6. Blaze
Blaze
Dinner is a tense but quiet affair and is annoyingly exasperating. I like dinner. It’s supposed to be peaceful and a time to catch up and enjoy everyone and their conversations. To just bond with each other. This is not bonding. This is a hostile and silent battle between six different parties.
I set my knife and fork down through the middle of my empty plate, side by side, and wait while Sage takes it from me. He disappears with everyone’s plates before he returns and retakes his seat at the table.
“Shall we talk?” He doesn’t look at anyone else but me.
I incline my head, giving him my support but not my permission, he never needs that. Though, to be perfectly honest, I’m more preoccupied being grateful that I removed my favourite candles before we set the table. I have a feeling this won’t go peacefully.
“Aaron, you need to tell us about Merle.” Sage drops the bomb, and the rest of them tense, the atmosphere charging and turning potent.
The detective scowls down at the table, his hands clench into fists, and he doesn’t answer.
“Are you capable of speech?” Rolly teases. “Do you want me to teach you? I’ll make it so good for you. I’ll even make you sing.”
Pix licks his lips and glances around. For one moment, his mask comes down, and I see a startlingly intelligent omega who is assessing this den of murderous alphas before he slams the curtain closed and just looks belligerent.
Interesting.
“If you aren’t going to speak, then I will just go see her,” Rolly says and gets up.
Aaron launches up and across the table, grabbing Rolly by the throat.
I tsk and catch the salt shaker while Sage wrestles his hot-headed stepbrother back into his chair.
“Use your words, not your fists,” I singsong.
Rolly mutters something that sounds like, ‘but he likes to be fisted.’ We all ignore him.
“You have to tell us about her. If she and you are going to stay here, hidden and safe, then we need to know,” Sage explains calmly.
Roseland looks as if he’s in pain.
“Fine. Just fine. No one else has been able to keep her safe.” Aaron slumps like he’s exhausted.
I do not let the unpleasant reaction I had to that sentence or his resignation show.
“Five years ago, I was doing a job-”
“What kind of job?” Rolly asks, interrupting.
King punches him hard in the shoulder.
“There were some bad people, and they were doing bad people things.” Aaron glowers around the room like an accusation.
“I was new to the force. There was a call out about a body. We went out and, I mean, there was a body, but there was this girl, this omega locked in a room, starving, hurt. Almost out of her mind. We searched for weeks, but we couldn’t find any information about her, and she didn’t trust us.
After a while, my bosses just let her go. ”
“You’re leaving out a lot of information, Aaron,” Sage growls, drumming his fingers on the table.
“I know, but the less everyone knows, the better.” He scrapes his fingers through his hair and looks up at the ceiling.
“Did she ever say who killed the person?” Rolly asks curiously. “Was it her?”
Aaron barks out a laugh. “Merle? No. There’s no way. She’s…well, you will see when she wakes up. Merle Kestrel is broken. Completely and utterly. She couldn’t have done it.”
I don’t like that word. Broken. As if there was something wrong with someone. I tsk again but don’t look away from his face because there is something there. He’s hiding a lot, and he’s misleading us, and it’s not sitting comfortably.
“She’s innocent,” Aaron says softly. “They hurt her. Badly. She is afraid all the time. She needs to be safe.”
I tilt my head to the side. Now, this he is sincere about. “Of everyone or alphas?”
“Specifically alphas. Any violence or yelling. Loud noises. Weapons,” Aaron grumbles. “She probably doesn’t remember me, but even if she did, I don’t expect her to trust me. The interrogations were horrific. She has no reason to trust the police.”
I sit back. “You’re saying our omega is completely terrified of just about everything? Her trauma is so deep that she can barely live in the world?” I need to clarify this information before she wakes up. The magnitude of this revelation is just astounding.
“Well, that’s exactly my point. She’s been officially missing for well over twelve months now.
Not that she was easy to find. But she would pop up at shelters and familiar places.
I’d show her photo to the staff, and they could tell me if she’d been there or eaten, how she looked.
For months, I could usually find her, but she disappeared.
I think she’s been living in the forest. For her to come running like that out of nowhere and look how she looked, like she’s almost dead.
I checked everywhere,” he murmurs to himself, and his voice is anguish. “She was nowhere.”
I stare at him and have this wild urge to laugh or cry. Shit, just fucking shit.
There is no question in my mind. She’s staying. But then, so is he, I just wonder if he hasn’t realised it yet.
I’m going to need to address it, but first things first. The omega.
“Pix, I’d like you to help us. Stay here for a while, maybe see if we can make her feel safe. She doesn’t trust alphas.”
He turns a look of loathing on me. “You want me to help you bond with your omega?”
Omegas, with an S. Omegas. Idiot.
But he is adorable. Especially when he’s this mad, and he’s fairly vibrating off the chair.
“So, what is our game plan, then? Are we just going to pretend we aren’t serial-” King glances at Aaron, “thugs?”
Aaron’s jaw clenches. I have complete certainty that Aaron Roseland has figured out that some of us are indeed serial killers; he just has no proof, and he needs us.
“Yes, we’re going to all pretend we are nice, doting alphas with no violence in us whatsoever. We want her to feel safe,” Sage says with a smile. “Surely, you would have no problem achieving such a thing, King?”
“I am 6 '7, packed with muscle, and terrify little kids when I look at them, I think you are asking the wrong person.”
He has a point.
“Ah, but here’s the catch. Scent match,” Sage says with satisfaction. “I know we are all scent matches to her and to-”
“Say it, and I will stab you in the eye with a pencil,” Pix snarls.
I bite my lower lip to hide a smile, but he is perfect. I am enamored already.
Sage stares at him wordlessly, but I can feel the amusement through the bond we share. Rolly and King exchange a look. I have no idea what that look means, but they’ve clearly decided something. One day, they are going to have to tell us about their bond that we are all pretending they don’t have.
“So, she stays here until when? When is the end date? I’m all against kidnapping innocent omegas and locking them in basements, pretty though this place is,” Pix says in his sexy, smoky voice.
“She needs to stay, recover, and hopefully be able to divulge who did this to her,” Aaron says quickly, but the way he looks at Sage…I don’t know. I think he’s lying, even though there’s no clue in his body language at all that he might be.
“Are you going to ask her permission, or are you just deciding for her? Because we both know you are so good at that.” The bitterness surprises me. Perhaps both omegas need to be top priority.
Aaron and Pix stare at each other, and the hostility in the room ratchets up to uncomfortable levels.
“What did I ever decide for you?” Aaron says darkly.
“You decided we could never be together, remember. Over and over, without a reason. She’s the one you want, and I’m just unwanted rubbish. A criminal who should be caged, weren’t those your exact words?”
Rolly leans forward, a deadly gleam in his eyes. “Is that true, Detective?”
“No, I didn’t choose for him, I chose for me. I am allowed to make choices for myself, aren’t I? And if you act like a damn animal and break into people’s houses and drug them, you do belong in a cage. As per the letter of the law under which we live.”
Pix sits back in his chair, his arms folded over his chest. He looks bored, but his scent’s locked down, and the muscles near his right eye are jumping.
“Blaze,” Rolly whines.
“No,” I say with finality.
“But he deserves it.”
“Not at the dinner table,” I reaffirm. I have rules, and those rules are absolute.
He throws himself on the table, letting out a wail.
King rubs circles on his back. “There, there, my baby, you can beat the nasty cop later.”
Pix snorts, and I shoot the omega a look. He looks away again, with an indescribable expression. He’s not happy. That much is clear.
I study Aaron for a long time, while the others talk. He doesn’t belong here with us.
We are all killers, but Roseland is still living in his delusions of good and evil and the grandiose world of justice that is black and white.
Except, sometimes you can do wicked deeds for good reasons. And sometimes bad people are perceived as good people. Take our parents, for example. Upright pillars of the world, except when it comes to parenting, in that they are true monsters.
Roseland is a good person. One of those true champions for the poor.
Ever since I found out about him and Sage, I have made it my business to find out everything there is to know about him.
I have stalked him, watched him while he slept, stolen his DNA, checked his police and medical files.
There is nothing about this alpha that I do not already know.
Aaron Roseland likes to drink black coffee on his apartment balcony.
He refuses to touch his family money, so he lives in this shitty, overcrowded apartment that is the best his salary can afford him.
He doesn’t use his leverage or his badge to push his own political agenda.
In fact, I’m not even sure he has an agenda.
Aaron goes to soup kitchens and volunteers at the battered women’s shelter, running errands and fixing things for the omegas and betas he’s saved.
He works day in and day out, running too many hours, looking exhausted while he fights an evil that he can’t hope to win against.
There is nothing I don’t know about this alpha, except this. And apparently, his discovery of the second omega. Those things he kept to himself. Which I find really, really interesting. What else has he managed to hide from me?
The question that’s bothering me is how did he find Pix.
I’m well aware of my younger brother’s proclivities towards killing people. It’s cute and overly dramatic. He has a taste for flair and fanfare, but for me, killing people is the act itself. Their bodies? Well, I make them disappear. No one finds them, or if they do, it always looks accidental.
For one so young and dramatic, the one kill I suspect I could pin on Rolly was so well executed that I can’t even be certain that he did kill him. King’s victims look like they were bashed if they turn up dead. There are numerous missing people that I can attribute to him. But no evidence.
Which leaves Pix.
I’ve heard rumours of a serial killer club. Just snippets off the wires I’ve placed in my brother’s car and bedroom.
If I’m right, this bored-looking omega may be one of the most dangerous serial killers in this room.
I have to have him. I need to have them all. They are like beautiful pieces of coloured glass, and I want to keep them on my shelf forever.
I swipe my hand across my face and lean forward, interrupting an argument about whether or not Merle should be allowed to leave.
“No one is leaving.”
No one is leaving because I can’t let you. I won’t. They are like a beautiful set, and I need them. Roseland doesn’t fit, not quite, but I’m willing to wait until he either does or doesn’t.
But they can’t leave. I stand up from the table and walk into the kitchen.
Sage follows, because, of course, he does, and presses himself against my back.
“Baby?”
“I need to have them. They are like beautiful lights,” I whisper as I lean back against him.
He chuckles. “You can’t collect them, my love, they are people.”
I make a noncommittal sound and turn, kissing his cheek. “They have to stay. Just long enough.”
Sage frowns. “For what?”
I hum and bite his jaw. He hisses and pulls away, his hand on my chest, slipping under my robe.
“Blaze?”
I throw my head back and laugh, feeling the part of me that was frustrated and irritated by this collision of people invading my home reset into satisfaction. I start to plan the undoing of my guests.
“Help me keep them?”
Sage frowns. “All of them?”
I press my lips to his throat, purring against the flesh there. “Sage, I want them. I need them.”
He shudders. Although he knows I’m insane, he loves that part of me. He says it’s like dancing with my danger, and it’s just another aspect of me he adores.
“If you need them, then I will get them for you,” Sage replies.
I inhale sharply, pleasure rippling through me. “You are the best alpha ever.”
“I know. But let’s go back before they kill each other. You know, I’m starting to think I should have let you get a puppy.”
I wink at him and pull my black silk kimono shut. “Yeah, you probably should have.”
“House training these four is going to be a lot of work; no slacking. I’m not going to be the bad parent all the time. You have to lay down the law, too.”
“I will.”
We walk back into the room to find Roseland strangling Rolly on the table. Rolly is laughing, even though his face is red, and he’s struggling for air.
King is sitting with his feet on the table, the chair balanced precariously on two legs, while Pix is nowhere in sight.
I narrow my eyes; the room gets cold, and the three of them stop moving and back off, as if they feel the feral danger inside me rising to the surface. Of all the alphas in this room, I am the strongest and most unstable, and my scent is like scenting a man-eating jaguar on a dark night.
“Let’s discuss the rules,” I say in a perfectly modulated tone of voice.
Sage, who is standing just behind me, says quietly enough so only I can hear. “Bad puppies.” Then he laughs.
I don’t find it amusing at all.