“My Cyn, my Cyn…” he kept murmuring over and over, my arm going around his neck to suck in his scent. I didn’t want to breathe anything else ever again.
I’d run out of that forest that day, home to Mum, home to her fear and anger, and hadn’t stopped running since. Even my training with Kai, my therapy sessions, somehow fed into that. But a tremendously odd feeling filled me as I tried to hug him as hard as he hugged me. When you were always running, stopping still was the most alien of sensations.
Hours or days passed, I didn’t know how long. I was in a daze of warmth, tucked up in my nest, welded to Rhys’ side. His mates brought up food and water because Rhys wouldn’t leave me for even a second, only dragging himself out of the pile of fabric when a call of nature hit. It must have been one of those that resulted in me waking up alone.
My heat had broken. Usually, it lasted a few days, but if you took a mate, that brought things to a close. So I felt clearheaded and curiously light when I crawled out of the nest into an empty room, then an empty playroom, an empty corridor, the sounds of muffled voices dragging me forward. I padded up to the office on silent feet, the voice getting clearer as I got there.
“This was not the plan, Orion,” a voice said, one I knew, but which one? I was still a little foggy, a bit wobbly, but I crept closer on the same mouse feet that had carried me out of my room, out the window, down the tree, and into the forest. And just like then, I saw something, blundered into something I wasn’t ready to see or hear.
Benson stood there, face like a thundercloud, arms crossed.
“She’s mated to Rhys—” Orion started to say.
“Which wasn’t the plan. You think that your ‘mates’ will stand by you, but they were not born a Ratcliffe, they have no loyalty to the family. They impair yours.” Benson’s eyes narrowed as he looked his son up and down. “Ratcliffe Industries needs Miranda Rhodes’ battery design if it’s to survive the money pot you’ve been draining to play at club owner.” His eyes flicked around the office, taking in the décor with a sniff.
“Draining? If you took even two seconds to look over the reports I’ve sent you, you’d see how fucking much we’re propping you up. Apothecary is bringing you in millions,” Orion spat.
“From drug dealing and gambling and whoring. You won’t make it onto the Fortune 500 list with a fucking club. This is your birthright, your future.”
“They are my future,” Orion growled.
“Not for long. Mating bonds can be broken. The therapy is brutal and not everyone survives it, but who’s going to worry about McCallum or the big lunk if they disappear? The son of a whore and some nobody from the suburbs… They don’t have anyone that will miss them, and I’m sure a suitable bribe will silence the other one’s family.”
Benson strolled closer, reaching out and brushing an invisible piece of lint from his son’s T-shirt.
“I never should have sent you to the camp. I made sure that counsellor was sacked, recommending a child of mine to go to a place filled with ingrates. You stepped away from your responsibilities then and haven’t picked them up since.” His eyes, a paler, more watery version of Orion’s, bore into his son’s. “You need to now. Mate that omega, take her as yours, and I’ll overlook your other connections. You can have the pack you always wanted, and I’ll have that fucking invention that threatens to destroy every single thing I’ve built.”
Benson pulled back, all his menace and animosity smoothed away like it had never been there in the first place.
I was proud of myself, for staying hidden, for slipping back and into an empty room when Orion’s father strolled out of the office, for staying hunched down in the dark until he left, then when I heard them calling for me, running up the halls, searching.
For their investment.
I was up and out the door as soon as I watched Rhys and his mates run past, barking orders at their betas, calling out much more softly to me. Every step I took away from them felt like fucking agony, but I forced my legs to move and keep moving until I found a fire escape, shoving the door open and staggering out.
I must have been a picture, a bedraggled omega clad in only a long T-shirt, and perhaps that was why the police car pulled up, officers getting out and approaching me slowly, a lot slower than them.
“Omega!” Marcus barked. The fire escape door slammed open, but it wasn’t louder than his alpha command. He used every scrap of dominance to try and stop me, but nothing any of them could do would have that effect anymore, not even that. I stared into Rhys’ eyes, saw that cruel boy that had jumped off the top of the wrecked car overlaid over the man now, and it went some way to distancing me from the destroyed look on his face.
“Are you all right, ma’am?” one of the officers asked, moving between me and the alphas, hand going to his belt where his stun gun hung.
“No,” I said with absolute certainty. “I’m not.” I could see the forest in my mind, but that wasn’t a safe place. None of it was.
Why me? Why then? Why did Orion draw me so swiftly and surely into his world? Why was Benson so keen for me to meet his son? What was Orion’s mysterious plan, and why did we never get around to talking about it? All the fucking questions I should’ve asked but didn’t.
Stupid omega. Little passive thing sucked in by all the seductively scented alphas, led along like a sheep to slaughter, bleating happily.
“Cyn, don’t do this. We can explain,” Rhys said.
Explain. Not ‘what the hell.’ Not ‘what is going on.’ No shock or surprise, only pain.
The pain of being caught.
“You knew,” I said, but I didn’t wait for an answer, my focus flicking up to the men in uniform. “I need to go home. Please take me home.”
Because that was the thing about omegas—our innate vulnerability was easily exploited, but we could also use it to suit our own purposes. I didn’t hold back the shake in my limbs, the tears in my eyes, the fucking pain, because I couldn’t, and that was all I needed.
“Of course. Come this way. We’ll look after you.”