"That's when he asked us why we were doing what we were doing," said Stephen. "We had no answers except that we did as ordered. Then he proposed the brotherhood. We knew each other better than we knew anyone else by that point."
Leo sped through another yellow light. "We were so disconnected from our own packs, we had forgotten what it meant to have a family, friends, a life beyond plotting to kill each other."
"I fell to my knees," Kellen whispered just loud enough to be heard, "and asked them to join me or kill me because I was done being Josiah's pet."
"I didn't know what to do or say." Stephen shook his head.
Leo tapped the breaks because of another yellow light ahead. "I thought it was another trap."
"I figured one of you would just cut off my head and be done with it. I wouldn't have cared either way. The fact that you joined me on the floor of that abandoned house of God and listened to what I had to say. You heard me and my wolf shadow, not your alphas. When you both agreed to create our brotherhood with me...it was nothing short of a miracle."
That last sentence sent shivers through Samara. How close had she come to losing the man she loved before she'd even been born? Another shiver followed. She bit her lip, trying to cut off the surge of adrenaline. Now was not the time to dwell on her love for Kellen because he wasn't going to fight for her. So, she pulled away from him. "While I'm fascinated by your history, we need to think about what we're going to do now. How can we keep Carlie and George safe after they return to the restaurant."
No one answered as Leo sped up driving for the next few hours until he blasted the van over the town line of McNary, about half an hour from Winterbourne.
"We should fill up the tank." Leo pointed to a building with bright lights and the outline of gas pumps that appeared in the distance.
After they pulled over, Stephen headed right for the back of the van. Samara joined him there. Kellen and Grace headed across the street toward a pharmacy that was open 24/7.
The brothers all had an agenda, but all she could do was stand around and feel useless. Kellen had a plan, but they were pressed for time. He’d silently communicated the details to Stephen and Leo, but it annoyed her that he wouldn’t tell her. "What are you doing?"
"I'm going to get the drone in the air. We're close enough and with infrared we can see exactly what's happening at the camp." As he talked, he pulled out a delicate piece of equipment followed by the wings. "Can you hold the drone still while I attach the wings?"
"Of course." She squatted low so she could wrap her hands around the body, as close to the nose as she could. The drone looked sleek and deadly, but it wasn't too heavy. She easily kept it in place without too much exertion. Once Stephen attached the wings, it would look much more graceful. She could only guess that the brothers had done a lot of modifying to get the drone to do what they needed it to do. Her grandfather had taught her how to use guns and knives, but now that she thought about it, he never did feel comfortable with computers or any modern technology. He would never have thought to teach her how to use a drone.
Kellen would.
That whisper in her mind held out the hand of temptation, not unlike Kellen himself when she ran from him that first day on the job. Samara shook her head to bring her mind back to the situation at hand.
"Are you okay?" Stephen asked.
Damned wolf shifter senses would make keeping anything a secret or unobserved impossible. "Yeah, just feeling guilty at not being able to do more."
"Kellen knows what he's doing."
Kellen knows what he's doing, but what is he doing? There was something about the way Stephen said it that had Samara mentally reviewing every conversation she'd witnessed between the three brothers. As Kellen told her, they worked together no matter what, always asking for each other's opinions, because the brothers had equal say over their lives. They weren't a pack, Kellen had said, and they never would be, but there was something about the way they spoke. Who always spoke first when it came to making a big decision? Who made the decision before asking the others if they concurred? The truth should have been obvious from the beginning, but it still made her suck in her breath. She tried to cover her shock by clutching the drone hard enough to keep her butt off the ground.
"Stephen."
Stephen didn't look up at her because he was focused on securing one of the wings.
"Kellen's an alpha, isn't he?"
That stopped Stephen with the wing only half attached, his ice-blue eyes locking onto hers. His wolf came close to the surface for a brief moment. "Don't tell him. Not yet. He's not ready to hear the truth. Not until after we rescue Carlie and George and kill Josiah."
"Why does he think he's an omega? Why haven't you told him he's an alpha? Does Leo know?"
Stephen locked the first wing into place, then moved around to handle the second one, forcing Samara to scoot around to the other side of the nose.
"Kellen has a way of making people believe him. Believe in him. What the three of us said in the van was the absolute truth. What Leo and I didn't say was that after the third hour of talking, listening, starting to realize just how much of our lives had been wasted in our pursuit of one another, Kellen walked over to the rectory to see if he could find anything to drink, whiskey or whatever. While he was gone, the two of us looked at each other. It was almost laughable. Kellen, honest to God, thought he was an omega, but he wasn't. Any wolf would know that within minutes, except himself. Grace must have raised him to think he was an omega to protect him from Josiah."
Oh, good heavens. No wonder Kellen gave himself up to Leo and Stephen. He had been manipulated into suppressing his alpha instincts and acting like an omega, a role that he was never supposed to play.
Stephen turned back to fix the wing as he talked. "Kellen has a special talent that draws people—wolf shifters and humans—to him. We listened to him. He made me and Leo feel powerful and valued and needed. That's what alphas are supposed to do to build a stable pack. It's something that all three of our packs failed to do.”
Hearing the pain in his voice, she touched his shoulder and offered him a small smile of encouragement. He nodded his appreciation before continuing. "So, Leo and I made a pact. We'd follow Kellen and see what else was out there in the world besides hunting each other. If we didn't like what we saw, we'd go our own ways. It didn't matter at that point. We'd walked away from our packs the second Kellen threw down his weapons. The only way to make this brand new friendship work was to allow Kellen to keep believing he was an omega. Otherwise, he'd get hung up on pack hierarchy and that would shatter the peace he'd brokered between the three of us."
Stephen stopped talking when he had to lock the second wing in, but Samara was deep into her own thoughts. She still knew little about what these three had been though, but now she wanted to know all of it. If she had to live as an alpha, then she wanted to become an alpha like Kellen. She didn't want to rule, she wanted bonds like the brothers had, ones that could never be broken. Her parents had close friends, but not like this. After a thousand years of watching people die, both horribly and peacefully, she doubted her grandfather had similar bonds, even with the wife of each generation he spawned.
