Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Beck
By some small fucking miracle, we’d pulled off a win and were moving on to the championships. We hadn’t been at our best, our minds on Kayla most of the time, but we were so good this season that didn’t matter.
I’d checked my phone several times, but I hadn’t heard a peep from her, even though I’d told her to text us every hour. Rio said that was a bit overreaching, and maybe it was, but I couldn’t stop the worry from eating me.
She should have at least texted once to check in by now. It was nearly eight in the evening. I understood she wanted independence, but she needed to understand that our alpha instincts needed somewhat frequent assurance she was okay.
I was just about to text her and say as much when Brian came up beside me and nudged me with his fucking elbow. The urge to punch him in the goddamn face was so strong I nearly broke my phone from squeezing it so tight.
We hadn’t seen him since the practice when I’d fired him. But I couldn’t legally fire him until the end of the season when his contract was up. Sports teams fired coaches and managers midseason all the time, but there wasn’t any reason I could share with our lawyer as to why.
It was the last time I ever trusted anyone with some important aspect of my life. So far, we’d been lucky that the people we worked with took the utmost care in doing their jobs.
Brian’s mistake had at least worked out in the end.
“Will you stop checking your damn phone? We have an interview in five minutes in the media room. I need you to be focused.” Brian was walking next to me as we went through the tunnel toward our private locker room.
“We? You don’t have an interview.” I went back to looking at my phone because… fuck him.
Brian let out a huff like he was trying to blow something down. “There’s no reception out here anyway.”
As soon as the words left his mouth and we stepped into the locker room where Rio, Kane, and Rylan already were, my phone pinged with notifications. I didn’t need to listen to know they weren’t good.
The growls, anxiety, and anger coming from my three packmates all at once told me all I needed to know.
“Out.” I turned to Brian and put my hand in the center of his chest, pushing him back toward the door.
“What? We need to quickly debrief before you go to your interview.” Brian ducked out from under my arm.
“Cancel it. Now, get out.” I rarely used my alpha bark during business, but Brian was long overdue to be barked at.
Brian paled, and he backed toward the door. “Beckett, what the fu-”
“Get out or I will punch you in the goddamn face!” My bark growl combo did the trick, and he ran out with his tail between his legs.
The loud bang of a fist hitting metal rang out in the locker room, and I spun around, finding Kane punching the shit out of the siding on his locker. “This is all my fucking fault!”
Rio grabbed his arm before he could do any more damage. “Stop.”
“What the fuck happened?” I glanced at my phone to find a voicemail and voice message from Kayla. “Fuck. There wasn’t any reception in the stadium, and I didn’t even realize!”
“She’s in heat. We need to go.” Rylan was already out of his uniform and pulling on a pair of sweatpants. “I’ll call and see if we can get on a flight in the next hour.”
I toed off the cleats and brought my phone to my ear to listen to the voicemail she’d sent hours ago. “Hey. I uh... Can you come home? It’s um... fuck. It’s hitting me hard, and I just need... please.”
The pain in her voice fucking broke me.
I quickly changed out of my uniform, my mind on one thing and one thing only: getting to Kayla.
“She’s not answering her phone.” Rio had his bag already slung over his shoulder. “Our driver is waiting for us outside the athlete exit and we’ll stop by the hotel to grab our stuff and check out before going to the airport.”
“There’s no time for that.” Kane still didn’t have a shirt or shoes on but was heading for the door.
Rylan put himself between Kane and the door, his ear plastered to his phone. “Well, when can you fucking get us a plane or a helicopter? Approval? Do you know who we fucking are?”
We were losing our minds and I needed to take charge before one of us did something really stupid.
I tugged on my shirt and then grabbed the phone from Rylan. “This is Beckett Thomas. We need something approved for an emergency. What can you do for us? Are there commercial flights available? We are going to Burbank or LAX.”
Buying our own damn private plane was now moving to the top of my priority list.
“They are booked solid. The best I can do is three hours from now. That’s when we’ll have a plane available and can get it here.” The man on the phone sounded like he would rather be talking to anyone else other than pissed off alphas. “Will that be good for you?”
“It’ll have to be.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to think of any other way we could get to Kayla faster.
“I recommend getting here as soon as possible in case we’re able to accommodate you. There’s just four of you?”
“Yes. We’ll be there soon. Thank you.” I hung up and shoved the phone into Rylan’s chest. “Calm down. We all just need to calm down. Put on your clothes and shoes. We’ll swing by the hotel on the way, and then hopefully something will be available sooner.”
I didn’t bark, but my voice was sure and firm, which was what this pack needed if we wanted to make it to Kayla in one piece. The last thing we needed was for one of us to lose it and end up on a no-fly list or worse, arrested.
We finished changing as fast as possible and headed out the athlete’s entrance. Since we were supposed to be in a press conference about our win, no one was waiting to snap pictures or ask us questions, so we made it into the SUV with no fanfare.
Our stop at the hotel was quick, just long enough to throw our shit in our bags and check out before we were back in the car and on the way to the airport.
We all kept calling Kayla, but she didn’t answer. I didn’t think I could wait, at best, two or three hours to make sure she was okay.
“We need to get cameras installed in the house as soon as her heat is over. Let’s call Michelle and see if she’ll go over and check on her.” Rio was scrolling through his phone as if the answers to all our problems were inside it.
Michelle was our publicist, but even so, I didn’t trust anyone to go into our house when our omega was in heat. “No. What good will that do?”
“What if she’s hurt?” Kane had been dead silent since the locker room.
“Then what? They cart her off to the hospital where we can’t protect her? She’s probably sleeping or left her phone somewhere.” I was sure of one thing, no one was touching our girl but us. “Her heat just started today, or maybe last night. She isn’t going to die.”
I didn’t think.
I blocked out all the emotions coming through the pack bond we shared, unable to handle them any longer along with my own.
The SUV pulled into the parking lot of the private jet terminal of the airport and we piled out, grabbed our bags from the back, and rushed inside.
Once we got on a plane, it would take about two hours to get to L.A.
and then another twenty or thirty minutes to get to our house if we landed in Burbank.
It was nine o’clock, so the terminal was empty besides us. I marched right up to the counter and waited patiently for the man to look up from his computer, but I only had so much patience. And that patience was two seconds.
“Excuse me. I’m Beckett Thomas.”
The guy finally looked up and glanced over at the rest of my pack, who had moved into the waiting area. “That was fast. I have some good news and some bad news.”
I couldn’t stop the growl from coming out. “What’s the bad news?”
He didn’t seem put off at all by my growl. “The good news is there’s a plane landing in an hour. The bad news is it needs fuel and some minor maintenance before it can take off again, so the best we can do on such short notice is a departure time of eleven-thirty.”
“What about this plane that’s right outside? It looks like they are getting ready to leave. We can pay whatever is necessary.” Rio came to stand next to me at the counter and I was grateful because I was about to bite the guy’s head off.
“I’m afraid that’s a private plane that isn’t part of our fleet. We have coffee, water, and snacks while you wait.”
Rio tugged me away as my fist curled around the handle of my suitcase. “We can have Omega Protective Services check in on her. It’s going to be fine.”
I sat down heavily next to Kane and put my head in my hands, feeling defeated. My job was to protect my pack, and right then, I was doing a shit job of it. Maybe we should call OPS to check on Kayla. But then what? They take her away because we couldn’t take care of her?
Honking came from the parking lot and a party bus pulled up outside the door. Four women came down the steps dressed to the nines in minidresses and high heels that would break a neck.
They stood off to the side giggling and squealing, and then I saw why. Payne, Alvaro, Cal, and Tate of N’Pact came down the steps.
I personally didn’t see their appeal, but women and a lot of men went nuts over them and they ate it up like it was a feast laid before them.
We’d met them a few times when they’d invited us to parties at their house, but none of us were into dealing with the type of betas that followed them around.
“I am not in the mood to deal with a bunch of knottyboppers right now.” Rylan slumped further in his seat. “Maybe they won’t notice us.”
“Oh my God! It’s the Killer Gnomes!” one of the women shrieked as soon as they walked in the door.
“My ears are bleeding,” Kane muttered. “Shoot me now.”
“Do you think they just picked those chicks up from the stadium?” Rio crossed his arms and watched them all gather around the check-in desk with the band.
“Probably.” I stood to pace, unable to sit still, and tried calling Kayla again. It went straight to voicemail. What did that mean? Had she turned it off? Did the battery die?
“All right, ladies, take a seat in the beta area. We’ll board in ten minutes.” Alvaro, the leader of their pack, gestured to the other side of the waiting room.
There wasn’t a beta area in this small terminal.
I shook my head as they came and sat in the seats across from where we were sitting, eyeing us with curiosity. We should have been over the moon at our win, but we looked like a bunch of depressed assholes ready to snap at any moment.
My phone rang and Brian’s name flashed on the screen. I wanted to decline his call but also wanted him to leave us alone for the foreseeable future. “What?”
“You’re canceling all of your media for tomorrow?” He was pissed and not a single ounce of me cared. “You have contractual obligations to uphold. What about the photoshoot for Alpha Heat Magazine? It’s for the cover!”
“If they can’t understand that we need to get home to our omega, they can fuck off. We’re also canceling our practices.”
“You barely won your games today. We need to be on the practice field every day until the championship game.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard come out of your mouth. Do you want us to lose? We need rest, and we also need to be with our omega.”
“Oh, so now you want her. Is that why you’ve run off? What did she do? Spread her legs and now all of a sudden you love her?”
I growled, the chatter from the band and the girls they brought going silent. “You don’t get to talk about her like that.”
“Why? She’s affecting something we’ve worked hard for all season! Is she in heat? Is that what this is?”
“That’s none of your fucking business. The championship doesn’t matter if she needs us!” I was clutching the phone so tight I swear I heard a crack. “We’ll forfeit if we need to.”
“No, no! This is great news! Her starting her heat is perfect to give us the extra boost we need to seal the win. The championships are in Los Angeles, so you wouldn’t have to be gone from her for long. What would be even better is if you bonded with her.”
Was he actually fucking serious?
“I’m hanging up now.” I hung up and threw my phone in my seat. “Motherfucker is going to get punched in the face.”
“I’ll hold him for you,” Rio agreed.
“You guys having a rough time with your new omega?” Tate seemed unsure if he should ask, but the kindness in his blue eyes didn’t go unnoticed by me. I couldn’t be mad that he was asking.
“Just trying to get to her. She um… unexpectedly went into heat. We can’t get ahold of her and there’s no plane available until almost midnight.” I stopped at the window, looking out at the tarmac. “There isn’t a chance you’re flying back to L.A., is there? Maybe we can catch a ride.”
“There are only eight seats,” Payne, the one member of N’Pact that didn’t quite fit with his black hair in his eyes, black eyeliner and nails, and tattoos covering most of his visible skin said.
“But I’m down to kick the chicks off the flight.
They’re hot, but too damn loud and lacking some brain cells from too much hairspray. ”
“Should the celibate one really be making these kinds of decisions for the pack?” Cal, who had a crazy glint in his eye, turned to Alvaro. “Let’s vote.”
Alvaro rolled his eyes and stood, walking toward the girls. “Ladies, I’m afraid we have bad news. There’s just not room for you on the flight anymore.”
“Aww, but Alvie.” One of the women whined like pretending to be an omega would help her cause.
“What did you just call me?” he growled, stepping closer to her. She shrank back in her seat. “My name is Alvaro to the likes of you. Now get out of here before I call our security.”
I didn’t know what the hell that was about, but I wasn’t about to ask.
“Fucking groupies,” Payne grumbled.
“You don’t know how much this means to us. Thank you.” I extended my hand to Alvaro as he walked back toward us. “We owe you.”
Alvaro shook my hand and then reached for my bag. “Come on. Let’s get you home to your omega.”