43. Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Two
Xane
Once Kian’s finally out of my sight, I walk back to the jet and sit down on a grassy patch of ground by the side of the steps. It’s not any better out here than it is inside, but going back in there, even to sit in the cockpit, would feel like an invasion of Scarlett’s privacy.
She needs to relax, so I’ll give her the peace and quiet to do that.
Once she’s feeling better, and once Riley’s compliant in one way or another, I’ll get us into the air, and fly us back to Cressidan City Airport, so she can go home.
After that, I don’t care what happens.
Golden Palms is Riley’s favored vacation spot.
He can charter another flight to get him there, if he even wants to get back onto a plane again after this fucking nightmare. Somehow, I doubt it.
Trick will probably just be glad to get back to airconditioned civilization after spending a day in this fucking heat.
As for Kian … Well, Kian’s probably going to be beating himself up about this for the next six months, but it’s all on me when it comes right down to it.
I let him rope me into the deal he struck up behind my back.
Worse, I let him talk me into thinking I might be wrong about fated mates.
The dumbest thing about that is how conflicted I still feel.
Logically, I know true mates are a romantic ideal, borne out of the biological need that Omegas trigger inside of Alphas. And despite the yearning I put into our song lyrics, I’ve never felt the need to seek out an Omega for the purpose of finding a mate.
I thought I had everything I needed.
I was so sure I didn’t need anything more than I had.
But I know now that can’t be true, because I wanted to believe the woman we brought out here might be meant for me, and my pack.
I wanted to believe that so badly that I faked a crash landing.
The truth is much simpler now I know she’s an Omega.
Whatever I’m feeling for her is only because she’s that rare designation.
Even if it wasn’t anything like what happened all those years ago, even if it felt like something more, the way an Alpha feels around an Omega is too potent to pretend it’s not a dangerous game to be trapped together.
She’s beautiful, and she’s an Omega, but she’s not meant for us.
She wouldn’t even be here if I hadn’t let Kian’s crazy fantasy run wild.
This isn’t fate. It’s the complete opposite.
He engineered our meeting.
“Fucking fuck,” I mutter as I set the empty bottles down on the grass beside me.
I place the towel between my legs, and it falls open, revealing the starting notes from her interview with Kian. I pick the notepad up, and stare at her writing as if it might reveal a clue to what upset her enough to make her run from our least threatening bandmate.
It’s scrawling and hard to read, and what I do manage to pick up isn’t illuminating at all.
But it’s not the first page in the pad.
Curious now, I flip to the first of a dozen pages that don’t seem to be related to an interview at all. She’s written down a handful of chord progressions, next to some small but detailed doodles of microphones, guitars and amplifiers.
The words are lyrics, as far as I can tell, though they’re a little bit all over the place.
Maybe lyrics to a handful of different songs?
And the chord progressions seem to relate to some, but not all, of those different songs.
It’s weird to discover someone else’s process, to stumble into it like this.
I close the notepad.
It’s too much like snooping.
I should have thought about that before I let myself look.
What I saw reminds me that she was also pictured with a guitar on a blog where she wrote about our band in a way that made Kian convinced that she was made for us.
There are plenty of female musicians who like our music.
A lot of them are Omegas, too, since the industry favors rarity.
If we were ready to meet our match, we could start with our own connections, and I’m sure we’d find a woman who would fit in perfectly with all four of us.
We didn’t need Kian to make something happen with a pretty stranger.
It doesn’t matter if she’s a musician as well as a magazine writer.
And it doesn’t mean anything that she’s also an Omega.
None of that tells me she was supposed to be here.
It doesn’t mean she was made for our pack.
Even if I uncovered a little piece of her heart right now, and it feels like it could be a match for my own. Even if all I’ve done since I was introduced to her is think about her.
It doesn’t mean a damn thing.
“Fated mates are a lie,” I murmur, wishing I had a beer in my hand.
I can’t let myself get drunk if I expect to fly us out of here.
But I want more than anything to make the world disappear for a while.
Nothing makes sense anymore.