The color in his face deepens. But he spins on his heel and gets into his flashy blue car, spraying dirt everywhere as he reverses haphazardly before peeling out of the clearing.
Oscar
Jake looks helpless as he glances at me. Beside me, Theo is completely still – honestly, I’m not sure he’s even breathing. But his hands clench on the table.
Jake says it slowly. “I’m sorry, Theo.”
She meant every word of that voicemail.
I try to take a breath. “Theo—,”
When he stands, I’m on my feet a second later. “Not here.”
We’re in the middle of the diner again; all of us gravitating here by mutual, silent agreement. And we all know why. It’s quiet tonight, only a few others dotting the booths around us.
And the omega who fate apparently chose to be ours is only a few feet away, separated from us by a shitty plastic door and a whole heap of fucking trauma.
“I’m just going to speak to her,” he says roughly. “I won’t do anything.”
He looks broken. He looks like he did after Brett’s death, when we had to pin him down at the doors of the hospital as he roared for Kennedy and his brother. Except Brett wasn’t there, it turned out.
She’d left him behind. Gone for help for herself, and abandoned him up that fucking mountain to die alone.
“I thought…,” he stares down at the table. “It doesn’t matter what I thought.”
He hoped he was wrong. But Kennedy confirmed all of his worst fears with her words. I look over at Max and Jake, their faces shuttered.
Max doesn’t wear a hint of a smile. “What the hell do we do now?”
They all look at me. Even Theo, a desperation in his eyes. A silent plea.
Slowly, I sit. “We eat, and we leave. We’ll regroup at home.”
What the fuck do we do? Our mate killed our packmate’s brother. She as good as confirmed it. Pushed him into throwing himself off a fucking cliff, and he went ahead with it while she walked away. I reach for my drink, my fingers clenching so tightly against the condensate glass that I wonder if it’ll shatter in my hand. “Did she saywhy?”
Brett wasn’t always easy. I know that much. He could be harsh, and cruel, and possessive. But I never saw him act badly toward her. Not once.
“It doesn’t matter,” Theo mutters, his voice heavy. “It doesn’t change what she did.”
We pause as Mick sets our burgers down on the table. I’m not hungry, and none of them move to touch theirs either. I wait for Mick to leave before reaching into my pocket. “I went to the library earlier. Printed off a few of the news reports. Just in case we missed anything.”
Theo snorts. “They only told half the story.”
“True,” I murmur. “But I found this. It was on a blogging site. They have an interest in conspiracy theories, and they tracked down the hikers that found Kennedy in the woods.”
Theo frowns. “The hikers weren’t named anywhere. We looked.”
I shrug. “They obviously found them somehow. Maybe they knew people connected to the case.”
Spreading out the paper, I gesture to the part I’ve highlighted. “Read it.”
Theo reads silently over my shoulder. When he’s done, I pass it to the others. Max and Jake scan it.
“Poor thing,”Jake murmurs aloud, his brows drawing together.“She was in a terrible state. Catatonic. I’ve never seen injuries like it.”
“She was treated for dehydration.” Theo shakes his head. “They’ve got it wrong. It’s some fringe piece from a journalist that likes to sensationalize.”
“Your father was the one who told us it was dehydration,” I remind him. “We didn’tseeher.”
