Chapter 41
Chapter
Forty-One
ROAN
The bastard was after her.
That’s the first thing I saw when we burst through the trees— Beckett Rylan, former Howler and eternal thorn in my damn side, in the water with Wren, trying to catch her like she was a prize he’d won instead of a woman he was about to break.
My pulse went feral.
Rhett got to her first, and getting her out of the water before he went after Rylan once more.
He slammed his shoulder into Rylan’s chest, all muscle and rage.
I barely remembered the sound — a crack, a grunt — before they slammed into the rocks.
I followed after them. Jay already had Wren.
She was safe, he would protect her. Right now, all I wanted was to savage the son of a bitch who hurt her.
Who’d hunted her and wanted to hurt her.
The fight didn’t last long. Beckett Rylan was great at bullying those weaker than him, but not us.
He didn’t have the strength or the dominance to take on one of us, much less both.
We dragged him up onto the shore, all of us soaking wet and him unconscious.
The temptation to just leave him there to freeze to death was real.
Finishing him off was also an option visible in Rhett’s feral eyes. I shook my head once and Rhett grimaced. “I know,” I told him on a growl. “Call the sheriff’s office. Report him for assault.”
“Fuck, that’s going to be paperwork.”
I could hardly blame Rhett for the snarl. Not when I felt it too.
“Tell them our omega is in heat, and we’re bonding.
He’s their problem, not ours.” Identifying Wren as our omega in paperwork could cause some problems, but I didn’t plan on us being here for them to take her name.
“If necessary, we’ll stop by in a few days once we’re free.
They can handle him until then.” If that meant he sat in their jail cell, well, how sad for him.
Leaving Rhett for a moment, I stalked back to where Jay held Wren. Knowing Jay had her was one thing, yet a very primitive part of me needed to see her, touch her, to assure myself she was safe. She was ours—mine, dammit and I needed to assure myself she was fine.
She was shaking, soaked through, her hair plastered to her face like riverweed.
Christ, she’d gone into the water. Her lips were pale, her skin clammy.
I could smell the cold on her — that sharp, metallic edge — but underneath it, the unmistakable sweetness of her heat. Faint, but rising. Damn it all.
“Jay, get her to the cabin,” I ordered, my voice coming out rougher than I meant. “Now. Get her warm. We’ll take care of this.”
He hesitated for half a second, his beta instincts all tangled up with protectiveness. Biological status aside, Jay adored her every bit as much as we did. But one look at me and he nodded. Wren swayed, and I caught her just long enough to steady her.
“Roan…” she chattered, voice trembling like broken glass. “What do you mean by… take care of?”
I cupped her chin, cold skin beneath colder fingers, and tilted her face up until her eyes met mine. Gods, those eyes. Copper infused whiskey like thawing ice.
“Trust me,” I said.
Then I kissed her. Not long, not deep, just enough to soothe us both. To remind her we were here, and she was safe, mine.
Her lashes fluttered. Her lips, trembling and a little blue, curved the smallest smile. It cracked open something raw in my chest I didn’t even know I’d been holding.
“As much as I’d like to kill him,” I said against her mouth, “we won’t. Not this time.”
Her soft thank you landed somewhere deep, not just words, but a thread. Acceptance. Bond. She was in my blood, because of course she was. It was how we’d known she’d needed us before. Why we’d pursued the thread to find her even when we hadn’t understood.
Alpha. Beta. Omega. Her designation had never mattered to me. She was mine. She would always be mine. We would be hers. Today—we would seal that bond permanently. After we dealt with the asshole.
“Go,” I told Jay again, and this time my voice left no room for argument.
He slipped an arm around her and started toward the cabin, both of them half-stumbling through the mud hardening with ice.
It wasn’t quite the snowy landscape it had been, the rain had melted a lot but this storm would bring more to blanket the frozen landscape. Wipe it clean.
But even through the cold and the chaos, her scent was a slow blooming, molten sweetness curling through the air. Her heat was coming on fast now. Probably as triggered by us as we were by it.
Jay would handle it, for now. He’d keep her warm.
Ease her. Rhett moved past me, caught Wren’s hand before she could leave entirely.
He didn’t say a word, just bent, brushed his lips to hers.
Rougher than mine. Fierce. Like he needed to taste her to believe she was alive. Not that I could blame him.
She made a small sound that was half sigh, half command. “Don’t be long.”
God help me, that tone nearly undid me.
Rhett and I exchanged a look, a silent agreement older than any team we’d ever played on.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I murmured.
Then we turned back to Rylan.
He was dragging himself up, blood on his teeth, eyes burning with something ugly and stupid. The kind of look a man wore when they’ve already lost but can’t admit it.
“Didn’t think you’d get here so fast,” he spat.
“Didn’t think you’d be dumb enough to come near what’s mine,” I said, stepping closer, cracking the ice off my gloves one finger at a time. “Guess we both underestimated something.”
Rhett laughed, low, dark, dangerous.
For a heartbeat, the forest went still. Just the wind whispering through the pines. In the distance, I could imagine the cabin door closing behind Jay and Wren. We weren’t that far if one took a direct route. Still, I trusted our beta with her. He would never let anything happen to her.
Standing there with my promise to her sitting heavy in my gut, I eyed Rylan. “Sheriff coming?” The question was for Rhett and surprise flickered over Rylan’s face. He spat out blood.
“Sheriff? You’re so—”
I didn’t let him finish the comment, I just slammed my fist into his face with every ounce of my strength behind it.
The feeling of bone crashing into bone vibrated up my arm.
I probably broke a knuckle or three. But I absolutely broke Rylan’s jaw.
He dropped like a sack of rocks, crumpling into a bloody, silent pile.
That was better.
Promising to not kill him didn’t mean I needed to listen to his bullshit.
“You’re sure we can’t kill him?” Rhett believed me, but his grumble almost made me laugh. I got it. I really did.
“If he ever touches her again,” I said, swearing it in blood. After we bonded her, after she wore our scent? “I’ll gut him without hesitation and we’ll be within our rights.”
Laws were strange things. Unbonded omegas had fewer protections than the bonded.
As archaic as that was, I also understood that played a huge role in Wren’s choices.
She wanted to live her life on her terms and not be dictated to by assholes like Rylan.
That she chose to let us bond her? Invited us to?
That was a gift I would treasure for the rest of my life.
“Good.” Rhett nodded. “The sheriff is on his way. Soon as we scent him…”
Agreed. Once the sheriff was here, Rylan was his problem. As Wren’s soon to be bonded alphas, we could press charges against Rylan easily enough. This wasn’t team rivalry or league politics, it was just blood and consequences.
She was ours.
Always.
Rhett
The sheriff looked like every small-town cliché ever written — big hat, thicker mustache, and that drawl that could stretch a syllable into a sermon. I used to roll my eyes at men like him. Still kind of did, honestly. But right then? I could’ve kissed him.
Not for his charm. For the simple fact that he was not Rylan.
He nodded like he’d seen this kind of thing before, alphas who went too far, omegas who got caught in the mess, and the rest of us trying not to tear the world apart in response.
“Press all the charges you want,” he said, his voice like gravel and tobacco. “Boy’s lucky you didn’t kill him outright.”
I almost laughed. Lucky didn’t even begin to cover it. If Roan hadn’t been the one holding the line, Rylan would’ve been fertilizer under the pines by now.
Then came the part that made me grind my teeth.
The sheriff tipped his hat toward the cabin in that lazy way of his and said, “If she’s yours, best finish bonding her right quick. Make it official. Save everyone the headache later.”
Alphas will be alphas, that was the subtext. Boys will be boys. A little omega panic, a little violence, nothing the world hadn’t seen before.
It should’ve pissed me off more than it did. Maybe it did. Right now it was a low, simmering thing in my gut that wanted to argue with the whole damned structure of how we’d built. But Roan’s hand brushed my shoulder, a subtle touch, and the fire cooled just enough.
“Let it go,” he murmured under his breath, eyes forward.
He was right. Wren was what mattered. Everything else could burn.
By the time the sheriff and the ranger climbed back into their truck, my head was already somewhere else. Or more accurately on someone else.
Wren.
The thought of her hit me all at once, low and deep and visceral. She was alive. Safe. Waiting.
For us.
We didn’t talk on the way back to the cabin. Didn’t need to. The air between Roan and me was charged, humming with the same single thought: claim her.
Snow crunched under our boots, wet clothes sticking to our skin. The moment we stepped inside, heat from the cabin’s fireplace hit us, all rich and smoky and thick with the scent of her. Her heat had deepened, lush and heady, curling through the air like a drug.
Then I heard it.
Her cry.
A sound that made my heart slam against my ribs and my cock go hard in the same instant.
It wasn’t a cry of pain. Oh, no. It was that soft, broken sound omegas make when they’re coming undone.