“Nobody would accept us as a single alpha and omega living on our own,” I point out. Plus as much as I appreciate Ben’s loyalty, I still want the others. I want us all to be together.
He’s determined. “Then we’ll take suppressants and live life as betas. As long as I have you, I don’t care.”
“But we’ll be poor.”
“I was born poor. I’m okay dying that way too as long as I get to be happy in between. Now c’mon. I know it’s hard, but you need to be out there for this. Just remember I’ve got you, no matter what happens next. It will be okay. I promise.”
I have no choice but to believe him. It’s the only way I can put one foot in front of the other as I march to face my doom.
ARCHER
Ben disappears inside the cabin for five, maybe ten minutes, tops. Noah, Miles, and I refuse to speak to each other in his absence.
What more can we say to each other?
I expect this bullshit from Noah, but Miles has been my best friend as long as I can remember. I built all of this for him, and he’s really going to throw it away now? Over this?
While I don’t love Violet’s past, I still love her. I knew it from the very first moment I laid my eyes upon that knotty.net profile of hers. Yes, we are animals controlled by our biology. Yes, maybe at first my dick decided in place of my heart, but in this moment, all my organs match in their intentions. We have Violet, and we are never letting her go. If that means splintering our pack, so be it.
All eyes shift toward Violet as she descends the porch steps, hand in hand with Ben. He’s on her side too. Not all is lost. We still have two alphas. We can find another to complete our pack if that’s what Miles and Noah force us to do.
I get up to offer her my seat; it’s the only one that won’t force her to sit beside one of her current nay-sayers. She accepts without looking at me. She doesn’t know that I’m on her side, not yet. But she will soon.
In fact, I’m going to tell her right now. “Violet, I—”
“Wait.” Ben raises a hand and cuts me off. “There’s something I need to say.”
I gesture for him to go ahead. Normally as pack leader I’d have the right to speak first; however, this situation is anything but normal.
“Violet shared a very painful secret with us today. She didn’t have to, but I, for one, appreciate her telling us the truth. And I’m standing by her even if that means walking away from the rest of you. We’ve all done things we’re not proud of. Just look at how we got our start as a pack. Violet’s sorry for what happened, and she’s already punished herself more than enough. It’s not our right to judge what she did before she knew us. Life is hard. Shit happens. It’s up to us to learn from it and move on. And that’s what I’m trying to do now. Because you know what? Violet isn’t the only one who’s been keeping secrets.”
“She already knows about Bokerah,” I remind him. Lately it’s like Ben can’t speak without either making a speech or a joke. I don’t want to hear from him though. Right now we need Violet to speak.
Ben shakes his head and moves to the other side of the fire. He’s not done yet. God help us. “Yeah, but not everything. Nobody knows the whole story except for me.”
“We’re not talking about what Bokerah did,” Noah barks from across the fire pit. “We’re talking about Violet.”
“Well then, please indulge me just a moment. I promise it’s relevant.” Ben’s eyes find mine instead of Noah’s. He’s asking permission.
“Go ahead,” I say, gesturing for him to continue.
I don’t want to keep reliving my biggest mistake. Just like I know Violet is ready to escape her own. But even now, hearing her name cuts just as deep as that knife she tried to off me with.
I remember Bokerah coming into the office, flirting her way into my good graces, letting me take her any which way I wanted, until it was enough for me to bring her to meet the others. Alphas and omegas aren’t supposed to play around before their official matings, but Bokerah was only twenty. She hadn’t gotten her first heat yet, which meant we were safe. And it was my first time being with an omega. I became infatuated. I wanted to make her ours forever. So when she asked for a place in our pack, I agreed to present it to the others. And since I wanted her, they agreed. I was, after all, their leader.
Ben speaks again, relieving me from my bitter memories. “We first met Bokerah when she approached our pack with a mate offer, but that’s not when I first met her.”
I know it’s cliché, but you could hear a fucking pin drop in that forest.
Ben licks his lips before continuing. “I first started working for you in tenth grade, Archer, but before that I worked for somebody else, a guy in his mid-twenties named Tyler. Bokerah’s brother.”
Well, of all the things I expected to happen today, this was not fucking one of them. It’s hard enough hearing about Violet’s past. She made those mistakes before she ever met us. But Ben? Whatever he’s confessing to now can’t be good. It takes everything in me to wait, to hear him out instead of grabbing him by the neck and wringing the truth from him.
“I fit so easily into your drug operation because I’d been running for Tyler a couple years by then,” he continues. “I was basically an old hat at it, but I didn’t want to deal for the rest of my life. And the job had become easy, so I started taking some shortcuts to save time while still cutting the same paycheck. It let me spend some of my free time writing instead of every last minute of it on the streets. Tyler trusted me, so he gave me more and more responsibility, even though I was still so damn young.
“One day I had to make a delivery over in Valley of the Moon. I’d met customers there plenty of times. Pretty routine shit. I could be in and out of that park by supper time.”
I wish he would just fucking get to the point. Why do we need six hours of backstory? We all know what eventually happened. Now I want to know what secret role Ben played in it all.