. How did a man that was on the cusp of thirty have so many kills. Even if he started as a teen when I did it just didn’t make sense. There was a moment where I debated how honest I wanted to be with him. That came down to the question: how badly did I want Calliope and Cain?
That was something I wasn’t even sure of myself. I was always a loner, keeping up appearances, but holding the truth of myself close to my chest. If I really wanted to make a try of this, I would need to be brutally honest. I wouldn’t accept any less, so I wouldn’t give any less. “Truthfully, I lost count around fifty.”
“When was that?”
“Twenty years ago.”
He stared at me with his mouth open, as if he couldn’t believe what I was telling him. “You killed fifty people in seven years?”
“It was more like a decade.”
“You killed your parent’s entire pack when you were fifteen?”
“Don’t sound so surprised.” There was a laugh in my voice when I responded. “It wasn’t that difficult.”
“I suppose it would have been easy for someone of your…” he searched for the words, “bulk to handle.”
“I’ll make you a deal. You tell me about your first kill, and I’ll tell you about mine.”
He thought about that for a moment before nodding. “You go first.”
“Fine, killing my parents pack wasn’t really that difficult. My mother died first. I managed to get her alone and shot her in the forehead with my father’s gun. I picked off her alphas as they came into the room. My father felt every last one of them die and didn’t even call. The bastard was too busy at work. I was arrested and charged. He couldn’t be bothered to fly home. Didn’t check on me, simply paid to make it go away.”
“Why?” That wasn’t the question I expected.
“He paid to make it go away because he couldn’t have his defective alpha son ruining his plans to run for the presidency.”
“Jesus, I thought my dad was fucked up.” That made me laugh, but I skewered him with my gaze, waiting for him to make good. “My first was much younger than yours. I was six when my father put a blade in my hand. When he taught me just how to aim it so when I completed the throw, it killed instantly.”
“Your family sounds fun.”
He sputtered when I said that. I wasn’t even lying. His family sounded like one I would have rather been born into. That would have been better than what I was given. We had more money than God due to good investments by one of my grandparents. What I lacked was something that money couldn’t buy—care, compassion. Things that I wouldn’t have appreciated anyway. But it would have been nice to be able to imitate that. At least then I would have something I could do with the feelings that were bubbling up inside me. Before we could say anything else, he directed me to take the road that would lead to his pack’s house. Could I really be a part of a pack? Cain had to be out of his mind to bring me here. Had he even considered that I might lose it when I saw his omega? That I might use the heat as an excuse to kill them all? That stopped me. Of course, he had. A man like Cain thought of everything.