12. No Turning Back
No Turning Back
Evangeline
Anger surges the more I watch them. Her laughing, touching and breathing in my mate.
It’s too bad I can’t see what is happening in the car.
Lucky for them though, I was this close to stabbing both of them.
Thankfully, she runs from the car like it’s on fire and her life can be spared.
My mate’s fate is yet to be determined. I can’t let him get away.
Not after that display. I need to know where he goes at night.
Is he working late? Does he get drunk at bars and pick up Betas?
I can’t keep going with these gaps in my knowledge about him.
A taxi swerves around the corner, and I throw myself into the road. The bright pink car with a light up sign blares its horn and skids to a stop, the hood seconds away from being my doom.
I dive into the backseat. Pleasantly surprised to find the fabric plush, soft, and an even brighter pink beneath me.
“Fucking hell! Are you being chased?” The driver screams.
She sticks her head out of the window, eyes darting as she looks for my assailant.
“No. So, weird request, but—”
A black car drives past us, and I know it’s him.
“—follow that car!”
I slam into the back of the driver’s seat with the force she takes off. I wrap my arms around it and her. Our combined laughs echo through the small space. Her eyes meet mine through the mirror, matching smiles etched onto our faces.
“Fuck yes! Buckle up. I won’t lose them.” She leans forward and increases speed.
I am going to give her the biggest tip after this, and I may demand her friendship.
* * *
I’ve done some questionable things in my life, but as I count the 57th camera, I start to believe this is the most insane.
I have to find out what else I don’t know about him.
Good thing too. I don’t know what I expected, but it sure as shit wasn’t a horror castle in the woods and babies.
I know I don’t exactly love his apartment.
It’s a little cold and sterile for me, but this is too much.
I feel like the victim in a fantasy horror movie.
Taken to the castle in the woods to be hunted and killed.
I want more cottages and fairies. I don’t easily get spooked, but as I move around unfamiliar woods with the painful knowledge that I’m probably being watched, I do feel a little out of my element.
I wouldn’t say scared (I would mean it, but I wouldn’t say it), but I do worry that I may have made a mistake coming here.
The closer I get, the more security I spot, and it makes sense. He does own a security company, and his apartment was strangely easy to get into. Maybe he really lives here? That’s why he’s rarely at home.
My heart warms with love and hate at the sight of him playing with the babies. I could have watched him for hours. He gathers them up in his arms, and they look so much smaller bundled against his chest than they did on the floor. They disappear, moving up the stairs and out of sight.
I duck behind a bush below the window and catch a glint of light high up in a tree. The longer I look, the more cameras I see, and I know I must have missed some. He probably already knows I’m here. The element of surprise is gone, but I am full of surprises.
I don’t know what I plan on doing next.
I scan the outside, keeping low and close to the tree line so I know I have an escape.
A single tree leans slightly away from the house compared to the others, but the positioning is perfect.
I find my footing and push myself up. Bark scrapes my palms, and my knees tremble as I try to find a ledge for my fingers to hang onto.
The autumn cold whips at me, but at least I don’t have to compete with leaves.
With one leg dangling, I stretch until my fingers graze a low-hanging branch.
I test its weight. It doesn’t budge. With a deep breath in and out, I lunge.
My arms wrap around the solid wood, and I swing.
My hair blows in front of my face, but I don’t need to see.
I close my eyes and heave up, using all my strength to pull until my stomach folds over the branch.
Fuck jeans.
For a moment I dangle there.
Once my heart steadies, I keep going. One leg over and I shimmy to the trunk. I have never regretted my choice in clothes more than I do right now.
Up and up and up. The wind has thankfully calmed down, but the air is colder. The branches are getting thinner, but it doesn’t matter. I stare at my target. The window.
Now that I’m eye level with the second floor, all I have to do is make the jump.
I look down. It’s not as high as the clock tower, but the gap between the tree and the window is much larger. Not to mention, there’s not much to hold on to on the other side.
I brace myself and move along the branch until it shakes. My fingers tremble, and my stomach tightens. Adrenaline courses through my veins. This is more exciting than scaring Alpha Henri.
I jump.
I plummet.
My vision blurs, and my arms spiral, trying to catch onto anything other than air.
With a thud, I land. Hard.
My lungs are on fire, and I need to breathe, but the air won’t come.
Cold tears stream down my face, and pain blooms over my fingers and arms.
Are they broken? Did I collapse a lung?
Air leaks through, and the dregs of oxygen go straight to my brain. My vision clears, and my fingers flex.
Stone scrapes at my skin, and as I manage a first proper breath, I look down.
I did it.
Hunched over, I’m clutching the stone windowsill, my stomach pressing into the stone ledge.
My ribs scream and my muscles ache. With great effort, I manage to lift my leg, balancing my knee beside me.
One hand slowly lets go, testing my balance.
Since I didn’t plummet to my death, I quickly pull my knife from my pocket.
I wedge it under the seam and wiggle until the metal latch slides from its place. Much like the clock tower, the window has been painted over, so it takes a few breath holding seconds to cut along the sides enough for the pane to come free.
Thankfully, it slides up, and I slip inside. It only hits me as my cold, numb, trembling body hits the floor that the windows are definitely alarmed and I might as well have come in the front door.
“I love you.”
My heart clenches and my head spins towards the open door. But he’s not speaking to me.
With all the strength I have left (almost zero) I crawl across the floor.
“Love, Cas!”
“I love you too, King.”
“No.”
I can’t help but chuckle. Here I am on the floor, and my mate is trying to convince a baby to love him.
“I love you.”
“Love, Mama.”
“I love you.” He sighs.
“Love, Dada.”
The little grumble my Alpha makes kind of makes me love this kid too.
“I love you. Come on, just say it.”
“Love—”
Alpha Cassius steps closer, and the scent of cut grass sweeps over me.
“—Jes!”
His shoulders drop, and he leans over, placing a kiss on the meddlesome baby’s head.
“You’ll love me one day.”
I must be way more fucked up that I realise, because I am one hundred per cent jealous of a child.
I duck behind the corner as he turns to leave.
“No.” he shouts with joy and I have to bite my tongue and remind myself that I’m angry.
These babies could be his, or not. Either way, he went on a date with another Omega tonight, despite knowing I exist.
I move like his shadow. Stalking him as we move further from the room.
I hide in the darkness as he pours himself a glass of dark liquid, swallowing it whole.
The only light is the white glare from the moon through the window.
It illuminates his face in a way that makes me want to scream.
Does he have to be so perfect? A strong jaw and a straight nose that look like they have been chiselled from marble.
His mouth was made to smirk, and his scent—
It’s mouth watering.
My whole body is on fire, my lungs fill with his smoke, and I can breathe for the first time.
I step closer.
My fingers tremble around the hilt of my knife.
Blood pours over my hands. Sticky, warm, and slippery. His screams echo in the room and in my mind. But I don’t stop it from letting me plunge the knife back in. The spurting is weaker now, but no less gross. His stomach convulses under me as he takes his last wretched breath.
I shake my head.
I am not stabbing my mate.
Really?
Yes, really!
He’s taller than I thought he would be. I take my time, silently staring at the expanse of his back, broad shoulder, strong arms, a long torso leading to a trimmed waist. No wonder they keep putting him on magazines.
With a run, I leap, wrapping my arms and legs around him. My knife digs into the flesh of his neck, resting against his scent gland.
My skin tingles at the contact, and my core clenches, but I ignore it, leaning in close to his ear and whispering.
“Does Omega Sadie know you have kids?”
I peer over his shoulder and watch our reflections clearly in the glass of the window.
He smirks, his tongue darting out and licking his lip as his eyes wander over us and land on the metal.
“Whose babies are they?” I ask, pushing the knife.
“My nephews.” He chuckles, tilting his neck further into the knife and looking over his shoulder at me.
“If you don’t believe me, I can show you pictures of my brother’s pack.”
I drop the knife and prepare to let him go, but he spins around, locking me in his arms. Face to face, chest to chest. My heart pounds.
With a gentle, large hand, he cups my cheek, his fingers caressing as he stares into my eyes. So blue. Deep, with grey flecks, an ocean during a storm.
“Did you follow me all the way here?”
He sounds amused, pleased. It shouldn’t stir up something inside me, but, fuck, it does.
“Yes, and you would have done the same if you saw your mate on a date with someone else. I had to know what else you were hiding.” I accuse. The anger that had faded comes back in full force.
“I had to make you come out somehow.”
I scoff. He tricked me. Baited me into doing what he wanted. I’m not nearly as mysterious as I think I am.
“And holding a knife to my neck? Is that something I should do to my mate?” His voice purrs. The rumble vibrates through me and deep into my body.
“I had questions that I needed answers to. What did you expect me to do?” I scowl, but it only makes him smile more.
“Like, ‘Whose babies are they’?”
“Yes,” I grumble.
I try to wiggle out of his hold, but his arms tighten around me. I glance at the floor and see my knife lying there. So close, yet so far. I’m not going anywhere, not until he lets me.
“Do you like babies?”
“Yes.”
“Huh.” His eyes widen a little in surprise.
“Why are you shocked?”
“You’re just not like other Omegas. I wasn’t sure you would be interested.”
The assumption digs at me more than I would like to admit.
“I am exactly like other Omegas. A completely individual person.” Putrid anger practically vibrates out of me as I snarl the words like a feral Omega I fear I will become.
He grabs my chin, forcing me to look directly at him. His thumb strokes my lip, and he groans.
“You are completely unique. You’re perfect, and I have been looking for you for a very long time, my mate.”
“You’re my mate when I want you to be.”
He smiles wide and terrifying. Slowly he lets me go, sliding my body down the length of his, rubbing his scent over me until all I can see is smoke and fog.
He lunges, and my head spins, trying to follow his quick movements.
He pushes himself back against me, only this time my knife is in his hand.
The cold metal trails a sharp path down the length of my throat.
His fingers follow, soothing the sting but burning my skin in their wake.
He opens my palm, placing the hilt in the centre, and wraps my fingers and his own around it. The Alpha drops to his knees and forces my hand to lift the knife up to his throat. He pushes himself into it, nicking his skin. I stare at the drops of blood as they stain his sun-kissed skin.
His hand slides into my hair and pulls.
I arch against him, my breath shallow and rapid.
The heat of his breath licks at my skin as he runs his nose along my scent gland. I perfume. The spicy scent wraps around us, and I tremble from the force. His lips move against me as he speaks. The words are low and permeated with an intense, possessive growl.
“No. That’s not how this works. You’re not in control here. You came to me, and now that you’ve shown yourself, you don’t get to back out of this. You are my mate, and you’re not running from me again.”