26 Kashmir
All this waiting made me feel like a sitting duck.
Playing another round of poker with the guys should’ve helped take my mind off things, but it didn’t.
I kept trying to talk myself into this becoming our norm, but I’d always been a man of action.
I needed a challenge that helped me embrace my darker side.
With my leg bouncing below the table, everyone could sense how my own tension raised.
While grateful for the help the Alpha here gave us, we couldn’t leave very often.
“Will you stop bouncing your leg?” Ryatt wasn’t too pleased with life right now.
As a group, we all decided that Kit would be worth it for us to enjoy.
Her Alpha didn’t seem to have a problem with it, but we couldn’t ask him formally.
All of us found it odd that he never revealed himself, and Kit deserved more protection than that.
“Sorry,” I muttered. “I just feel antsy for some reason.”
“We’ve all been on edge from being locked up,” Franco reminded me. Only Kayos and I had been able to leave the compound, so the others had it worse than we did.
“I don’t know,” Kayos joined. “Something feels off right now, but I can’t put my finger on it.”
Laying our hands down on the table, none of us folded, so we watched as Jericho won with a three of a kind in kings. His smile was small even though he cleaned a lot of us out of our chips, and I felt partially to blame for that because I kept bringing up the negative things happening.
“I’ll try to be more positive,” I promised the group. “It’s just hard to be happy when you feel like everything’s falling apart.”
“We’re all here together, so that’s the only thing I need.
” Jericho stacked the chips by color. It reminded me of when we first taught him how to play this game.
He wasn’t a card shark, but it was always cute to watch him have a good hand because we could all read his tells.
He didn’t know that’s how we all stayed in on this last hand.
The corner of his mouth kicked up to tell us he had something worth betting on.
Studying him that helped me relax just a little bit.
His words were right; we did have each other.
We even managed to find the Omega we thought we lost, but she went out today for some reason.
Right before I let myself slack deeper in my seat, the door to our quarters barged open.
Anika looked frantic and panicked as she fought her brother to come in.
Her and Raphael were arguing over something that we weren’t privy too.
“She’ll kill us if you say anything,” Raphael warned his sister.
“She’s in trouble,” Anika growled at him. “If there’s anyone that I trust to help us with this, it’s the men in this room.”
“Trust us with what?” Ryatt stood from the table. His dominance exuded across the room because a flare of panic met us by force. Kayos and Turner also stood to establish their ranks among us as Alphas as well.
“It’s Kit,” she said as though it’d be answer enough.
“Anika,” Raphael said one more warning to his sister. “She’ll have our heads if you say anything more.”
“She won’t have a head if we don’t act,” Anika hissed back.
Swinging her menacing gaze back our way, she tried to right her shoulders, but they were too tense to lower.
“Kit went to lunch with Mandy today. They do it every month, so it has never been a problem before. I went to the store down the street while she had lunch in a public spot. We’ve never had anything happen, so I thought she was safe. ”
“What are you saying?” I asked her. A swift breeze of trouble whispered in the air, and it blew all around us.
“They were taken,” she cried. “They’ve taken Kit. Mandy too.”
Everyone froze because Kit finally told Kayos what Saul did to her. We knew the horror she faced in our absence because we trusted the wrong person.
“How do you know this?” I hurried to say.
“Kit was able to speed dial me right before she passed out from the drugs. I heard some of the words as they took her out the back and loaded her up. I didn’t make it in time to get to her, so I only saw the white van pulling away after they tossed Mandy in it too.
She wasn’t awake, so they must’ve drugged both girls.
They have Kit, and they’re going to use her to give up all the names she’s protected. ”
“But how would they know she’s involved?” Turner asked.
“I was able to make out one face in the passenger seat because he was staring at me in the mirror. The night you guys arrived, you saw the Sellers carrying off someone. He was Kit’s lover who broke her number one rule, so she made him kill his girlfriend, and Kit sold him to the Sellers after.
He was with Saul’s men, so God only knows what he has said about our compound. ”
“How come you’re bringing this to us?” Ryatt asked her. “Where’s her mate? Where is the Alpha who is supposed to be protecting her?”
“Are you guys this dense? I don’t remember you being this stupid.” Anika’s annoyance was prominent, telling us all she grew frustrated. “There is no Alpha here, Ryatt! Kit runs everything and pretends to be under the control of an Alpha.”
“But we’ve seen her mark,” Franco argued. “She was bitten by her commander of the pack, and she bears his scent.”
Anika quickly unzipped a pocket on her uniform before tossing us a small perfume bottle. My hand took it and let it mist around us for the scent to be revealed. Sure enough, it was the one we had all learned to be the Alpha who claimed our female. “She lied to us?”
“She lied to protect the rest of us,” Anika pulled down the collar of her shirt to reveal the same two marks on her neck.
“We branded ourselves into becoming a pack with the false scent, under the guise of an Alpha that doesn’t exist. Her, Raphael, and I knew it was our only way out from the world we were stuck in.
We’ve never had a problem quite this big, so I’m finally telling you guys the truth.
Kit is an unclaimed Omega now in the hands of Saul! Her perfume only lasts a few hours!”
“Do you have any idea where they went?” Ryatt moved to the dresser and pulled out a notepad. He knew to start planning to save her.
“The only clue I have is that they went north down 22nd Street, but when I took some shortcuts to cut them off at the bridge, they weren’t there. It tells me that they’re somewhere between those two points because I know I beat them to the bridge.
“And this lover?” Franco hissed.
“He dies too.” I shrugged. Living in the morally gray area, I made the hard calls just as fast as Kit did the one day in the woods. No one would hurt me while I sat around and waited for them to cause more pain and suffering against those I loved.
“When do we go after her?” Jericho was the one to ask. None of us were okay with the idea of him helping, but we knew he had been around Kit too long. She was teaching our Omega that he could stand on his own two feet, and we all knew better than to treat him like a pet any longer.
Ryatt came to the same realization before pointing to Jericho and Franco.
“If he’s coming with us, you have to stay by him at all times.
” Right when Jericho wanted to pop off something, Ryatt raised his hand for him to shut up.
“This is my limit because I am protective. I am letting you join the fight, but I need you to do it in a way that won’t make the rest of us feel unsettled while we fight ourselves.
It’ll get us killed worrying about you.”
An understanding passed between the group as we all sat around the table to figure out who would do what.
For now, the mission needed to be recon and tracking, so we’d keep it to ourselves.
Once we knew where Kit landed, we’d finally finish and end the person behind our demise.
The person who we tasked with protecting our unclaimed Omega all those years ago.
God, it better be me who finds him first for my own sense of justice to be had.