Chapter Eight
Carter
I’d told Elias and Jayden that I would try to make inroads with the female. She was ours, our fated, and our scent match, but the decision of whether we moved forward together lay entirely in her lap.
So far, we’d each had pleasant conversations with our female, and Elias had even had the privilege of helping her with her injury.
How we all hated that she’d been hurt in the first place.
We could not protect her from all of life’s minor dangers, but we vowed she’d never come into contact with canned soup again—at least not as the cook.
We generally tried to eat well, but we did occasionally eat processed foods, like almost everyone else in the country.
If she liked canned tomato soup, one of us would make sure it arrived in a bowl in front of her.
Funny place to draw a line, but it represented how much we wanted this female under our roof and safe from even the household accidents that landed so many omegas in Elias’ clinic.
I hesitated outside the shop, wondering if I should bring her a latte or treat from the coffeehouse next door.
In the end, I decided I’d ask her to take a break and come with me to select her own.
Seemed like a good choice for a date without much pressure.
But when the bell over the shop door chimed, instead of the cheerful omega bustling around the place I expected, I encountered a very different female.
Standing just a few feet from me, she held her phone in a trembling hand, her eyes fixed on the screen, lips moving like a fish out of water.
“Anathea?”
“I—”
I closed the distance between us in two steps. “Darlin’, look at me. Breathe in and out.” Closing my hands around her free one, I squeezed lightly.
As if waking from a dream, she lifted her violet gaze from the phone and met mine. “Carter.”
Keeping hold of her, I moved back to the door, flipped the sign to closed, and twisted the lock. “Yes, darlin’. It’s me. Now, show me what’s on that phone that has you so upset.”
She shook her head, but allowed me to ease it from her grip. “I-it’s…”
“All right. Where can we sit down and talk about this?”
“The back room?” She ticked her chin in that direction. “There’s a table where we eat our lunch.”
“Perfect.” I guided her toward the rear of the store. “Whatever is wrong, we’ll figure it out, okay?”
No answer, but that was all right. We’d still fix it.
Once we were in the combination break and storeroom, I eased her into one of the wooden folding chairs at the small table.
An electric kettle and a selection of tea things sat on a shelf nearby, so I let go of her hand, tucked her phone in my pocket, and plugged in the kettle. “What kind of tea would you like?”
“Green?” she said. “There’s matcha powder.”
“Ceremonial. That’s the best grade. All right if I have a cup, too?”
That seemed to catch her attention. She moved to stand. “I should do it. You’re our guest or the customer or…are you here to inspect us?”
I waved her back to her seat. “I’ll take guest. I just came to visit with you.
Let me be the barista, though. I am very good at making matcha.
” A white lie. I’d never done it before, but I did enjoy the drink, and there were directions on the can.
Also, I’d seen enough YouTube videos to appreciate the ritual involved.
A few minutes later, I’d whisked the powder into the hot water until it all dissolved and none floated on the surface.
“Here.” I set it in front of her. “Let it cool, then you can tell me how I did.”
“Aren’t you an expert?”
I chuckled. “You’ll have to be the judge. So, while we wait for our drinks to be a temperature that won’t burn our lips, we can get to know one another better.” I fished in my pocket. “Starting with what on this phone had you frozen in place, looking like a rabbit about to bolt.”
“Oh, just give it back. There’s nothing anyone can do about it.” She sighed and muttered, “Except move farther away. A lot farther.”
Ignoring her request, I swiped the screen. Not password protected. Not safe. But it enabled me to see the text that she’d been looking at. “Who is this Vex, and why does he think you reneged on a contract?”
Anathea buried her face in her hands. “Isn’t it obvious? I belong to him. Them.”
“I beg your pardon? How do you belong to someone or someones when you clearly have no interest in them. Why did you agree to this?” I knew most of the answers before I asked the questions.
The omega was in a similar situation to the one I’d been in but with greater consequences.
Nobody had come after me. My former pack mates and the pack leadership had to pivot, but as an alpha myself, I couldn’t be coerced or forced.
Females? Omegas? In a bad pack, they had almost no rights.
“My family signed for me. I never agreed to anything, and I would rather be dead than mated to them.” She shuddered. “They treated me like property to be traded for power and connections.”
“And, it sounds like you almost got out of it, but now they want their property. Do they know where you are?”
She shook her head. “Only my sister, but if they figure out that she knows, they will get it out of her. Somehow.”
I could imagine how, but I didn’t want to make Anathea feel any worse than she already did. “So you need help.”
“I help myself. I don’t need an alpha to protect me.” Tipping her chin up, she shedded despair like shedding her fur for her skin. Blazing violet eyes challenged me to deny it. Which I absolutely would not do.
“I’m sure that’s true, but if you don’t want to have to go far away, if you want to continue to build your life here, my pack and I would like to provide assistance.”
“Pack?”
“You know them. Elias, Jayden, and I.”
She pushed the chair back, the legs screeching on the concrete floor. “You want what they all do. A female who is your possession. I won’t do it.” One more shove, and the front two legs were in the air, Anathea tumbling over backward, about to slam her head into the floor.
I flung myself over the table and grabbed her arm, moving around to stabilize her further. “We would never think of you or any omega that way.”
“I need you to leave, okay? I have to figure out what to do.” Her expression was closed, wary.
Although I wanted to fling her over my shoulder and carry her off, that would make me no better than those she’d fled. “I’ll go, but I want you to have our phone numbers in case anything happens or someone comes snooping around. Or…if you just feel like talking.”
She let me put them into her phone before I handed it back.
“Can I suggest one more thing?” I asked.
“What?”
“May I walk you home?”