Chapter 10
Chapter
Ten
Two days later
CAI
I never promise to do something I’m not planning to make good on, and neither do my brothers. Over the last two days, Maddox and I have systematically “retired” any guards with ties to my father.
If he’s paying them, or there is any communication with Dad, they’re dead. I took a deep dive into bank and phone records. None of them are smart enough to use burners, and why would they?
We’ve been Dad’s good little soldiers our entire lives, but we’re setting fire to all of that. We systematically broke the dead bodies apart with axes and electrical saws out in our woods and then buried them. It’s not perfect, yet it works.
No one has asked where the missing guards are, however, turnover can be normal for us. Maddox’s paranoia is well known, so it’s surprising to me in a way that these guards played with their lives for extra money.
My mind doesn’t work the way that everyone else’s does, though. When I’m firing on all cylinders and not distracted, I’m very calculated. Now that it counts, I am ensuring that the omega inside our home is safe from being kidnapped by someone much worse than us.
Olivia has been very quiet over the last two days, which means she’s also sleeping a lot.
Maddox, Aled, and I have all been rotating on who brings her food.
Unfortunately, Gareth is busy with his own surveillance and murdering spree, so Olivia has to deal with the least favorite of the Behan brothers.
Me.
I can see that Gareth is separating himself from our father as much as possible. The way he calls him by his first name speaks volumes about how he feels about him. However, what he isn’t allowed to do is cut us off.
I refuse to lose the crazy fucker because we didn’t step up faster.
Gareth is the fucked up moral compass and backbone that we need.
Jogging down the stairs after showering, I follow the sounds of Olivia talking in the kitchen.
Maddox made her lunch and gave her his phone afterward to call her family.
The recording of the call is being sent to my phone, and I listened to some of it in the shower. Olivia is trying to convince her daughter and her pack that she’s healthy and fine.
She’s basically lying through her teeth, especially after the events that occurred two days ago. Liar, liar, little omega.
Leaning against the entrance to the kitchen, I watch Olivia lean against the counter. She’s careful not to put any pressure on her forearms, and I decide I’m going to check her wounds once she’s off the phone.
Is she in pain? I need to know.
“No, Cere,” Olivia sighs, placing the phone on the counter. She must be on speaker phone. Good, now I won’t have to go back later to listen to the recording. It’s efficient. “You don’t need to do all that. I want you to take care of yourself and the baby. I can handle this.”
“Mom, you shouldn’t have to deal with alphas who do anything other than worship the ground you walk on,” her daughter says. I mean, she’s not wrong. “Cian is also worried about you. He ran into Dr. Royal and he said he saw you.”
That motherfucker.
“He’s the physician on call for the Behans,” Olivia says. “The guys had a knife fight between themselves. It wasn’t a big deal, but they needed stitches.”
My jaw almost unhinged itself as I listen to how easily she continues to lie. Damn.
“Dr. Royal didn’t give many details, but Cian said he was still worried. Are you sure we can’t just kill them all?” Cerenity asks.
For a pregnant woman, she’s pretty bloodthirsty.
“That’s really not necessary, baby. I promise. I’m figuring things out,” Olivia says. “I wanted to call and tell you I’m fine.”
“If they force anything on you, kill them. Cian told me to tell you that, by the way. He said he’d deal with any fallout. Please don’t think you need to play nice,” Cerenity adds.
Olivia turns slightly, allowing me to see her grimace as she presses her hand against her lower stomach. She’s wearing one of Gareth’s hoodies that hits her mid thigh, and it doesn’t look like she’s wearing much else. My eyes widen as the air thickens with the scent of her slick. Fuck…
“I promise I won’t,” Olivia says, her eyes pinched in pain. “I have to go. I’ll call you later, okay?”
She’s pretending that she’s simply away on a short vacation instead of being held captive. I can tell that she’s used to minimizing things to show that everything is normal. That’s definitely some kind of trauma response if I’ve seen one.
“Mmhmm,” Olivia says, replying to something her daughter says. I’m no longer paying attention as I stalk forward. “Love you too. Bye.”
Hanging up, she glances in my direction.
“I didn’t say anything I shouldn’t have,” she mutters. “I’m going to go upstairs to lie down.”
“Not yet,” I say, my hands squeezing her hips as I lift her up on the counter. “I want to check your bandages.”
“They’re fine,” she says, leaning back and lifting her leg before I realize what’s happening. Olivia kicks out at my face with her bare foot, and I barely have time to turn my head before it connects.
My head snaps back before I grab her thighs and push upward until her back hits the counter. Goddamit, Olivia.
The Hellcat is fast as fuck.
“It looks like Gareth wasn’t only fucking you,” I grunt. There was something odd about their banter behind the door the first night she was here, and now I think it’s because he was teaching her self defense.
Pinning her legs tightly against my shoulders with one arm, I smirk at her. There’s a great many things I’ll need to discuss with Gareth when he’s back, but it’ll need to wait until after Olivia’s heat.
I’m done keeping secrets for my father.
“I’m not responsible for any of your dumb assumptions,” she says, struggling to escape me. All her thrashing does is push more of her scent into the air, and her panties are damp with slick.
How much longer am I expected to ignore the elephant in the room?
“What’s with all the yelling?” Maddox asks, strolling in. He takes in the position I’m in with Olivia and his nostrils flare as he smells her sweet scent. “Why are you holding her down?”
“I went to check her bandages and she kicked me in the face,” I reply. My other hand presses her chest down so that while she’s hitting me, she can’t sit up. There will definitely be a bruise later, but at least she missed my nose. That’s a miracle if there ever was one. “A little help please?”
Maddox rolls his eyes, pocketing his phone as he walks around to firmly shove her sleeves up her arms but gently takes her wrist. Olivia whimpers as he begins to pick off the tape and pulls off the bandage.
“Am I hurting you?” he asks, freezing in worry. He hasn’t realized that she’s in heat yet, and she shakes her head.
“This is silly,” Olivia says, trying to pull back her arm. “I’m perfectly fine.”
Maddox ignores her and peels back the bandage in its entirety. I can’t see her wrist from here, but I can see his gobsmacked expression.
“Is this for real?” he breathes. “Are they both like this?”
“What?” I ask, pulling her wrist away from him. Maddox drops it in favor of grabbing the other, allowing me to see that her skin is completely clear.
It’s like that day never happened. But it did, and she’s healed.
“I’ve always healed quickly,” she sighs, refusing to look at me. “I wouldn’t have survived everything that I have otherwise.”
“Does this have something to do with being in heat too?” I growl.
Whenever I have a spare second, I’ve been going down the rabbit hole of information available about omegas. My education is severely limited, and I realized after my misinformation about rejecting a scent match, that I needed to figure out fact from fiction.
During my twenty minute scroll this morning, one of the best tidbits I learned was that omegas can heal much faster than normal leading up to their heat. That’s not to say that Olivia doesn’t have super fast healing, because there’s not a single scar or blemish on her body.
“Excuse me?” Maddox asks, his thumb moving over her perfect skin as he tosses the bandages into the garbage.
“We need to revisit what Cai just said, but I’m still having trouble processing how quickly you healed up.
You’re lucky that the stitches kept up with you since they’re the kind that dissolve. ”
“I didn’t think about that,” Olivia says, making a face. “If I’d been conscious, I would have mentioned it to the doctor. My skin was a mess yesterday, it reminded me of Frankenstein as the skin grew over the stitches before they finally began to dissolve."
I’m deeply horrified by the thought as I give into my intrusive thoughts and nose dive into Olivia’s pussy.
“Ugh,” she moans, her hips moving up to gain traction. “Fuck, you need to get away from me. Off!”
Olivia shoves at my head and I suck on the slick dampening her panties before resting my chin on her pelvis. Her slick pushed past the flimsy barrier of cotton, and is now staining my skin. I want it all over me immediately.
“You’re going into heat,” I say slowly, watching as Maddox releases her arm as if it’s on fire.
His hand touches her forehead before his gaze meets mine over Olivia’s body.
Her skin is getting warmer by the second, and she’s going to be very unhappy, very soon.
“Just because we rejected you, doesn’t mean it won’t still hurt to ride this out alone. ”
My hands grip her ass, taking my sweet time running my nose up her soaked scrap of cotton covering her pussy.
“Olivia,” Maddox says, moving so that he can lean over her. “Hate fuck us if that’s what it takes, but you can’t do this alone.”
“When is Gareth coming back?” she gasps, struggling to find another solution as she begins to writhe in pain. The cock ring with a knot came in the mail this morning, and it’s on the table.