I turn to Gage, my eyes wide with shock.
“Guest room?”
Gage grins as Emmett curses, and Olly says, “I beg your pardon?”
“She is a guest after all, isn’t she?”
Emmett is beside us in a flash.
“Of course,” he says. Gage grunts.
“Good. Olly, text me if you learn anything new.”
“Of course,” he says, his voice breathless.
And with that, Gage leaves me with the alpha and the beta, and suddenly I long for the cage.
Chapter 15
Gage
I catch up with Diego outside the showers. Between Auryn and myself, his skin is going to be nothing but pruny wrinkles in no time.
“Diego, I need you to come with me.”
“Sí, boss. Right away.”
He trots down the hall after me, following me to the garage. I appreciate his automatic obedience, his willingness to go where I go. I love our pack like brothers, but sometimes–especially since Auryn arrived–Emmett is a bit abrasive. Resistant. Not like Diego. I could’ve asked him to follow me into hell, and he’d be right by my side.
Am I risking a lot by leaving Emmett alone with Auryn? Well, alone with Auryn and Olly, but Olly’s so caught up in Auryn’s blood samples that he won’t notice if Em and Auryn throw down again. I don’t think that will happen now, but asking him to show her to a bedroom might have been a bit of a gamble. We could have another Diego situation, another hasty mating, but I think after my … “talk” with Em, he’ll be nice. Even if they hook up, I don’t think they’ll require bandages. Maybe.
Diego and I get into the Humvee and drive off towards the Orions’. It’s about an hour’s drive, which begs the question: How did Auryn get so close to our compound on foot? Was she driven by the same primal instincts that brought me to her cave?
I know she’s my mate. We’ve got the start of a bond, that much is certain, but so does Diego, it seems, and possibly Olly, too. I’ve heard of omegas bonding to entire packs before, but given our luck with women, I never thought it would happen for us. We’re the lone-ranger mercenary types, not homebodies.
Does Auryn, our spicy omega, even want homebodies? Maybe there's more to this bond–these bonds–than can be seen at face value. Sure, she started a nest in the cave, but maybe there's something to Olly’s cinnamon and peppercorn.
The situation with Auryn is so muddy. Usually, the omegas we are hired to bring in are only running away to get a taste of freedom before they solidify their mate bonds. More cases of getting in that last hurrah before they settle down and breed. But Auryn? She seems to be running for a different, more desperate reason.
She seems to be running to escape horrors that I can’t begin to understand.
Alphas lie. Alphas are bad. Alphas harm. Her notions about alphas don’t fit with how true alphas should act. Is this coming from experience? If so, I feel duty-bound to root out what's going on in the Orions’ pack and put a stop to it.
As we turn onto the road leading to the Orion pack home, Diego perks up and sits straighter in his seat. “We’re going there?” he asks.
“Yep.” I cut the engine before we get all the way down the drive and coast to a stop about two hundred yards from their house. “We’re going to get to the bottom of Auryn’s issues with alphas, which I suspect stem from this place.”
“Will we need guns?”
I only pause for a moment. “Maybe.”
Diego hops out and opens the back, getting out two holsters. “Tranq ammo or …?”
“Live ammo.”
“You got it, boss.”
We arm up, and I draw one of the guns from my holster before ducking into the woods and creeping through the brush. Diego follows right behind me. The wind blows in our favor, keeping us upwind of the Orions. With any luck, they won’t see or hear us either, and we can be in and out without having to use the guns.
