23. Aerin
23
AERIN
T here’s no sleeping until Mack is back, safe, and I know he’s okay.
After I get out of bed, I make a pit-stop at the bathroom, brushing my teeth and washing my face once I’ve used the toilet.
It’s still the middle of the night, yet I pulled on a pair of linen pants, a baggy T-shirt, and dressed as if it was the start of a new day and not 2 a.m.
The dream I had of a boy and girl haunts me as I stare at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. I look tired. I don’t quite have bags under my eyes, but my skin is pale and there are lines of tension around my mouth.
“Please be okay, Mack,” I whisper.
My dad had, to my surprise, suggested I go back to Minnesota until we figured out what was going on. He seemed to think it was only a matter of time before someone tried to grab me, and I hadn’t been able to tell him that if someone did, they’d soon discover I’m an omega missing her powers. I’d refused my dad’s offer. Going back to the Boone Pack wasn’t an option.
“Winter Lake is home now,” I’d told Dad. “Whatever is happening right now won’t change that.”
His offer had surprised me. For the longest time, most of my childhood, actually, I hadn’t thought he cared about me at all. That he viewed me as a duty and nothing more.
But after Nolan Lonergan kidnapped me and Dad helped Mack find me, our relationship has changed. We’ll never be close. At least, I don’t think we will. But I call him once a week or so, and he calls me as well. Very rarely he mentions Mom, which is something he never used to do before.
“Aerin!” Adela calls up the stairs. “Do you want tea?”
No. I want Mack back. But since he’s out and I have no clue when he’s likely to be back, I will settle for tea. “Okay!” I call back.
I walk out of the bathroom, grip the balustrade as I make my way down the stairs and into a brightly lit entryway.
Everyone has settled in the dining room. That’s not really a surprise. That seems to be where we all drift to in times of trouble.
My grandparents already have white mugs of tea in front of them at the table. Helena is standing in front of the open refrigerator, peering in, and Adela is at the counter making more tea.
“Where are Chris and Zoe?” I ask as I walk in.
Helena twists from the refrigerator to smile at me. “Outside. They wanted to make sure there’s no one hanging around.”
I take a seat at the dining table as my grandparents smile at me. “Is it safe?”
“They said they’ll be fine,” my grandpa says, his forehead creased in a frown. “They—whoever they are—want omegas. But I just can’t understand why.”
“Alphas have always wanted omegas,” I say.
Adela places a mug of hot tea in front of me. “Alphas have always wanted omegas because we can hold a broken pack together. But this… snatching up omegas from packs across the country like this doesn’t make sense. They’re making enemies who will wipe them out as soon as everyone learns who is behind it.”
I wrap my hands around the mug as I study the map with brightly colored pins we left here before Mack and I went up to bed. Bennett stayed for a little longer before he left to go home to Helena.
“Bennett said he didn’t think Clary was involved, but I’m not so sure.” Helena closes the refrigerator door without taking anything from it, and leans against a counter with her arms crossed.
He must have told her everything when he went home.
“Clary?” my grandma asks.
I spend the next couple of minutes explaining what happened with Clary and soon wish I hadn’t been so forthcoming when Adela frowns at me.
“You had a nosebleed?”
“It wasn’t that bad,” I reassure her. “And it stopped soon after it started. I’m fine now.”
She gives me a probing look and I know getting out of this conversation is going to be a million times harder than when Mack pressed me to talk about it.
“I won’t try to do it again,” I promise her. “I was just frustrated.”
She takes a seat.
Because she’s still looking like she might have something to say about it, I decide distraction might be the thing that saves me from her disapproval. “Has Mack mentioned anything about all of us moving into a house together?”
No one says a word.
But suddenly everyone decides they need to either sip their tea or look away.
“You all knew?” I guess. I’m not disappointed that I’m the last one to know, but I am surprised Mack didn’t talk to me about it first.
“He might have mentioned something,” Adela says.
I rub my back when it reminds me that sitting in hard chairs is not a long-term activity.
“Come on.” Helena straightens. “Let’s go sit in the den. More comfy.”
Adela gets to her feet. “It’s late, or early, whichever way you want to look at it, but I’ll see if I can throw something together for us to eat.”
My grandma rises as well. “I’ll help.”
“And I’ll enjoy this tea,” my grandpa says, toasting them with a grin.
We leave Adela and my grandparents to finish their tea and pull food together that I can’t imagine anyone will want to eat, migrating to the den to settle on the couch.
Helena turns the TV on, but after flicking through a few channels, she turns it off again and tosses the remote beside her. “Nothing to watch.”
I know exactly why she’s not interested in watching anything. “You’re worried about Bennett, aren’t you?”
She nods. “I know he can handle himself in a fight, but I’ve gotten used to fighting alongside him. It’s weird to not be with him.”
I can guess why that would be. “He asked you to stay with me, didn’t he?”
She shakes her head. “I offered. We agreed if there was going to be trouble, it’s likely to be at the hotel, but just in case there was trouble here, I wanted to be here.”
“But you’d have rather been with him,” I say. “Wouldn’t you?”
She nods.
As Adela and my grandma rattles around in the kitchen, I give Helena a rueful smile. “I’m going to admit to saying something to Mack that I didn’t mean.”
Helena and I are closer than we’ve ever been before. It feels like a lifetime ago that she was just my dad’s enforcer. Now, I call her a friend.
She takes my hand and squeezes. “I heard, and it’s okay. I understand your fear. Especially now. I tried telling Bennett to stay at the back if there was any trouble. You can probably imagine how that went down.”
We both laugh.
We’re both bringing children into the world soon, and neither of us wants to lose the fathers of our children.
We share a smile, and I squeeze her hand. “It’s scary isn’t it? They mean so much to us that they make it impossible to imagine a future without them.”
“It is scary.” She nods. “But I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m happier now than I ever have been in my life, and I don’t want anything to threaten that or take it away.”
“Are you sure Zoe and Chris are okay outside?” I ask, glancing at the den entryway.
They’ve been outside in the backyard since before I came downstairs. I’d thought they would walk around a bit, make sure no one was out there, and then join us in the kitchen for tea. But they seem determined to stay out there all night.
“They’re fine.”
“Did Mack or Bennett tell them to go out there?”
A slow smile stretches across her face. “Nope. They volunteered.”
“Because?”
“I have a feeling they’re not just going to be watching the house out there.” She waggles her eyebrows suggestively.
I laugh. “ Chris? I doubt it.”
He’s found love with Zoe, who is on the path to recovering from her broken mate bond with her former mate. I wasn’t able to use my omega gift to help her heal as I’d wanted to. It had hurt, knowing that with barely any effort, I could have taken away all the pain in her heart. But talking with her had been surprising.
I’ve learned the power of helping another heal through sharing my own pain.
For the longest time, Chris was worried Zoe would struggle to see this place as home, but I think he’s started to accept that she’s happy here in Winter Lake, and with him. I hadn’t thought Chris was the romantic type. He’s too quiet for that. But with Zoe? I might see them sharing a kiss out there.
I’m turning to ask Helena something when two things happen almost at once.
Outside, a wolf howls and a woman screams.
A door slams open and glass smashes. From inside the house.
My omega powers might not be working now, but I’m still a wolf, and my nose works just fine. The scent of blood in the air warns something tonight has just gone very wrong.