“Do you even hear yourself right now?” Ben cracks his knuckles, then his neck. “Do you not hear how fucked up this is? It’s like we get a free pass for what happened with Bokerah, but Violet has to keep paying for a mistake she made a long time ago.”
“How long ago though?” Noah asks, his voice deep but shaky.
“Does that actually matter? How long ago did we have Bokerah? Not long enough to erase her from memory.”
“Bokerah was crazy. That wasn’t our fault,” Noah says in the pack’s defense.
“And Violet’s first heat hit early when she was young and unprepared. Was that her fault?” Ben doesn’t seem to care about the pack, only the wayward omega who tricked her way into it. The second such omega for fuck’s sake.
I shake my head. “We have minds, you know. We’re not all just some slave to our biology.”
“Really?”Ben shouts. Now his face is almost as red as Noah’s.
“It seems like that’s exactly what we are,” Archer says. “You, me, Violet, all of us. This whole fucking world is ruled by our biology. Maybe that’s why our race is dying out.”
“Don’t go all Darwin on us now, Arch,” I say through clenched teeth, shooting him a dirty look. “If you want to argue survival of the fittest, then look at us. Look at what we overcame. Look at you!”
“What do you want out of this, Miles? Noah?” He turns to each of us and studies us for a moment before continuing. “Our hormones are fucking nuts right now, thanks to what just happened upstairs, and not all of us are thinking rationally. Think about how you felt ten minutes ago, an hour, a day. Does this really change how you feel? Does it change enough that you want to send Violet back to the mother she’s so clearly terrified of? That you want to live the rest of our lives without an omega to punish this one for something that happened before she even met us?”
I hesitate, so Noah answers for the both of us. “Well, maybe not back to her mother. But at least away from here. How can we ever trust her after this?”
“Violet’s pack, and pack’s family. She belongs just as much as any of us do,” Ben snarls. “After all, none of us here are blood.”
“But she’s already had a baby. What if she can’t have any more?” I ask. Yeah, I want to be a father. I’ve always pictured myself with at least one or two little packlings. I’d be a damn good father too, so why is it starting to seem that fate is conspiring against us?
“Well, if that’s the case then the pack dies with us. Same as will happen if we send her away. No omega in her right mind will want us after two failed mating attempts, and we’ve already had an omega who wasn’t in her right mind. Need I remind you how that ended?” Archer points to his bare torso and the jagged scar left by Bokerah’s blade.
“So since you two assholes have such thick skulls when it comes to this, let me break it down,” Ben offers with a snort, speaking very slowly and with wild hand gestures. “If we keep Violet, which we should, we still have a chance to grow our family. If we send her away, that’s all out the window for us. And even if Violet can’t or doesn’t have children, we still get to live the rest of our days with a sweet, gorgeous omega who’s perfect for us.” He lifts one hand then the other as if weighing options. “Seems pretty fucking obvious to me.”
Archer nods along with Ben’s speech, then adds, “Besides you’re forgetting, some omegas never give birth at all. Then others have multiples, like Violet’s mother, who had seven. The fact Violet has already had one doesn’t really impact our chances. It’s still luck of the draw here. What would we have done if she had come to us perfectly virginal but still couldn’t have any babies? Would we send her away then?”
“You’re assuming a world where she hasn’t lied to us. That world doesn’t exist,” Noah hisses. His entire face is red. It’s taking everything he’s got not to go nuclear on Archer and Ben.
“Oh, blow it out your ass.” Ben stalks away from the fire and heads toward the cabin.
“Where are you going? We’re not done talking here,” I call after him.
“I’m going to get Violet. It’s not right for us all to sit around deciding her fate like she doesn’t have a say in it. We can keep talking, but we at least need to give her a voice.”
VIOLET
I hear every word that’s said around the fire. The forest plays each word back, amplifying, echoing. I couldn’t ignore the pack’s argument if I tried. Even my growing sobs aren’t enough to block out the din.
The first thing I did when I returned to the cabin was to grab the contraceptive gel I’d hidden in the lotion bottle and empty the entire container inside myself.
The chances of me getting pregnant while not in heat are incredibly low, but then again, bearing a male omega’s child was supposed to be one hundred percent impossible, and look what happened then.
I can’t believe Miles is the most dead set against me in all this. He was always the sweet one, the kind alpha with a soft spot for me. And despite his words to the contrary, I know he wants to send me back to my mother—to march me right back to San Francisco and demand a refund on the big fat check he wrote to buy my hand.
Ben finds me curled into the fetal position on the bed, a pillow pressed firmly over my ears. He gently lifts me into his arms and traces kisses down my cheeks to rid them of their tears. “I’m so sorry about everything that’s happened to you, and I’m sorry you have to hear those buffoons arguing your worth outside. But believe me, Violet, I will always be here for you, no matter what it costs me. Always.”
I sniff and stare up at him. “How can you promise that though? If the pack doesn’t want me, I’m gone.”
“If the pack doesn’t want you, then I don’t want the pack. I mean it, Violet. I’m here for you. All of you. Tell me what’s wrong, and I’ll move mountains to make it better.”
When I continue to cry softly at this confession, a devilish smile snakes its way across his face. “Or I can fuck you so hard you won’t even remember you had a problem in the first place.”
That at least shocks some of the tears away. Sometimes jokes really do help to lighten the darkest of moments. Ben is a genius in that way. But how could I ever ask him to leave his pack behind for my benefit?