18. Cas
CAS
Waiting to be kicked out of the McLeod pack becomes, inexplicably, boring. There’s little to do in my bedroom prison other than contemplate my fate. Nathan’s fate. Kato’s. It’s like a coin has been flipped and it’s hanging in the air.
Heads: I’m pregnant and we all die.
Tails: I’m not pregnant and we live, but Nate and I are separated from Kato anyway.
Neither seems a particularly good outcome.
Living is better, but living without one of my mates?
We’ve barely been mates and already I know it will destroy us all.
Numbness settles in as I go over it from every angle.
Maybe I can suck up my fear of Bash and we can appeal Declan’s decision with the council.
Maybe Kato can tell his uncle to shove it and leave the pack with us. Maybe maybe maybe.
The coin is still in the air and all I have are uncertainties.
I spend most of the day tying and untying my ribbons around my wrists and thighs and ankles, imagining instead that it’s Nathan and Kato who are lovingly winding them around my limbs. Even the soft silk of the ribbons does little to comfort me when all I have is time to worry.
As evening approaches, I’m huddled under the duvet when I hear footsteps. This is the most interesting thing to happen in hours. I cock my head, hoping for the light, tentative steps I associate with Eden. No luck. These ones are so heavy they could shake the house on its foundations.
Declan is the last person I expect to receive a solo visit from. Until now, he’s only supervised Eden’s meal deliveries a couple of times, waiting outside the door like a looming spectre. I’d have assumed the alpha thought I stank with the way his nose wrinkled every time he saw me.
When he enters the room, Declan’s expression is one of disgust. No change, then.
“You’ve been nothing but trouble since you arrived,” he says in lieu of a greeting.
“I didn’t arrive,” I say, “so much as I was brought here.”
“I’m not here to argue semantics.”
“Why are you here, then?” I ask tiredly. I’m not in the mood for games, the ache in my body from being separated from my mates making me irritable.
Declan narrows his eyes. “We’re going on a wee walk.”
“The kind of walk I won’t return from?”
He doesn’t answer my question. I don’t know if that’s good news or not. Instead, he gestures to the open door. “Move.”
My feet take the steps even though every fibre of my being tells me to stay in the safety of the room, to curl up in the corner and cover myself in blankets, to hide from the dangerous shifter in my midst. However, Declan could command me or carry me out easily enough if he wanted.
Better to go of my own free will. At least then I can maintain a modicum of self-respect.
So I walk out of the room, head held high, trying desperately not to flinch at Declan’s proximity.
He takes me through his big house, stomping down the stairs and along the stretching hallway until we get to the entrance.
Eden is hovering near the doorway, arms wrapped around his middle.
He seems smaller than usual. His anxious gaze meets mine and I try to muster up something that looks like reassurance.
Fuck knows why I’m the one reassuring him, but clearly I’m not immune to his angelic face. I don’t like seeing the crease of worry between his brows, or how he gnaws on his lower lip.
“Where are you going?” he asks, his voice so shaky I’m surprised he managed to get the words out at all.
“Stay here,” Declan commands, a tendril of alpha command in his voice.
Eden takes in a short, sharp gasp of air. “Alpha—”
Declan pushes me towards the front door. “No, Eden. Be quiet and do as you’re told.”
Emotion clogs my throat at Eden’s kicked-dog expression as he leans back against the wall. He doesn’t tear his eyes from me, so I turn my head, forcibly looking away. It makes it easier to walk out, even though I can feel Eden staring after us.
Declan follows close behind, steering me out of his sprawling garden and away from the village, along a thin, foot-trodden path that’s barely wide enough to accommodate us both.
It’s overgrown with blackberry canes on either side.
The thorns tear at my clothing, snarling in my oversized grey jumper.
I glance at Declan out of the corner of my eye, but he’s focused on the direction in which we’re heading.
With every step I take away from the village, my heart breaks a little more.
Has he gone back on his word to exile Nathan and me?
If Declan kills me in cold blood today, there won’t be any escaping a terrible fate for my mates.
I stumble as I walk, earning me a shove and a growled, “Get a move on,” from Declan. I barely notice it as my mind races, considering the possibility of escape.
I shiver as we walk, even though I’m heating up from the pace Declan is setting. My thoughts, as I face what might be my final moments, drift to my parents.
They were rarely apart. Together through thick and thin, right until the end.
When they were killed five years ago—by illegal traps set by humans—I thought I’d die too, the pain of losing my only family enough to shove me off this mortal coil.
In recent months there were many times I thought it would have been better if I had.
Sticky wetness on my hand alerts me to the fact that I’ve pulled so hard on a bit of loose skin around one of my cuticles that I’m bleeding. I stick my finger in my mouth to soothe it, the metallic tang of blood sickening me. It reminds me far too much of the smell of the place Bash kept me.
Even as Declan marches me further towards the edge of his territory, he maintains his rigid posture.
His face hasn’t budged from his usual frown.
I think about the other times I’ve seen him in my short time here, and I realise he’s never so much as cracked a smile.
Not once, not even when looking at Eden.
Must be exhausting to be such a prick.
“Hurry up,” he grunts, grabbing hold of my bicep and yanking me forward. I’m barely dragging my feet, but clearly he thinks he has better things to do than escort a fucked-up beta-turned-omega to wherever he’s taking me.
“You don’t need to drag me, you know,” I grumble. “I’m covered in enough bruises and scrapes. Don’t need you to add to them.”
Declan lets out a sharp, annoyed puff of breath. “I can’t trust anyone else around you. That much is fucking clear. If I sent you out here with any of the other alphas, they’d have you on all fours the second you were alone.”
My gut twists with how casually he says it. And how he insinuates that it’s my fault, like I’m the common denominator. Which I suppose I am, but I can’t help how Bash made me.
“And of course you’re the only alpha powerful enough to resist me?
” I ask, not resisting my urge to poke the bear.
Call it suicidal, call it stupidity, but I’ve had enough of people treating me this way.
If Declan is going back on his word to exile me and is instead leading me to my death, it won’t matter if I piss him off.
He snorts derisively. “I’m more powerful than any other alpha in this whole bloody land.”
“Then why are you stuck leading a tiny pack all the way up here?” I ask, then yelp as he swings me around to face him.
He gets right in my face, so close that I can taste the deer jerky he had for lunch on his breath. “Don’t,” he says in a deceptively calm tone. “Don’t you dare think you can challenge me, or rile me, or whatever it is you’re trying to do.”
I swallow hard, my throat dry. “I just want to know why someone with as much alpha power as you wouldn’t be somewhere down south. Why stay up here? Your brother left to start a whole new pack in the States—why didn’t you do the same?”
He shakes me, rattling the bones in my body and making me dizzy.
I yelp in protest before he stops and holds me firm once again. Declan sneers down at me. “You’re a mouthy little shit all of a sudden, eh? If you were my omega, you’d never get away with it.”
I think about poor Eden, married off to this shifter three times his age. No wonder he struggles to speak up. Declan has him on a tight leash.
He must scent my fear, because I see Declan smile for the first time ever.
It’s a cruel, satisfied curl of his lips that makes me want to slap the expression off.
I flex my muscles, intending to do just that, but the second I so much as twitch he squeezes my arm so tight I fear he’ll leave permanent indents.
A whimper of pain escapes me.
“Walk,” he says. Not an alpha command, but I don’t dare disobey.
We plod along in silence, gulls squawking and the wind whistling through the trees.
I wish I was heading towards Nathan’s little cabin, but we’re headed in the opposite direction.
Despite not being the most ideal start for the three of us, it was blissful compared to this.
There was even one perfect moment in the aftermath of the chaos where all three of us were together.
I want to grasp hold of the memory and bring it to life.
Instead, I’m marching away from my mates with Declan as my sole companion. Tears prick at my eyes. Every step I take feels like walking on broken glass.
We come around a bend to a path that lines the sheer drop of a cliff edge.
The sea is choppy, a dark, swirling abyss that makes a chill run up my spine and fear prickle my senses.
I know that Nathan and Kato aren’t going to swoop in and rescue me, but part of me hopes for it nonetheless.
It’s futile. I can sense they’re far away. If they were close, I’d know.
Maybe because they’re still together, they’ll survive.
Maybe it was meant to be this way—three mates whittled down to two.
Perhaps this was why fate brought us to one another, so they could mate me as a way of bridging the gap between them.
Two alphas so often at each other’s throats, united over mating a doomed, manufactured omega.