Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Syrus
Silva leaves Widows Peak behind and keeps driving for forty-five minutes. My brows pull down as I follow ten minutes behind her, not wanting to spook her.
I’ll be in enough trouble later for tailing her.
“Where is she going?” Isidro mumbles, watching as I turn into a state park.
Widows Peak is nestled into a valley and surrounded by mountains. It’s why it can be difficult to get mail and deliveries when we get snowed in.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” I mumble caustically, following the little dot until it stops.
A few minutes later, I pull into a spot next to hers, frowning as I see that the truck is empty.
“Hope you have decent tracking skills,” I mutter, grabbing a backpack I keep with me at all times. It has water, a first aid kit, and various other things.
“Does it look like tracking people in the wilderness is my super power?!” Isidro complains as he gets out of the car.
“So touchy,” I chuckle, trying to keep it together as I lock up.
Silva is probably trying to work shit out in her head, which means she’s walking on one of the trails. I expect she isn’t too fussy about which one, so I begin walking toward the closest one that I see.
It’s beautiful here. Stunning foliage, mountains surround the park, and I think it’s as good a place as any to figure your shit out. I don’t see this as running, I can sense that Silva is really fucking overwhelmed right now.
The scent match situation alone is big due to her past with alphas.
Isidro follows me as I walk, and I listen intently for signs that my omega went this way. The trail goes about a mile before ending at a creek with the sun hitting the mountains around it perfectly. Silva sits with her legs tucked underneath her staring at the water, her eyes wet.
Walking so she can hear me, I drop my backpack on the ground beside her and sit so her back is pressed against my chest. Sitting quietly, I kiss her temple and hold her as she sits lost in thought.
It’s my day off, I have nowhere to be. Any emergencies, I have good people who can figure it out, and I texted the department so they’d know I was out of town for a few hours.
Isidro blends into the background, because I can’t see or hear him. The least he can do is let me work.
“You found me,” Silva sniffles. “Do I want to know how you managed that?”
“I put a tracker on your truck,” I mumble. “I have anxiety about losing people.”
That was a much more truthful response than I expected to give her.
“Okay,” she whispers, turning to snuggle against me. Since losing my sister, I have been neurotic about taking care of people I care for, which is one of the reasons I began meeting Silva at her club after work to follow her home.
Once we started dating, that was no longer enough.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Maeve,” I say against her hair.
“You don’t owe me anything,” she says. “I do want to hear about her though. Do you think she’s out there somewhere?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “A part of me hopes she isn’t if it means the difference between being in pain or being free. Is that awful of me to say?”
“No,” Silva says. “Knowing how bad life can be, how it feels to have your insides ripped apart for the pleasure of alphas while you cry and scream, I don’t think it is.”
Fuck. Closing my eyes against the pain in her voice, I force air into my lungs. I hate that she’s been hurt by the dipshits she lived with as a kid.
“I’ll happily kill your foster brothers for you,” Isidro says. I have to curb my flinch, because I’d almost forgotten he was there. “Unless you’re against killing too.”
“You don’t know me,” Silva says. “Don’t act like you do. I’m not lying about who I am, but you are.”
Opening my eyes, I watch as Isidro drops onto his ass next to us.
“I hide so no one can tell me I’m a liability when I’m working,” he says.
“I’m the mole for my team. I figure out how to get close to people, and since I seem pretty innocuous, they trust me.
It’s why I don’t have a Spanish accent, even though I wasn’t born here.
My parents immigrated here when I was six and my sister was ten.
She was kidnapped, raped, and dropped off dead at my parents’ doorstep when she turned twenty-two. ”
Silva and I are silent as we listen, and her fingers dig into my forearm. I cuddle her closer, because I can tell this is going to be really fucking hard to hear.
She’s right, the world is harsh for omegas, and she and her friends have built a place that offers a moor in the storm.
“She went out with her friends, and one of the guys there was offended when she refused a drink. My parents always told her to be careful when she went out because she’s an omega.
I was still seventeen at the time, but I wish every day I was older so I could have protected her.
The bastards drugged her, and left without her friends noticing,” Isidro explains.
“Sounds like her friends were shitty,” Silva says softly. “I’m so sorry about your sister. Being an omega doesn’t make you a liability.”
“In undercover work it does,” Isidro says, making a disgusted face.
“Certain scents are easier to remember,” I explain. “It’s shitty that omegas are more memorable, but in a town full of omegas, you stick out like a sore thumb when you smell of your alphas.”
“A miscalculation on my part,” Isidro says, shrugging. “Ugh, what I wouldn’t give for a cigar right now. I fucking hate talking about myself.”
“So why are you here?” Silva asks.
“He stowed away in my car,” I say, smirking. “Isidro insisted that he needed to talk to you.”
“Very funny, Beta Asswipe,” Isidro mutters. “This town that you and your friends have built is amazing. Even as distrustful as people have been, I can see how wonderful they are with each other. Shep was ready to go fuck my alphas and I up on your behalf.”
“He still might,” I add. “Shep may be scared shitless of Silva, but he’s loyal.”
“I’m not that scary,” my omega grumbles.
“You can be,” I say, at the same time that Isidro says, “You’re pretty fucking scary.”
We glance at each other smugly before I remember he’s on the community shit list. If Silva doesn’t like you, neither do I. Solidarity in pettiness.
“Anyway, I’ve been living as a beta for a really long fucking time,” Isidro says.
“I’m on a lot of meds, I don’t perfume, and barely slick.
I drop the meds once a year to have my heat with Harlan and Kyren.
They’re my scent matches. Somehow, even with all the meds, they knew pretty early on that I was important to them.
I think Harlan knew you were important when he saw your picture, and that’s why he couldn’t shake you. ”
“Do you think Lexi’s scent matched to his brother?” she asks, sitting up to face him.
I hadn’t really thought about that, but the possibility is pretty high.
“That’s what I’m thinking. Aiden is a good guy, but he doesn’t even know I’m an omega,” Isidro confesses.
“Why are you telling me?” Silva asks.
“I don’t want you to think I’m competition, and I also need you to know that Kyren and Harlan aren’t bad alphas,” he says. “They’re fixers, which means they want to disband whatever is hanging over your head and murder them all.”
“Bulls in a damn china shop,” I grumble.
Isidro sighs, nodding.
“I have a lot of…guilt over taking a deal from G. I won’t say his name, because it’s borrowing trouble,” Silva says.
“It was our only option. The six of us were young, and our self defense skills aren’t what they are now.
We were exhausted from running, and I had to think about the other girls as well. ”
“When do you not think about other people?” Isidro asks. “Honestly, everyone who talks about you either says you’re scary, or gushes about how amazing you are.”
“Are you asking where the truth lies?” she asks, rolling her eyes. “I almost didn’t leave the mansion, Isidro. A part of me wanted to stay back so they at least had one omega to sell. I did all the leg work, and made certain everyone was ready.”
“You almost stayed?” Isidro asks, appearing horrified.
Goddamn it. I very much want to wrap my omega in bubble wrap, but that’s the fastest way to lose her.
“Yep. Think about that when one of your twatwaffle alphas says I’m a coward,” she says, sighing. “I worry about our safety bubble bursting. There are so many people who need Widows Peak.”
“You almost stayed?!” Isidro asks again, yelling. “Are you fucking insane?”
“Isidro, stop being broken,” I complain. “Spitfire, do you think he needs a reboot?”
Silva laughs as she leans against me, and Isidro stares at us.
“You know what? You’re both insane,” he groans. “There’s no cure is there?”
“Nope,” she says, shrugging.
“You’re different with Syrus,” Isidro mentions. “Lighter somehow.”
“I laugh more with him,” she says. “It’s nice. My life isn’t all rainbows, Isidro. I don’t sleep well, I wake up screaming from nightmares, and then drag myself out of bed to start my day. Harlan, Kyren, and you remind me of every shitty dream I’ve ever had.”
Isidro looks like he’s been physically struck, and I don’t blame him. That’s a heavy statement.
“Tell him why,” I ask Silva. There’s got to be a reason. She doesn’t have a cruel bone in her body.
“Your presence threatens everything my friends and I have sacrificed for,” she says.
“Going after the people who took us, without handling it properly, means ripping away not only our safe haven, but also that of the four thousand people who live here. They don’t have a background in any kind of defense training, nor do they know our pasts.
My nightmares lie to me almost every fucking night, telling me I didn’t get out, I’m still being tied down, raped, and abused by my foster brothers.
Or that I was sold to an alpha and his friends that are twice, maybe three times my age.
Rape isn’t the worst thing you can do to a person. ”