Fallen Omega

Chapter 40

Chapter

Forty

Reaper

H er note’s clutched in Knight’s hand as we run through the streets, something thready and wild and hot in my veins. It makes me sick.

Normally, I thrive on this, running for my life—for a life.

But this time…this time it makes me want to puke.

“We need to find her.”

Knight looks at me as we run. “We will.”

I don’t know if I believe him. I push harder, legs burning, and I’m veering, out of control. And I almost fall.

Knight speeds up, grabs me. “Reap?”

“Something’s fucking wrong. In me.” There nothing around, except the streets, a few people I dismiss immediately. “I can’t smell her. I should be able to fucking smell her.”

His hand comes down on me, pulling me to a stop, and I almost take him out.

He knows it.

Eyes me .

“Reap, we don’t need to. We know where she is. This is panic talking. Panic.”

“How the fuck do you know?”

He glances around, then at me. “I know panic. I feel it too.” He points. “Here, a fucking short cut.”

Knight takes off running and swings left, and I do too.

“Another,” he says. We take it. Trying to reach her.

Knowing it’s too late.

I know. I feel it, like I’m being stabbed rapidly, like I want to throw the fuck up, like I want to smash things to pieces.

I’ve gotten through life not really needing anyone. But fuck.

I need her.

She sees me.

And I think I finally want to be seen.

Liz is in my veins, burning me, warming me. Cooling fires and making others spring up. She’s cohesive, a cog. And right now, the old blackness that’s full of nothing but death and cold destruction is sucking at me.

I fucking need to get there.

What if it’s too late?

We keep going and Lizette permeates me.

It’s not just being seen. It’s by who.

Knight and Dante see me, but it’s her, she’s the one I want.

Because she’s special.

She has an unsullied heart, a soul that doesn’t judge or feel sorry for me. One that sees me and likes me and wants me.

The way I see her.

But it’s easy to see her that way. She’s easy to love.

And now it’s too late.

She’s been gone too long.

It’s my fault. If I’d moved faster, got back earlier. Been the one to confront Ghost.

What does it fucking matter that I’ve got the information I need? Information I know Knight will now be able to verify once he goes in the right direction.

What does it matter if she’s dead?

It’s my fucking fault.

I can’t get that out of my head. I saw her on the feed out by the dumpsters in a hoodie. Mason’s hoodie, so my fleeting glance filled in the wrong blanks.

I didn’t put it together, didn’t look again because when I came in and saw that, Dante staggered in, bleeding, and collapsed.

Ghost… Ghost’s gone. And whether the fuck’s gone off to die or found another life in him, now Liz is lost, he knows we’ll destroy him. I don’t think he’ll be back.

“Here.”

We look at the building. I don’t usually carry a gun, but I do now, and we both pull our weapons and race in.

I can’t fucking smell her, and I lose my mind.

I can’t hear whatever Knight’s saying, there’s a roaring in my ears, and I slam into the door, splintering it.

I look at the carnage. The blood. And I fall to my knees.

Knight drops his knife, takes my gun, and shoots the prick that’s dead on the ground. I can smell the death in the room.

I’m paralyzed. Lost. And I have no one to rip apart and kill.

“Snap the fuck out of it,” Knight says. “See this is why you two need sensitivity classes. Get over here and help me.”

My head snaps up.

I smell death but I also smell gardenias and relief floods me. She’s alive.

So much for being a big bad. Love fucking sucks. If it brings a man like me to my knees then?—

Then I’ll take it.

Knight’s checking her over, murmuring to her. “It’s okay, Liz, baby, it’s okay. I’m here and I’ll protect you and I have your hunter, too. You brought him to his knees. You’re a badass. No one brings Reap to his knees, just you. Wake up. ”

The thing that beats in my chest clenches. It isn’t a heart. It’s something else, a ball of little used emotions, a ball awakened by her. It clenches and I think I might die if she doesn’t open her fucking eyes.

“Liz,” I whisper. “Angel… Come on.”

She moans and struggles to sit up. I look at him. The knight in his pretty armor’s got glittering, shimmering eyes, and a tear slides down a cheek.

He doesn’t bother dashing it away, just smiles and helps her sit straighter. She almost falls into his arms, but not from weakness or injury. From emotion. She’s falling into him.

Liz touches his tear and licks her finger.

I get up and move around the place methodically, collecting the casings, and find a bag and a heeled shoe. Inside the bag is an ID belonging to Susan Pemberton —interesting—but I make quick work of wiping down everything that we touched. Then I search the dead fuck’s pockets and strip him of his personal items.

When I’m done, I go to Liz, and help Knight get her up. I swing her up in my arms as he goes to call us a car. I can hear shouting from his phone and grin down into her hair.

I can’t help it.

Relief floods me, and holding her is like holding the essence of life itself.

“Dante’s losing his mind. I can hear him from here,” I tell her.

She holds me, her arms weak.

“You did something no one’s done. Made me lose my shit, Liz. Never, fucking never, get into trouble like this again. What were you thinking?”

“I wanted to save my alphas. I thought…thought the Council would destroy you. They were meant to be here. He—Jake—he told them where I was. H-He’s that guy’s son—Craig. He fed information to the Council, and Ghost… I guess…I guess Jake thought he would cause confusion and get his reveng e on me. For rejecting him and for Knight and Julien beating him up.”

I kiss her forehead. She looks like she was beaten to a pulp. Fuck. In a way I wish she hadn’t killed him.

Because if life still sparked in him, I’d take absolute satisfaction of snuffing it out.

He fucking hurt her.

And if I’m feeling like this, what the fuck would Dante do if he lived?

However bad it might be, however cruel, twisted and long the torture, I know I’d be with him. Helping.

Fuck. Liz got hurt.

And there’s no one I can kill.

Thank Christ we heal fast.

“Car’s here in five.” Knight looks at us and I give her to him because he’s all puppy dog eyes for her.

And he’s the best at this. She needs the best. He holds her like she’s the most precious thing ever and I know how he feels.

And, as he holds her, soothes her, she passes out or falls asleep. All I know is there’s a contentment to her, one I don’t have.

Because now the rush of relief’s past, the unfinished tendrils are still there. The reason the Council’s interested in her hasn’t changed.

They want her, and it’s something we all have to face.

Knight shakes his head as we start to walk to where we can go for the car the moment it arrives. “Thank fuck we can go home now.”

I choose my words carefully. “This isn’t done.”

“Of course it is. Dead asshole one and two.” Then he pauses. “What do you mean it’s not done?”

“We need to work this out.” I take a breath. “The Council won’t stop.”

He doesn’t still, but his head rises. And whatever he’s about to say, the platitudes or words of reassurance don’t form.

Instead, he takes me in. Nods.

“What did you find, Reap? I have some pieces, but?—”

“When we’re back,” I say, “look up Candy Enver.”

“That’s…” He doesn’t finish.

“Her mother.”

“She’s dead.” He looks at me. “Isn’t she?”

I nod. “On paper.” I know how easy it is to die and keep living. I know how to invent yourself in plain sight. Thing is, I never have had to. “We’ll get her back and then you, me, and Dante will have a talk.”

It’s not going to be pretty.

It took Julien and four others to restrain the wounded Dante. And Dante isn’t a forgiving soul. He’s going to be hell for the next, oh, hundred years.

Lizette’s passed out when we get back in and Darcy takes over. Everyone’s down in the living area on our private third floor in Pandora’s, where if we’re honest, we live a lot of the time.

Dante’s patched up, halfway healed and growling at her when Darcy stands him down. Stands us all down.

“No. I’m going to bathe her, dress her wounds, and then you can beat your chests. But she’s going to sleep.” Darcy pauses, looks each of us hard in the eye. “Properly sleep. It’ll help her heal.”

“She’s the boss, bosses,” Julien says, drinking his whiskey.

He’s still got his feed up, and upstairs each entrance is watched. We’re open for deliveries, which won’t arrive until later, and then Julien will head up and handle it with Mason. Maybe some back up under the guise of extra helping hands .

We exchange a look as Darcy leads away a groggy, weak Liz.

I’ve moved on from all those emotions. And what I should be, where I should be, is cold. Dark. Perfect clarity calm.

I’m not.

Things are alive inside and won’t go down.

Fury is moving through me, it’s out now, and I don’t know how to get it back in.

There’s blood on the black t-shirt Dante wears. I can smell it. The thigh of his jeans is also stained dark brown.

But beneath the rips, cut clean by a knife, a knife I know Ghost carries—carried—because I have one the same, that cuts like everything’s butter, goes in clean and deep and nasty, the flesh is already healing. It looks right now like a nasty scrape. By tonight it’ll be a scar. Tomorrow? Probably gone.

He heals fast.

And it’s not a knife designed to bring about slow healing. It’s a knife made to kill.

Fast. Deep. Surgical.

Dante’s fucking lucky he’s standing.

Lucky he’s alive to tell the tale.

He strums his fingers on the wall, then takes off to his office. I follow, along with Knight. But I stop him before he goes in. “Grab everything on Candy and the Council president. And Lizette’s father, both under Connor and Elias.”

He frowns. “Why?—”

“When you see it, you’ll see it. If I’m wrong, you won’t.”

He nods and starts to go. “Nice to see the human under the cracks.”

“Fuck you.”

“Yeah, I love her, too.” His gaze drifts to Dante’s door, and he shakes his head. “The thing with the girls?”

I don’t knock, just walk in.

Dante’s got a giant motherfucker hand cannon that he’s loading a clip into. I lean against the wall and pull out my cigarettes, lighting up.

“He’s dead, Dar?—”

“I know that, Seb,” he snaps, hating that I almost used his real name.

We never do. But I think this moment calls for it.

I ignore that he used mine. “And that’s for?”

“The next fucker who even dares to think he can touch her. Did you see her fucking face? Motherfucker!”

I nod and drag in smoke. I study the glowing tip as it fades to ash, and I blow out a ring of smoke. “I get it.”

“Nothing to fucking get.”

I nod again. “Lost my shit when I saw her. The kid was epic, though. You and I, we’re a different breed. She can undo us. Destruction. It’s her appeal, and also why we might feel we want to push her away.”

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do, Dante.” I straighten. “You like your sex a certain way.”

“Just because I like rough control, her on her knees and spitting venom in passion form, doesn’t mean a thing. Just like if I want to blow apart a pile of motherfuckers who think they can take our money maker from us when we took her in doesn’t mean a thing.”

“Really?” I push.

“What are you fucking trying to say?” He aims the gun at me, and I just raise a brow back. “That I love her? That I care?”

“I don’t know, do you?”

“She makes us fucking money. We put energy into keeping her safe. She scratches an itch and has a body made to fuck. That’s not love.”

Dante needs to cling to his control. But the thing is, I don’t think he has it. I think he’s dangling and he’s wrapped up in his own brand of denial.

“If you say so,” I reply .

His eyes narrow, glittering and he lowers the gun. “I do.”

“Don’t…don’t fuck it up.”

“I’m not. Nothing to fuck up.”

I let that slide.

Instead, I shift gears.

“You missed out on a show earlier.” I pause, blow out smoke. “You should have seen what she did to the guy.”

He smiles, looks at me. “Yeah?”

“Fucking brutal.”

“Good.”

He’s making me do a lot of talking which I don’t like, but I need to get my point across. And for a man who can be verbose and also concise, I think he’s stuck. I think the stubborn asshole’s a little lost, like me.

Not Knight.

That prick’s in touch with all his feels. Go figure.

But Dante and I, we grew up both in and out of the Council system. We always knew what we were and in our own ways, rejected it. Our paths parted and converged, over and over. Mine had a lot more death and jail time. His…

I wonder if Dante’s control needs are a different sort of prison.

But I can see it all where he’s too close. Blind.

I won’t say scared, but there’s a fear there. It’s in me, too. And it’s so unlike anything I’ve felt—me, a man who can walk into any situation without a drop of dread or fear. I see things clearly.

Emotionless, yes.

But our Lizette is something neither of us have encountered.

And the fear of losing her is strong.

So yeah, I have to keep talking, get the point across.

“She scared the fucking life from me, Dante.”

“Sebastian?” He looks at me, then picks up another round and puts that in his pocket. “I get it, you lost your mind over her and I’m going to?—”

“You know, when we were young and we ran?” I interrupt. “We were out there wild, fighting our way, and we made it here. Nothing’s got to me. I get it that I’m wired differently, maybe wrong. But it serves. I can get things done. I don’t even fucking mind prison.

“But this fucking girl with the big dark eyes and long dark hair and voice that could crack and melt diamonds? She gets to me. And it makes it worse or better…something, anyway…that she not only sees me but she gets me. She likes me.”

He pushes papers aside. A sign of his disordered thoughts. Dante’s control reaches all the aspects of his life. This slight mess…it’s telling.

“You’re sharing this why? I’m not a touchy-feely guy. Knight’s out there, I’m sure he’ll give you a hug.”

He finds the glass and he’s about to pour another drink when I just reach over and take the bottle, drinking from it. I don’t even care it’s not my drop. It’s got alcohol. It works. “Fuck you, Dante.”

“She doesn’t affect me other than I want to fuck her into all levels of submission.”

“That’s a lie. You want her. You like her and you take it out on her and everyone else because you wish you didn’t. She’s either strength or weakness, you decide, not her. The weakness for her makes me strong.”

“I’m going to shoot the fuck out of people, how’s that for a decision?”

I take another swallow right before he comes around his desk to snatch the bottle back. And the pain from his healing wound’s etched deep in the grooves of his face. A different kind of pain’s in his eyes.

It’s like, I realize, a song.

Fuck, do all of us have one for her?

I know I didn’t have anything like a song in me before I met her, but now? The emptiness has a fullness, like life. Those areas that allow me to kill without compunction, the quiet and steady things now have a beat to them.

They’re still there, but…

It’s like an elemental beat. Drums and wild, unfettered voices.

Like she awakened something, gave it a voice, that well inside me that’s always been dark now teems.

And the song in my veins is everything at once. It’s emotion. Drums and flares and wildness set free from earthly tethers. It just is. And in there is her. A center of a thing so calm it’s like my emptiness except it’s life.

His is a softer song that can hurt. It’s the violent urges and the need to control through degradation turned into something else, something delicate. For her.

The rest of it is between them, but I see that.

And Knight’s is her surface song, her quiet moments where she sings alone without an audience. He’s comfort and a thing I can’t give. I’m not capable. I’m not that.

The comfort of a beta upbringing.

Her father was a weak alpha, but he took her and raised her, teaching her what she was, but that she could also be so much more, and her decisions were never preordained. Because isn’t that the beta way? Able to choose who and what they want from the whole world of betas?

We’re different, the whole control and the reasons we left the Council ruled world—just like her father—is to escape that whole bullshit of decisions made because you were born a certain fucking way.

But Knight came from that world.

And he offers her something like home.

I rub my eyes.

Does it even matter?

We fit. With her.

Just like the three of us can rule as equal alphas of our pack.

But first I need Dante to get it together.

We need to save our omega and stop Council interference. Because that’s a major disaster.

“I’m going to take them out. All of them, Seb. Every last one, and when I’m finished here, I’ll burn the fucking Council down.”

“Nice chest thumping, Dante, but no.”

He pours himself a glass and sets the bottle down reaching for the gun once more. With his other hand he pats his pocket then his ankle, clearly checking his weapons.

Not because he’s checking that he put them in place, but because he’s reminding himself just how armed he is and what he wants to do.

“The Council isn’t some cheap one man show, Dante. It has branches. It’s all over. And yeah, there’s a real HQ, but they also have octopus arms so take out one and it just fucking keeps going. You’re not doing anything but getting yourself dead and our operation blown the fuck up. We keep it local, and you don’t head out like some idiotic vigilante and fucking murder anyone. And that’s coming from me. If I thought we could, I’d have fucking done it already.”

“So I’ll kill this lot. Blame it on the full moon.”

I rub my head. When he’s in deep denial, he’s hard work, and he makes me fucking talk way too much.

“Today goes on as normal. Same as tonight. They’re not making a move yet.” I outline what Lizette told me the dead fucker said. “Right now, things are in holding. The Council thinks Ghost has either double crossed them or done his job and the dead fuck got in the way.”

He looks at me. “The body was gone.”

I know but I nod. “If he’s alive, he’s disappeared.”

“I want to make sure.”

“You’re not going on a hunting expedition. His part’s finished.” He opens his mouth but I keep going. “How the fuck do I know? I know him and so do you. If someone didn’t take the body and he’s alive, he’s gone. His part is done, he knows how to cut losses, and make an exit.”

“Losses?”

“Ghost, if he survived, is heading back out of town and thinks his job is done. If he lives, a loss to him is not seeing your guts spilled. But he’d take such a loss. Man like that will figure another day another chance.”

He closes his eyes. “If he survived.”

“We need to deal with the bigger threat and by my thinking we have…” I think about it. “We have a day or two. We let her heal and run the business as usual.”

“And then?” Dante grips his hand cannon. “They won’t give up. They want her for a reason and fuck if I know.”

“I know.”

He looks at me.

“I think I know,” I amend. “If I’m right we can stop it and get things back to the status quo.” Then I drop the good bomb. “And give ourselves guaranteed future protection.”

Like providence, Knight bursts in with his laptop. Not his porn one, his real one. I still can’t believe he went to that level on the off chance he’d need to throw someone off the scent. Then again, it is dubious genius.

And I admire it. I pay that much attention to detail on my kills. Just in a different way.

Griffin’s a cocky little bastard, so I keep my praise to myself. I just smoke my cigarette and go back to silence as he talks.

As each word falls, he gets more and more excited about it all.

Dante slowly puts down the gun and takes the computer and we go over it, everything that the smug genius Knight put together in minutes. Once he got the right trail to sniff along.

“Now what?” Knight says, looking at us both .

But it’s clear what we need to do.

We just have to be in agreement. Because once we do it, we can’t reverse it.

I take a final drag on the cigarette and put it out.

“Now we make a decision. The three of us,” I say. “And then she has to agree. More, she needs to understand what it means.”

“Staying,” Dante mutters.

“If she doesn’t want to stay?” Knight asks, anxious.

He doesn’t look at Dante, he doesn’t need to. It’s obvious Knight means because of him.

“That’s her decision,” Dante says. “She needs to be sure.”

“We need to be sure, too. And now.”

“I’ve been sure since day one, Reap.” Knight takes his computer.

“Well?” I ask, turning to Dante. “I’m in.”

“It’s up to you, Dante,” says Knight. “This can’t be majority. It has to be unanimous.” He looks at me. “Along with the other stuff.”

Dante finally nods. “We do this.”

It takes two days for her to heal, with us all visiting. I know because I catch Dante curled around her early hours of that morning.

I don’t say anything to him. But while she looks worse for wear that afternoon, we’re cutting it close, as the Council wants a meeting with Dante in a few days.

Liz doesn’t heal like Dante or me or even Knight. But she’s omega, so she’s faster than a gamma or delta. She still looks rough. Gorgeous, but you can see what she’s been through, she healed inside.

Heart. Mind. Psyche .

As Knight takes her through things, she frowns. “I don’t…”

“Keep reading,” Knight says.

Liz stares at what we’re showing her. “No.”

“It’s true.” I move closer. “Your mother’s alive.”

She shakes her hair and the air is filled with a rage born from lament. “No, she’s dead, she…how could she leave Dad?”

“Leave you?” Dante clarified. “Very fucking easily. People are the worst.”

“Not you, though, Liz. You’re the best of us all.” Knight touches her hand.

But she sucks in a breath. “She’s dead.” Then her mouth sets. “Dead.”

“And if she isn’t?” I ask.

“I don’t care. She’s dead to me.” Liz rises. “If that’s all, I’ll pack and go to the Council. It’s time. Even if I killed Jake, they still want me and want to marry me to that…that alpha. And I need to know you three will be safe.”

“What if we said we know how to stop that happening?” Dante asks. “It goes back to an old fairytale that Reap told me about. And it echoes what Ghost said.”

Liz goes still, but the air quivers, this time with something like hope. “Whatever it is,” she whispers, “I’m in. Do it.”