There’s something I can respect about a man who would rather endure hell than be forced to live his life a certain way. I just wonder if he’ll have what it takes to put an end to his father when the time comes.
“Declan?” Nolan’s voice has me jerking away from the computer in surprise. I turn to see his concerned face. “You’re still watching?” I can only imagine how I look, hunched over the computer desk in the corner of my bedroom, my eyes probably bloodshot from being awake too long.
My gaze shoots back to the screen, and my shoulders relax when I see Jo back with Hayden and Kole. They’ll keep her safe for now. I stand and scoop Turnip up before dropping her into my shirt pocket. “I have to get Turnip back to Thornfield. I can’t stand not having eyesandears on her.”
Nolan gives me a sympathetic look. When Jo came to live with all of us five years ago, the guys adopted her as a little sister as well. However, none of them seem to have the same trouble I do letting her handle herself. “She knows what she’s doing, Dec. It’s too late to make the drive right now. Why don’t you let it go until tomorrow?”
“What if she needs me?” I can’t help but ask. I failed her the first eighteen years of her life. HerandMabel. If I had the guts to take Dad out sooner, Jo never would’ve had to deal with that piece of shit she called “Daddy” for as long as she did. Maybe I could have even saved her mom. Dahlia. Or, I suppose Jo only would have known her as Fiona, since she changed her name when she left Cian.
“She’ll be fine without Turnip one more day.” Nolan’s hand grasps my shoulder, the touch igniting something inside me. Nolan seems to have that effect on me more and more these days—even when wearen’tseeking out each other’s company for physical relief. “She should be going to bed soon anyway.Youneed some sleep.”
I find myself leaning into the touch. Looking over my shoulder, my eyes search for the screen with Jo on it again. She has her head leaning on Hayden’s shoulder, and Kole is no longer watching the movie, his eyes on her face.
She’s got two alphas who can do a hell of a lot more to protect her than I can at the moment.
“Yeah…Yeah, okay. Tomorrow.” Turnip squeaks in protest, but I just take her out of my pocket and set her back on my desk. My brain will function better after I get a few hours of sleep anyway.
one
Sam
“Have you seen Jo anywhere?” My pulse is thrumming with unease as I walk into my best friend’s living quarters.
“Um, knock much?” West gives an indignant huff as he looks down at himself, only a towel around his waist. He has a protein shake in one hand, and it looks like he was walking from the kitchen back to his bedroom.
I just roll my eyes. “Dude. I’ve seen you naked so many times since we were kids.” West shakes his head at me and keeps walking, disappearing into his room. He leaves the door open, so I call out, “Jo went with Leslie a few hours ago, but I haven’t seen her since.”
Leslie had entered the cafeteria and gone straight to the little troublemaker, which should have been my first red flag. Typically, Sundays are off days for doctors and admin.
West comes back out of his room, his towel gone, replaced with a pair of basketball shorts and a t-shirt. He frowns. “What did Leslie want?”
“I didn’t catch all of what she said, but I guess Brooks wanted to check out Jo after the fights last night.” I rub the back of my neck. It had made my skin itch at the time, but I had chalked it up to my alpha’s claim on Jo, or nerves about last night.
Last night…when we tortured and murdered that piece of shit Arthur Banesworth.
Now that I think about it though, there was something…off about Leslie’s usually bubbly personality. She seemed like shereallydidn’t want to be there.
West crosses his arms, that little crease appearing between his eyebrows as he thinks. “Have you asked Hayden or Kole?”
“They’re both still sleeping.” We hadn’t gotten back to our respective rooms until close to five in the morning, and while I’m used to pulling all-nighters, the two younger members of our quintet are not yet acclimated to it. At one point, Kole might have been, but he’s been locked up in here for three years now.
He grabs his laptop and perches on the couch. “I’ll check her schedule. Maybe they added on more labor for beating the alpha last night.” I mean, that’s definitely a possibility. Both Brooks and Whitmore had been pissed beyond belief when Jo took down four betas, one after the other, and still managed to knock out an alpha. “Have you checked her room?”
I open my mouth to say, of course I have, but then I realize…no. I haven’t. I checked the courtyard, the cafeteria, the arts and crafts room, but not…her room. Idiot. “Come with me to check there, then. There’s something off, I can tell.”
West frowns before closing his computer and putting it on the couch. “There’s no change to her schedule. Let me put on my scrubs, and then I’ll join you.”
There’s no way they know about Banesworth. I’ve heard so much gossip this morning, nobody can deny the fact that he quit. I scrambled the security feed from last night and made it look like a technical error. I made sure his car got picked up and taken to my scrap guy. West sent the resignation from the fucker’s personal email.
We’re in the clear as far as the murder of Arthur Banesworth goes.
Now, we just need to make sure our omega is okay.
West and I stand in front of Jo’s door twenty minutes later, and if it weren’t for the fact I already scrambled the feeds once, I’d do it again. As it is, if they ask why West and I came to Jo’s door together at eleven in the morning on a Sunday, we can just say that West was doing his duty as her psychologist to see how she’s holding up after the fights last night.
And I’m…here in case she…stabs him. Or something.
I raise my keycard to swipe it, but West knocks my hand away, giving me a look like I’m crazy. “Knock, Sam,” he chides, and raises his own hand to knock on the door. Immediately, we can hear shuffling inside the room, but no answer.
