Chapter 7 Cyn
Cyn
Ileap down, and only her quick reflexes save us from our watery grave. Or at least an icy dousing.
“Are you insane? Are you trying to kill me now? Ruining my life wasn’t enough?”
I open my mouth, but I can’t respond. All I can do is stare at her because we’re pressed together from thigh to chest. And I can smell a faint trace of peanut butter cookies.
“Get off me!”
I struggle back, trying to give her space, but as soon as I let go, she slips. I catch her and haul her back up into my arms.
“Cyn,” she growls, her eyes darkening.
I wish they’d darken in another way, but it’s just anger that shines back at me now.
“Sorry, I thought you had fallen in.”
“So, your instinctive reaction is to jump in after me? That’s the worst thing you can do, for the record.”
“I…” I open and close my mouth because she’s right. What is wrong with me? I would have jumped in to save her. Hell, I didn’t think; I just reacted. I wouldn’t have jumped in for anyone but my pack and now, apparently, her.
That’s uncomfortable, and I don’t want to think about it.
“Oh, shit!”
I follow her gaze and see our water bottles floating down the river at breakneck speed.
Before I can speak, Rory jumps into the water.
“RORY!” Bonnie screams his name. She struggles out of my arms and launches up, following the river along the bank. “You bloody idiot. Stupid goddamn dumbass alphas.”
I’m right behind her, with Dakota and Vale on our heels.
“Swim, Rory!” Kota shouts.
“Leave the bottles, Alpha, and grab the tree. Swim now. Kick hard. Propel yourself out of the water.”
Rory ignores her.
Vale looks almost as angry as Bonnie does.
I wonder who’s going to kill him first, but, to my intense relief, he catches the water bottles and manages to catch a low-lying branch, throwing himself up and out of the water.
He hangs there for a moment, clinging to the branch, his lower legs still dangling in the river, and then he swings up and starts sliding towards the bank.
When he gets to us, Bonnie is almost shaking with rage. Her lips are white, her hands clenched, and I think I can hear a shrill whistling sound emanating from her.
“Bonnie?”
Rory dumps the bottles and walks past her.
She growls and leaps after him, grabbing his arm and swinging him around.
“Never, ever do that again!”
He glowers at her, doesn’t even answer, just stares at her before he slowly lowers his eyes to where she’s touching him.
“This is my job, and you are my responsibility. I’m not going to explain to your family why you drowned in a river due to your own stupidity.”
“I saved you-”
“You fucking saved your pride,” Bonnie snaps back.
“It would have taken me a couple of hours to go back to camp and get replacements. There is no place for heroes on this adventure. A hero is just an idiot who dies young and leaves his family in mourning, so smarten up, Rory Aster, or go the fuck home.”
She whips around, snatching up the bottles. She goes to the edge of the river and starts filling them.
“Kevin, Rojer, you’re carrying the water for the first half of the trek,” Bonnie snaps.
Rojer simply smiles and picks up one of the containers. I turn to say something to Bonnie, but she’s already climbing the path like a mountain goat. There and gone.
I rub my face and turn just in time to see Vale grab Rory’s wet shirt and yank him up against him, kissing him hard.
“You idiot,” Vale hisses.
“We can’t lose this chance; it’s too perfect. We’ll never get another,” Rory murmurs back. His hand finds Vale’s ass cheek, and he squeezes hard.
He’s right. Oh, I know he’s right, but, damn, the way my heart is racing. Kota looks sick, too. He wipes his mouth and indicates the path. “We'd better get back and get you some dry clothes, Roar.”
Rory does look cold; he’s shivering.
I strip out of my long-sleeve top and toss it to Vale as I pull Rory’s wet T-shirt off him. Kota uses my top to dry him off a bit, and then, they bundle him up in Vale’s hoodie.
“Best we can do until we get back,” Vale mutters unhappily.
I take up the rear. Everything about this trip has been going wrong, and I feel out of sorts, like a house of cards that’s on the verge of tumbling down.
Walking back into camp has me shocked by the transformation. The tents are up, Bonnie is snapping orders, and, to my surprise, people are listening and obeying her.
Meg is directing a group of people in tending the fire, while Desi cuts up something and puts it into an enormous pot.
Rory goes straight to where he left his sleeping bag but pauses when he can’t find it.
“Hurry up and strip off, Alpha, and give me your clothes,” Bonnie says in a way that does not, under any circumstances, sound like she might want anything else but those clothes.
Rory looks around and then bends over, undoes his boots, and strips off, handing her all his clothes, and I mean all his clothes, including Vale’s dry hoodie, that she tosses back at his face.
She doesn’t bat an eye at his nakedness. Her eyes don’t even flicker down, though a whole lot of the rest of the people here do.
“Happy?” Rory growls.
“Ecstatic,” she says blandly, turns on her heel and throws his clothes over a rope that stretches across the clearing. It’s just to the side of the fire.
I’m not sure I even like her. This version of her is so cold and harsh.
But she’s compelling, like a fire or a flood.
I just keep wondering what she’s going to destroy next.
“Cyn?”
I turn and find Vale standing beside me.
“Time to get ready,” Vale prompts.
I snap back into work mode, noticing that Rory has disappeared into the tent.
“Can I help you?” I ask Desi.
He looks at me all suspicious-like and then shrugs and passes me a bowl of spuds and a knife.
Ah, cool, something I’m good at. I start peeling the potatoes with ease.
“So, today was a delightful walk, but it gets harder, right? I’ve never been out here before.”
“Oh, it’s going to get so much harder. You’re going to regret coming out here before you end up loving it.”
I nod and smile, only half paying attention to him as I watch everyone else.
“Am I going to get fleas?” Kendall asks plaintively.
“The trek is going to take us deeper into the wild; we’ll be following a circular route. Rafting at one point.”
I know all this, but I pretend I don’t.
“Are there any spots that are really dangerous?” I ask. “It’s just with Rory falling in the river, I’m a bit worried.”
Desi straightens, looking around until he finds Bonnie. “Rory fell in the river?”
“Well, jumped. There was a situation. I thought Bonnie might have fallen in, and I jumped down to help her.” I shrug aiming for nonchalance.
“And I toppled the water containers into the water. Rory just reacted, but it’s got me feeling a bit nervous.
I mean, the most danger I put myself in is from a paper cut. ”
I wish I didn’t lie so convincingly, but people believe me so easily, it’s their own fault, really.
Desi scowls at Bonnie. “There are a few places, but don’t worry, Bonnie, Meg, and I haven’t lost a single person yet, and that is a record we pride ourselves on.”
“Oh, that’s a relief.”
Desi relaxes, but I can tell he’s still irritated, and now Meg and Bonnie can feel it, too, though the latter is doing an amazing job at pretending she can’t see us.
“The toughest parts of the hike are day three, when we have to go down the rapids, and then we walk along the river for a while. Day seven is when we climb to a higher altitude and follow some trails up to some absolutely stunning views.”
“I’m looking forward to seeing the rapids.”
Desi blinks and peels another potato absently.
“Days twelve and thirteen, we have a massive ascent as we start heading for the pass and making our way back here.”
I swallow hard and try to look intimidated by the very idea of facing it. I guess it works because Desi smiles.
“Don’t worry, I’ve got you, Cyn. After that, we’ve got a fairly simple walk back; it just has some easy to slip moments. Especially on day eighteen, that’s when we go through Colson’s Pass.”
“Colson’s Pass?”
“Yes, it’s an elevated pass of sheer rock. We go straight through the middle and then have to follow a tiny trail around the summit and down the other side. There’s a tiny rock wall we need to descend, that’s where we will let everyone try abseiling.”
“Wow.”
Bonnie scowls at me as if she knows what I’m doing.
I wait until I know no one is watching and wink at her.
The stick in her hand snaps, scaring several people around her.
She rushes to reassure them. I bite the inside of my cheek so I don’t have to explain to Desi why I’m watching the omega so intently.
“So, you have a history with Bonnie, then?”
I startle, turning my entire focus back to Desi. “No, not really.”
“She was your-”
“I met her on the red carpet for less than ten seconds. She wasn’t mine.”
“Scent matches-”
“I don’t believe in scent matches,” I say, but I’m staring at her. “Scent match is an excuse one person uses to control another. Now, partnership is a word I can get behind.”
“You hurt her,” Desi says coldly. “Meg told me all about it. If you hurt her again, I will make sure none of you makes it off Colson’s Pass.”
“I won’t hurt her,” I promise. “Everything went wrong back then. It was sudden and unexpected. There were cameras, and we handled it poorly. I am deeply sorry for what the press did, but the pain inflicted on her was not by our design. I would never do that to someone.”
A part of me is being honest, but the rest of me is lying. I would do it; I did do it. And I would do it again.
We could have stopped it at any time; instead, we leaned into driving her and her family as far away from us as we could make them run.
Sometimes, I lie in bed at night reliving those days and wondering if it was the right decision. Maybe we should have handled it more discreetly. But hindsight is twenty/twenty.
“Well, that’s me sorted. But if you do hurt her, it’s not me you have to watch out for. Those two omegas are savage as fuck. Fair warning, they’ll take your balls and wear them as dangly earrings just for shits and giggles.”
The image is…a strong one.
The fire sends sparks into the air, and our colleagues gather close to the heat as darkness falls.
The food cooks, and we eat, but I find myself watching her, studying her. I want to look away, but she’s captivating, with the quiet fortitude she has around her, capable, strong.
Not at all like the frilly little cupcake omega we met so long ago. And definitely not who the press painted her to be.
Who is she really?
It’s at that point that Greg projectile vomits into the fire.
The smell is horrendous, but worse are the piercing shrieks of Arissa Moseman. She’s loud and can talk with a mouthful of marbles, but these shrieks are out of this world.
It takes a split second to realise she’s been covered in vomit. It would appear that when Greg tried to turn, he sprayed her and then the fire.
I wince as her wails get louder.
It’s Desi who rushes to her rescue, while Meg deals with Greg.
Bonnie stands up and disappears.
Now where is she going?
I try to slip into the dark, but Desi calls out to me sharply.
“Cyn, can you grab the spare water?”
I glance to where she disappeared with frustration but turn back to Desi. “Of course.”
Desi finally looks away from me, he knew what I was going to do and stopped me. I won’t underestimate him again.
Bonnie doesn’t return for hours. Not that I was watching.