Pack of Lies, page 19
Tears mixed with sweat as my body trembled and shut down, reaching a point where only unconsciousness could soothe my pain.
I woke up to a warm, damp cloth on my forehead and the soft sound of humming. Squinting, I saw Willa hovering over me, the metal ceiling of the van beyond her.
I officially hate vans.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
She kept her voice quiet enough it didn’t exacerbate my migraine, which had dulled from the rest.
“Like garbage,” I said truthfully. “But I’m used to it.”
“You’re used to vomiting and passing out?”
“Yeah.”
“They really fucked you up.”
“That’s why I didn’t want Jessica to express interest in going there,” I said.
Placing my hands on the cold floor, I tried to push myself up to a seated position. Willa placed a hand on my shoulder to keep me down. We appeared to be the only ones in the vehicle. This one had a barrier between the front seats and the back area, but through the window in the barrier it appeared no one was up there.
“These alphas who rescued us claim they’re your mates, and they won’t be pleased if you’re trying to do things before they get you to a doctor.”
I snorted but stayed down. “I’m not going to see a doctor and they’re not my mates.”
I’d already seen Dr. Rover. Maybe that was how the Centre had found me in the first place. Other than aimless wandering around the block and in surrounding shops, we’d only gone downtown. The guys had given my chosen name to the hospital, not knowing my real one, but there were only so many people with my symptoms.
“Seriously? You need one. And they seemed adamant about being your scent match.”
“A doctor can’t help me. Good to know they’re still maintaining the lie of being my scent match,” I muttered. “Where’s Mae?”
Willa had looked far too confused about my relationship with Reese and Denzel, and I wasn’t in the mood to talk about it. It was hard to explain and embarrassing to admit.
“We’re at her house. She’s been distressed since she was kidnapped but was shutting down with more unfamiliar alphas around. They wanted to return her to her pack immediately.”
I couldn’t hear anything outside the van except for the occasional sound of a passing car. They had to have parked a ways away from where they were bringing Mae. “Why didn’t we bring her to a hospital?” I asked.
“Her pack is going to do more for her than some emergency responders. Plus, your guys don’t exactly want the police knowing they broke into an abandoned business and started a gunfight to save trafficked omegas. They might not be punished too harshly, but they would get arrested.”
She had a point.
If they got arrested, what would I do? I couldn’t find the Madame on my own. At this point, I could barely walk on my own. I didn’t have identification to get a job, or money to get around or find someplace to live. I’d be on the streets without them, and I despised how much I needed them.
Because after learning what the Centre had planned for me, I could finally admit I was grateful to be out of there.
Breeding experiments sounded horrific.
“Are they bringing you home, too?” I asked.
She shrugged, drawing the cloth back from my face. She pressed it into my hand and I wiped down my neck to get some of the watcher’s scent off me. I would need scent-cancelling body wash and a coarse scrub brush to truly rid me of him.
“Can’t go home. I’ll get them to drop me off on a street corner somewhere, and I’ll figure it out.”
“No way,” I said. “You’re what, eighteen? They’ll eat you alive.”
“I’m nineteen, and I’m not gold pack. I’ll buy some dampeners and be fine.”
“Reese and Denzel can help you too.”
Willa chuckled. “They’re invested in helping you because they’re your mates. They’re not mine.”
“They owe me the fucking world if they want me to stay with them,” I said. “If I want them to help you, they will. Leaving you to fend for yourself is just wrong.”
Jessica having to fend for herself was bad enough. I bit my cheek until I tasted blood, and let the cloth fall to the van floor. Pushing myself up with a grunt, Willa didn’t stop me this time. She was wringing her hands in front of her, a puzzled expression on her face.
She might be trying to figure out why the men owed me so much, but I wasn’t about to volunteer the details.
“I’d accept help in the form of scent dampeners or a couple of weapons,” she said.
“Done.”
My head was spinning, but the vertigo wasn’t as intense as it had been before. Some of my muscles were sore, but it was from the strain of fighting against the watcher, and not because of spasms. My neck and back were particularly uncomfortable, throbbing where he’d hurt me.
The back door abruptly fell open, letting in more light from the glowing streetlights. Reese’s form was silhouetted, and past him I saw manicured lawns and bushes. This was an affluent area with big houses and rich families. No wonder Mae had been taken for ransom.
“I got some water,” Reese said, climbing into the back with us and shutting the door. “They were happy to help once Mae explained what happened.”
He cracked open a water bottle and handed it to me. I tossed back a sip, the chilled liquid soothing my bit cheek.
Reese tried to smile at me, but it faltered and I avoided eye contact with him.
“Where do you want us to bring you, Willa?” he asked, turning his attention to the other omega.
“She wants scent dampeners and weapons,” I said flatly.
“What?”
“Scent dampeners and weapons.”
“We can’t just give her weapons,” Reese said.
I took another swig of water, picturing the frown on his face but still not looking at him.
“It’s fine, just drop me—”
I cut Willa off. “No. Get her what she needs. I imagine you want me to stay with you, but I’ll get out of this van whenever she does if you don’t give her what she’s asking for.”
Tense silence filled the space, then Reese opened the door and stepped down onto the pavement. “Fine, precious. I’ll be your indentured servant for life if it means there’s a chance you’ll forgive me. Besides, there’s no way we’re letting you out of our sight until we know you’re going to be safe.”
I didn’t point out that I would never be safe. Gold pack omegas couldn’t be, not really. And I wouldn’t be safe if the Centre still existed, which it apparently did.
He shut us up in the vehicle again. Willa huffed out a breath. “Well, that was awkward. Are you going to tell me what happened there?”
“No,” I said, trying not to sound bitter.
I wasn’t sure I succeeded, because neither of us talked after that, waiting in the darkness until we left Mae’s house.
TWENTY-FIVE
MARLOWE
Nothing had been able to stop me from pacing a hole in the living room carpet.
Not Quentin grabbing me and trying to get me on his lap. Not Jubilee going through the odds of success for their rescue mission.
Nothing.
My scent match was out there kidnapped, and I hadn’t gotten to meet her. I hadn’t known she existed at all, which was a gut punch after I’d spent so many years waiting. I wanted my pack to have a scent match. It was the kind of attraction and connection you couldn’t feel with anyone else, as much as I knew they loved me and our bond.
What the fuck had Denzel been thinking?
I clenched my fists, nails biting into my palm.
Our pack lead had always been overbearing and protective to the extreme. There had been times where it had annoyed or irritated me, and times when I’d told him off and asked him to cool down.
Never before had I wanted to punch him in the face.
“Cupcake, please sit down,” Quentin pleaded from the couch.
He had one leg crossed over the other, both bouncing up and down erratically. He’d tried to plaster on a smile for me, but I saw his fury beneath the surface. It was in the clench of his jaw and the way his shoulders were drawn up close to his ears. Quentin was the only one of my pack besides me who hadn’t known about her, and he was furious about being out of the loop.
Thorn.
It was such a pretty name. Jubilee said she’d chosen it for herself after explaining the whole ordeal of how they’d met her in the first place. Where she’d come from. Why she’d been stolen from a public park, her captors leaving Reese drugged.
Why had she chosen it? I wanted to know. Would she be prickly like the name suggested? I couldn’t blame her if she was. Being forced to go gold pack and experimented on would make anyone a little antagonistic.
“I’m not going to sit down,” I mumbled after pacing the room a couple more times.
“You’ll wear yourself out.”
“I’m not that fucking fragile!” I snapped, glaring at him. “It’s not like I’m going to pace myself to fucking death. You all treat me like a terminally ill child with an anxiety disorder. I am not a child, and I am not ill, and I may have anxiety but it’s perfectly manageable with well-timed medication, which I have taken today.”
Quentin looked guiltily down at the plush couch and I sighed, immediately feeling horrible. If anything, that rant should have been directed at Denzel. Who’d lied to me. Straight to my face when he’d come home to visit. He’d fucked me while knowing she existed and hiding it from me, and I felt dirty.
But Denzel wasn’t here.
He was out in the world, possibly getting himself killed before I could ream him out and he could beg for forgiveness.
I collapsed onto the couch beside Quentin. “Sorry,” I muttered.
My mate leaned over me and pressed a kiss to my shoulder. “No, you’re right. We’re all a little tense. I’m sorry, cupcake.”
Body relaxing under his touch, I let myself slide to lay in his lap. I wanted an alpha purr, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask Jubilee. He’d lied too. It wasn’t his fault, and I knew it, but I didn’t want anything to do with any of them until Thorn was safe.
Quentin’s phone vibrated on the side table and I grappled for it, his hands finding it first. He swiped to answer the call and put it on speaker. Jubilee rushed over from the kitchen counter, where he’d been frantically scratching probability equations out onto his notepads.
“We got her,” Reese said.
I released a shaky breath. “Is she OK?”
“Shaken up, but fine. We have to drop off another girl we rescued, but we’ll be home in about half an hour.”
“No one got hurt?” Quentin asked.
Reese hesitated, then sighed. “One of the guys on the hired team took a gunshot to the shoulder, but Denzel and I are fine.”
That was the kind of detail they all would have left out of a report normally. Reese was sucking up to me by making me feel like I was really in the loop. It wasn’t going to work. Not without a big fucking grovel attached.
Admittedly, my anxiety did spike a bit at the knowledge someone had been shot. It could have just as easily been my pack. It could have just as easily been a head wound and not a shoulder wound.
Quentin’s fingers stroked my arm, sensing that from me. Jubilee reached over the back of the couch and stroked my hip and thigh, which I grudgingly allowed.
“We have a lot to talk about when you get back,” I said.
“I know, Marlowe.”
Reese only ever called me by my full name. No nicknames, no pet names. Only Marlowe.
“Finish up quickly.”
“Got it.”
He hung up after the crisp reply, leaving me to get back up and continue to pace.
On our quiet residential street in the middle of the night, the sound of a car door closing was as loud as a gunshot. I spun to face the door, heart pounding in my chest, not able to see anything with the front blinds pulled closed. Quentin stood too, one hand gently stroking my hip.
Jubilee seemed to shrink in on himself, likely ashamed of the lies he’d told.
Both Thorn and I were aware of them, now.
I might make myself smaller too if I were in the crosshairs of two angry omegas.
Was I going to be in her crosshairs?
Oh, gosh.
She could be furious at me. These were her scent match mates and I’d mated them before her. Was that something a thorny omega would be angry about? Probably. I nervously wrung my hands together, a ball of stress as I listened for footsteps coming up to the front door.
They took a long time, or maybe my sense of time was warped because of my intent anticipation.
My scent match mate was about to walk through the door of our pack’s house.
No. I didn’t tidy.
There were dishes in the sink.
A sweater draped over the back of the couch.
Probably crumbs on the floor.
She’s not going to like it.
Maybe she didn’t even like suburban houses. She might have preferred to live in the lights and glam of downtown. I would move there for her, no matter how much I loved my garden and our neighbours.
Wait, no.
Jubilee said she got migraines.
She wouldn’t like the wind chime hanging from the back porch, then.
I’d taken one step toward the back door, intent on removing it immediately, when the key turned in the lock. The handle turned. The door opened an inch, then swung open all at once.
Denzel strode through first, not smiling but not looking as demure as I would have liked to see considering how mega badly he’d fucked up.
And then, she set foot in our house.
Thorn was short, about the same height as me, and looked tiny in the baggy, dark clothes she was wearing. Her hair hung in straight curtains on either side of her face, the roots dark with the rest a gleaming silver. It was mussed, which matched with her haggard appearance. Gold eyes latched onto mine, squinting a bit with dark bags under them. She’d clearly been through a lot while she’d been kidnapped.
Yet, I couldn’t wrap my head around how gorgeous she was.
Her scent drifted toward me, sweet blackberry and orange tickling my nose. I needed to make a cupcake with a flavour profile like that. It was delectable.
I knew I should take it slow. She was delicate.
My bottom lip trembled, though, tears welling in my eyes as I rushed forward and wrapped my arms around her. I sucked in deep breaths of her scent as she stood, stunned, in my embrace. I was doing my best not to cry on her. “Thank goodness you’re alright,” I whispered.
Quentin gently unwrapped my arms from her and dragged me a step back. Rubbing at my eyes, I offered her a shaky smile. “Sorry. I know I shouldn’t have. I… don’t even know if you’re a hugger.”
She was silent for a long time, enough I pressed back nervously into Quentin.
Had I managed to make her hate me already?
TWENTY-SIX
THORN
We’d dropped Willa off with some of the guys who had helped Denzel with the attack on the Centre and getting us out of the trafficker’s warehouse. She’d been hesitant to go with them, at first, but something they’d said had convinced her she would be fine. They would get her some scent dampeners and the weapons she asked for, and then let her go on her way.
I wanted to give her a phone number or some other way to contact me, but I didn’t have one. Reese gave her his, but there were no guarantees I’d be with their pack long enough for it to matter if she could contact him.
Then we headed out in silence, in a new SUV instead of the van, on our way to their house in suburbia.
As we turned off the main roads and into quiet streets full of manicured houses, I began to fidget.
I don’t belong here.
Back in my hometown, nothing had been this perfect and clean. I certainly wasn’t, not then and not now. All I would do was mar the neighbourhood’s reputation with my gold eyes and trauma.
We pulled into the driveway of a gorgeous house.
The place wasn’t huge, but was big enough for a whole pack, and everything was homely and neat. A porch light and some solar lights illuminated the property, somehow making it seem inviting even in the middle of the night. Flower beds were in the front yard, ready for the spring rains to cause flowers to shoot up. The front door had a welcome mat with a dog on it. They had a doorbell camera.
My temples pounded and I hyperventilated, drawing to an abrupt stop as Reese and Denzel led me up to that intimidating, perfect front door.
“Precious?” Reese murmured, his hands coming down to rub my arms.
I couldn’t even bring myself to shove him off me, despite my fury over their lies. The comfort was necessary. Their omega was in there. Another member of their pack, too. With a perfect life like this, why would either of them accept me?
It had been so long since I’d wanted a pack, but the past few days had given me hope.
And it was about to be ripped away.
Scent match or not — and I still didn’t know for certain either way — when their omega saw me, when Marlowe realized how broken I was, he wouldn’t want me in their pack. Why keep the broken one when they have the perfect one? He would tell them to send me on my way and they would.
I should want that. After all the lies, I should be relieved I was going to be set free. They would find the Madame for me, and I would be set up with a new life where I wouldn’t be hunted or judged for being gold pack.
Now it sounded like a lonely existence.
“I’m fine,” I said quietly. “Let’s go inside.”
I was reassuring myself more than him.
Denzel unlocked and opened the door, and I followed him numbly through it, pausing just inside the doorway.
There were three people staring at me. Jubilee, of course, his shame obvious in his expression. A man who looked so similar to Denzel they had to be related — that was Quentin. And Marlowe. Their omega.
He was small for a guy, almost as small as me. His eyes were red-rimmed and had dark circles under them, the stress of learning about his pack’s betrayal impacting him severely. There were freckles dusting his pale cheeks and his hair was black, the style fluffy and somewhat long. His green eyes stared into my gold ones, and I wasn’t certain what I saw in them.
