I gasped as I crashed into the garage door, flinging it open. It banged against the wall, and their consciousness flooded into me.
I felt Mel’s fear first, quickly followed by Kai’s pure rage that surged at me like a tidal wave. He hurled it at me, again and again, so that I couldn’t reach out to her.
My fear sank into cold despair, because they were too far away.
A suitcase lay clattered near the car, like they didn’t have time to pack it. And I knew what it meant. I could see what was happening.
Mel was shouting at Kai behind the windscreen, and his sneer fixed on me.
The headlights flared, and I raised my arm to shield my eyes as the car reversed.
“No!” I yelled as I launched myself towards them. “No! Fuck! Where are you going?”
But it was too late.
The car shot backwards and up the slope, and I ran barefoot across the cold concrete floor, going as hard as I could to reach them. I needed to stop them, I couldn’t let them go.
“Wait!” I screamed. “Fucking wait! Don’t go!” But Kai was already driving out onto the road.
“No! Don’t go! Please—you can’t—” My heart was beating too hard, everything was going too fast, and, just as I reached the top of the slope, I saw the back of Mel’s head as they shot off down the road.
“No,” I gasped as I forced myself to keep moving. “No, this is a fucking joke. This can’t…”
I was still too weak, inside and out, and I couldn’t hold it together.
I was suffocating, wheezing, growling, and snarling as I pulled myself onto the road. “This can’t fucking…”
My legs gave way, and I fell to my knees. My eyes wide, my body shaking, I couldn’t fucking breathe as the panic took me over.
“No, you can’t—” I choked out, looking down the empty road like I could still catch them. “You can’t fucking—!” I snarled. “You can’t just fucking leave like that!”
I kept shouting, fighting against it even though my body was done for. Even crawling pathetically over the cold tarmac was better than sitting here and crying out like a madman.
Crawling across the ground, I waited for red to seep into my vision. But I wasn’t angry. That wasn’t why I was fighting.
I could still feel them there in me, but the further they grew, the stronger the deep emptiness clawed at me, until I was crying out for them.
Sin’s calming aura swept over me from behind.
“Get off me!” I snarled as he pressed his hand against my shoulder. “Get the fuck off me!” But he wouldn’t let me go.
“Caspian,” he said, his voice filled with warning, like he didn’t care.
His grip was firm, and I felt him kneel on the ground. Everything was so tight, and panic was swallowing me whole.
“They’re gone,” I wheezed as Sin held me from behind, pressing his chest against my back and wrapping his arms around mine as he let me rock against him. “We need to go after them. Sin, we can’t let them go.”
I didn’t cry. I wasn’t a fucking crier. No matter what happened, I would never give in to that part of myself.
Grabbing his arm, I dug my fingers in, hoping I could hurt him enough to get him the fuck off of me so we could move.
I bit my lip, harder and harder until Sin hissed as I cut through the skin to stop myself.
“Are you sure we can’t let them?” he asked. I jerked as he murmured the question next to my ear. “What if we don’t go after them?”
“What the fuck are you talking about? We have to go. They’re our fucking omegas. We can’t let them escape.”
“Why do you think they are running, Caspian?”
