Elliott
Inever could fool Keane. Since the conversation about the freckle yesterday, I’d felt him watching me.
Everywhere I went, there he was—at least, it seemed like it.
And I couldn’t be mad at him about it because he’d always been my rock.
I was ninety-nine percent sure he’d followed me up to the ranch house just now.
Had Ben told Keane what I’d said? Admittedly, my sudden declaration that I planned to sacrifice myself for the cause was pretty dramatic, but I’d been thinking about doing it for a long time. I’d been feeling unusually down yesterday—moods like that came and went for me—and I’d just blurted it out.
In retrospect, when I’d said to Ben that the kidnappers had ruined me, I probably gave him the wrong idea. To be honest, all my friends probably had the wrong idea. I’d never meant to deceive them, but I just couldn’t talk about it.
The betas who killed my sire before taking me and my birth father from our home had later singled me out, separating me from the other omegas they’d kidnapped.
They had a big, rough alpha called Edge watching me who told me that when the kidnappers were through with me, I was his.
He liked to describe in detail what he was going to do to me when that happened, as well as slapping me in the face and holding me down until I couldn’t breathe.
Sometimes, he’d pop up out of nowhere and laugh when I shrieked, something that kept me in a state of high anxiety that had been hard to break once I was rescued.
I hadn’t been sure why the betas had been keeping me separated from the others until I overheard them talking about my birth father, whom I hadn’t seen since the day they’d taken us. Whatever an omega x was, could they think that I was one, too?
Because of Edge, I was terrified of all alphas, even after years of therapy. That’s what I’d meant when I told Ben I’d been ruined. I didn’t want to mate an alpha, and no alpha would want to mate an omega with the baggage I carried.
Opening my apron pocket, I carefully took out the few straggler eggs that the hens had laid after my morning nesting-box check and set them in the bowl on the big kitchen table at the ranch.
My evening chores completed, I looked forward to going home and sending the ops alpha who had been trailing me all day back to his quarters.
We were never without one of them within yelling distance.
I knew they were keeping us safe from the government, who could swoop in at any time and take us, but they were alphas.
I didn’t want them anywhere near me. And now we had four new ones to add to the others.
Unsurprisingly, Keane appeared when I stepped outside onto the back deck. Startled, I jumped, hand to my thumping heart.
Keane looked at me apologetically. “Sorry, El. I didn’t mean to scare you. Are you done for the night?”
I nodded. “Why have you been following me around?”
Keane sighed and turned toward the stairs leading from the deck to the yard.
“I’m waiting for you to tell me what’s been on your mind,” he said. We started walking together toward what we now called home—the building all the omegas lived in on the Borders’ ranch.
“What makes you think something’s on my mind?” I asked. Again, I inwardly scolded myself for having opened my mouth to Ben. I wasn’t ready to tell Keane about what I planned to do. It was only half-formed in my mind, anyway.
“Yesterday, you were talking to Ben so seriously just before we all went over there. He looked really upset.”
I pretended to think about it before saying, “I don’t remember.”
“El. Why are you keeping secrets from me? We’re close, right?”
A lump rose in my throat. Since I’d made the decision to leave the ranch, every time Keane was nice to me, the tears threatened to flow. He’d always been there for me, and I was lying to him.
Clearing my throat, I gave him half of the truth.
“I told Ben that I don’t want children and that I never want to have sex.
Then I told him that those were the only two things omegas are good for.
I think that shocked him. I shouldn’t have said it.
I was just feeling down, that’s all. How could I expect Ben to understand?
He’s all in love with his two mates and the baby they’ve had together. ”
“You have a right to feel the way you feel. You need to talk it out with Gail.”
“You think I haven’t?” I snapped. Years of therapy hadn’t helped me. I’d finally stopped going.
As the barn came into sight on our left, I saw the four newest special ops alphas talking to Anson, who was the ranch manager as well as the leader of the SOS special ops team.
Everyone on the team took rut suppressants and were trained to be around us, but that didn’t stop me from being afraid of them.
The reason why Anson also acted as ranch manager was because everyone at the ranch had to work as ranch hands—Laura’s family, our group of omegas, and the ops alphas.
The ops alphas used to dress all bad-ass in black cargos and t-shirts, but Laura told them they needed to blend in and wear less conspicuous clothing because although we lived at the end of a road, the vet visited, as well as the Cheevers and other neighbors, and gossip spread fast. Plus, we never knew when the government might drop in and we’d have a Code Red.
My gaze gravitated to the tallest of the new ops alphas, Jet. He seemed to sense me looking at him and turned our way. He was tall and slim, but also broad-shouldered and strong. Quickly, I averted my gaze to the barn as though that’s what I’d been looking at all along.
“Why do the ops alphas have to be alphas?” I grumbled irritably, coming to a stop so that Keane had to stop, too.
Keane shook his head. “You sound like Riku.”
Riku wanted to join the special ops, but as an omega, he couldn’t. But I wanted to know why they had to be alphas because I was sick of having an alpha watching me all the time.
“They could have ops betas,” I said.
“Wouldn’t be as effective. I know you’re scared of them, El, but you need to get it through your head that not all alphas are going to hurt you—Particularly not the ones hired to keep you safe.”
“Is it really necessary for them to stick to us like glue here on the ranch?”
The ops alphas used to take turns walking the premises, watching for intruders, but after I revealed to everyone that I thought that Ben and I were omega x’s, like my birth father, Laura spoke with higher ups of the SOS about our security.
Together, they decided to send two of our ops alphas to the Angels’ ranch to guard Ben, Trey, Jackson, and David, who all had alpha mates to help.
The ops alphas at our ranch were told to up our security by keeping a constant watch on us when we weren’t in our house.
Recently, the SOS replaced the two we’d sent to Ben and David’s with these four, making a total of nine at our ranch to guard the ranch’s eight omegas—the eighth being Nova’s thirteen-year-old nephew, Dawson, who was nearing his first heat.
Starting to walk again, I said, “They’re all watching us, aren’t they?”
“It’s literally their job, El.”
“To stare?”
My gaze locked with Jet’s. His eyes were dark and crinkled at the corners when he gave me a friendly smile.
I quickly averted my gaze to the other three alphas.
Emma, who had been assigned to me all day, was slim but fit, and almost always wore her straight blond hair in a bun.
Lynn was taller—nearly Jet’s height—and bulky with muscles.
Brandon, shorter and broader than Jet, wore his dark hair in a buzz cut.
His overly muscular form reminded me of Edge, so I avoided him whenever possible.
“Jet seems nice. He obviously likes you,” Keane said.
My heart started racing and I turned to Keane, my eyes wide.
“I don’t mean like that,” Keane hurried to say. “Sorry. I just mean he’s a friendly guy and sees through your aloof behavior, that’s all.”
Quickening my steps, I was relieved when we arrived at our building. Unsettled by what Keane had said, no matter what he’d meant, I hurried inside.
Ren, who was always trying to make things homier, had recently put down some colorful rugs in the living area, which was open to the kitchen.
Part of me appreciated his efforts, but a larger part of me didn’t want to think about home in any context.
Home meant family, and my family was gone.
It was the same for the other guys, of course.
Sometimes they would talk about parents, brothers, and sisters and how much they missed them, but I never did.
I didn’t want to think about my fathers.
Gail, my therapist, said that my reluctance to discuss my past was one of the reasons I wasn’t healing emotionally, and she was probably right; but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. The few times I had, it had been so painful that I’d curled up in a dark room for hours afterward.
The curtains over the large living room window were drawn and the guys were watching a movie on the big screen TV.
“Finished with the chickens, El?” Camp called to me.
“Yeah. A couple laid eggs late today. I took them to the ranch.”
Camp was the oldest of our group, although only by a few months, and had always taken responsibility for the rest of us.
None of us minded because he was level-headed and fair, and his type-A personality made him organized.
He kept us on track but wasn’t a jerk about it.
In fact, the wide smile he almost always wore set me at ease.
Riku must have been the one to choose the movie because it was a horror film, which explained Ren’s absence. Like me, he didn’t like movies that contained jump scares. He was probably somewhere sketching. We had art in common, although I preferred to paint. Or, I used to.
“Not gonna watch with us?” Zeke asked as Keane and I headed down the hall.
Keane paused and I heard him tell Camp we were tired. I took the opportunity to get in the bathroom first.
I made my shower quick, though, so Keane wouldn’t be waiting long. Afterwards, I put on my pajamas and went into the bedroom.
“Your turn,” I said sleepily to Keane.
He nodded and headed for the bathroom.
Slipping under the covers, I got comfortable.
There were bunk beds in the room, but Keane and I slept together in a double bed because I hadn’t been able to sleep alone since my kidnapping.
Keane had always been willing to sleep with me and that was one of the many reasons why he was my best friend.
Closing my eyes, my heart sank with guilt. Keane would be furious with me when I left.
I was bone-tired from a rough day of chasing runaway goats and mending their pen, followed by an afternoon of stooping in the garden. But even though I was comfortable and felt safe, sleep wouldn’t come.
“You okay?” Keane asked, after crawling into bed and realizing I was still awake.
“Yeah.”
I used to wake up screaming, freaking everyone out.
For a while, the doctors gave me pills to help me sleep, and they worked, but I couldn’t stay on them forever.
That’s when Keane started sleeping with me.
Having him there helped. Although I still woke up many times during the night, I didn’t scream anymore.
“El? Can I ask you a question?” Keane asked after putting his wire-framed glasses in the case on the table by the bed.
“Sure, if it isn’t What’s bothering you.”
“I want to know why you didn’t tell us a long time ago about what the kidnappers said about your birth dad. That he was omega x.”
“I didn’t want to put you guys in danger.”
“You could have told me, though.”
Keane looked hurt.
Snuggling closer to him, I said, “I wanted to tell you—you always help me. But, if anything happened to you because of me, I’d die.”
Keane made a tutting noise. “Don’t be so dramatic. You wouldn’t die.”
“I’d want to,” I muttered.
Keane frowned. “Do you think we don’t feel the same way about you? We need to know these things so we can protect you.”
I wanted to tell him to protect Ben, but to not waste time protecting me.
I wasn’t worth it. But I knew better than to say that to Keane or any of the others.
They couldn’t see that I was expendable, which was why I was perfect for the job of infiltrating the program that was killing omegas.
I would get in, send information to someone—probably Riku, although I hadn’t ironed that out yet—after that, it didn’t matter what happened to me.
“You’re depressed,” Gail had told me more than once during our sessions. Worried that I might have suicidal thoughts, she’d put me on medication. I wasn’t suicidal. I had no plans to leave this world on purpose. I just didn’t think that if I did it would make much of a difference.
Gail put me on a new antidepressant a few months ago, thinking the last one wasn’t working.
The reality was, I didn’t take them. I’d tried for a while, but they made me feel weird, so I stopped.
Nobody knew that. Certainly not Keane—he’d make me take them even if he had to pinch my nose closed and force me to swallow.
Gail refilled my prescription every month, and I piled the bottles in a box in the closet under my paints, which I never used anymore.
I once loved to paint. After we were rescued from the kidnappers, the SOS therapists tried to get us to do things we enjoyed.
Keane was a big reader, so they brought him a bunch of books he was interested in.
Ren enjoyed sketching, so he got pencils and sketch pads.
Camp loved video games, so he was encouraged to play them.
But every time I sat at the easel, colorful paints at my elbow and brush in hand, all I could create was a circle of black that spread increasingly outward until it swallowed every inch of the canvas.
I rolled over, my back to Keane, and told him I wanted to sleep.