CHAPTER SIX - HOG
The door gives a defeated groan and then bursts apart, spitting wood chips in our faces. I already have my back pressed to the wall, Colt in a headlock against my chest, so I have a perfect view of our pack alpha as he charges through the debris.
“What the fuck?” Axel stops short, his attention caught by Colt’s kicking feet. The little fucker is gargling from a lack of oxygen, but I can feel him gulp as our pack leader’s gaze lands on him. “The next time I tell you to open the damn door, you open it, Sergeant!”
His alpha bark rolls off me, but I can feel Colt flinch, his body immediately going slack with submission.
Now’s probably a good time to let him go, but my gaze shifts to Birdie, who’s lying on her back and watching us with a sneer.
As expected, she’s more pissed than frightened, and I can’t help a rumble of approval at the fire flashing in her gold-flecked eyes.
Hold your ground, little omega. No one gets to touch you without your permission.
As if she can hear my silent encouragement, her attention flicks my way, and for a moment she looks confused. I don’t know if it’s because of my expression or because of the purr rumbling out of my chest, but she gives a quick shake of her head. Every inch of her body is tense with rejection.
Back down. Step away. I’m not interested.
Like that’s going to make a difference.
She’s got my attention, and I doubt that’s gonna change any time soon.
I feel an unfamiliar smile twist my lips and she scowls at me, clearly done with our silent conversation.
Rolling off the edge of the bed, she hits the floor in a crouch.
It’s exactly what I expected her to do, but Axel is caught flatfooted as she darts past him and through the busted door.
She’s impressively fast, and our pack leader is still swiping the air as she hits the staircase.
Up, not down, and Colt freezes in my grasp as she reaches the attic door.
We can all hear her fling it open, the hinges groaning as it slams behind her, but I’m the only one not surprised by the sound.
“How the fuck did she get in there?” Axel whirls to glare at us. “Did one of you leave it unlocked?”
I meet his angry gaze, letting him see the truth in my face. The attic is high ground, with a couple of decent ways out and deep snowdrifts to break her fall. It’s a far better option than the fucking basement, and he knows it, or he wouldn’t smell so damn guilty.
“She needs her own space,” I tell him as I finally release Colt.
He stumbles away from me, his hand jabbing for my neck before he’s taken his next breath.
Given the scar on my throat and his degraded reflexes, it’s only a half-assed effort, and I bat him away as I keep my gaze on Axel.
“Plus, she’s got as much right to Charlie’s stuff as we do. ”
That makes them both pause, and I feel the air thicken with a mix of grief and regret. The cabin reeks of it, but it smells even more disturbing with the omega’s sweet scent mingled in.
“She does,” Axel says slowly, hands gripping his hips, “but we need to set some boundaries. She can’t just…”
“What?” I interrupt him, my tone just shy of a bark. “Breathe without your say-so? She’s not your soldier, Axel. And she’s not your packmate, either.”
He squares his shoulders, his gaze darkening.
He’s my pack alpha, but I don’t bow to his bark and never have.
In terms of dominance, I should probably have a pack of my own, but I’ve never been interested in leading others.
When he’s not neck-deep in grief, Axel does that better than most, and Colt, for all his faults, is loyal in a way that my blood brothers never were.
Maybe that wouldn’t have been enough to form a pack, but along came Charlie, who always managed to soften our sharp edges.
Any friction that formed between Axel and me, Charlie found a way to deflect it.
Stern look and soft hands, until we worked out that dominance never stands a chance against the wily ways of an omega.
On instinct, my chin tips up towards the roof, my senses seeking some hint of the omega. Ever since I sucked her release off my fingers, she’s like a scratch in the back of my brain, a warm ember that keeps glowing, no matter the rest of the shit in my head.
“She’s mine,” I murmur softly, then catch the sharp tilt of Axel’s chin. It’s tempting to just leave it there, to let him chew over my words until they turn him inside out, but I’m not that callous. “She’s mine to protect, same as Charlie was.”
More so maybe, I’m tempted to add, but I don’t pile that on, since our pack alpha’s confusion is already thick enough to wade through.
“Yours?” Colt croaks, rubbing his sore throat. “What the fuck for, Hog? She’s not target practice, and she sure as shit isn’t gonna crawl into your jack shack.”
I want to smirk at the second part - because Birdie might join me in my sleeping bag if I asked her the right way - but I’m annoyed by the first comment. “Target practice? What the hell does that mean?”
He rolls his blue eyes at me, shiny with booze. “It means that she’s fast, and she fights dirty, but you can’t hunt her, Hog. Like you said, she’s Charlie’s little sister.”
I grunt at his twisted reasoning. “You need your head seen to, Colt.”
“Well, that goes without saying,” he mutters, scrubbing a hand over his raw scalp as he flops onto his bed, his arms thrown wide. “I just thought she’d smell more like him, you know?”
Colt’s disappointment is a hollow ache in our pack bond, drawing Axel to his side.
Doesn’t matter how drained and desolate our pack alpha feels, the urge to comfort his packmates always wins out.
“They were estranged,” he sighs, patting Colt’s shoulder more out of instinct than anything.
“Plus, I don’t think they had a lot in common in the first place. ”
I narrow my eyes at him, wondering exactly what details were in the general’s briefing.
Based on the wounds I saw on Birdie’s shoulders, the uncontrolled seizures, and whatever twisted abuse happened to her throat, it’s pretty obvious she’s been to hell and back.
The question is, was it her pimp? Her boyfriend?
Some other shithead who preyed on her while she lived on the streets?
Exactly how many people am I going to put in the ground before it wipes those tortured shadows from her eyes?
“She was being abused,” I grunt, my lip curling. “Trying to stay alive on the streets, while Charlie was with us, safe and sound. That’s the difference.”
The ugly rasp in my voice must finally get through to them, because Colt wraps his arms around himself, and Axel gives me a ragged look. “We didn’t know, Hog. You think Charlie would’ve left her out there if he knew?”
I shake my head, because even when Charlie was pissed at you, it never lasted long.
He could pull an epic sulk, but at the end of the day, he hated being on bad terms with the people he loved.
He was the glue that held our pack together, and I feel a dull thud in my chest that’s only partially from our broken bond.
It’s remorse – but a different flavor from what’s slowly suffocating my packmates.
Charlie was our pack’s omega, but he was also Axel’s scent mate and Colt’s best friend.
I came in a distant third, and while I know he cared about me, he never lost that hint of wariness in his eyes when he looked my way.
Not fear, but the inbuilt caution of omegas around an alpha of my size and dominance.
Add to that my rough edges and lack of social skills, and I always knew that if I wasn’t a package deal, Charlie and I would’ve never ventured beyond friendship.
That sounds bad, especially since he wore my bite mark on his throat, but I learned to live with the fact that for omegas, some alphas are for loving, and some are for protection.
Plus, our size difference had other awkward consequences.
We were bonded for nearly three years, but Charlie only tried to take my knot once, and it was a bad time for both of us.
He was used to playing around in bed, dragging out the touches and kisses so he could tease his mates into a frenzy.
But he didn’t want me in a frenzy. He wanted me in and out, quick and painless.
I didn’t blame him, given our physical proportions.
Charlie was lithe under his military muscle, while my dick is a challenge, and my knot is a beast. I’d personally swallow a railgun cannon before I’d let anyone try to stick it up my ass.
“Can we talk about this later?” Axel mutters, palming the back of his neck. “I’ve set up a call with the general.”
“Again?” Colt whines. “Why can’t Daddy just leave us alone to rot in peace?”
“Good,” I reply, ignoring him, “because I have some questions for Booth.”
Axel looks at me in surprise. “You’re joining us?”
“I’m still part of the unit, aren’t I?”
He nods, but he still looks confused, and I can’t really blame him.
I spend a lot of my time living out of a cave a couple of clicks away, with a doss bag, camp stove, and bunch of paperbacks for company.
It’s not much, but it beats the stink of loss and guilt that’s wormed into the walls of the cabin.
Loss for the only omega who was prepared to have me in their nest, and guilt for the fact that I was a better bodyguard than a lover. Until I failed at that, too, and a fucking IED punched a Charlie-shaped hole through the heart of our pack.
As we step past the busted door, Colt makes a pitiful sound and pokes me in the ribs. “You better fucking fix that, Hog.”
I cock a brow at him, since it’s not my boot print painted on the fragments. “Why me?”
Colt rolls his eyes. “Because if you want to claim a mouse, you have to pay for their holes.”
I grunt, because he’s got that wrong for a number of reasons. If the omega is any animal, she’s a hawk, not a rodent. “That’s Axel’s handiwork. He can fix it.”