“He’ll change if he knows what’s good for him,” Saint said, striding over to the far end of the bureau to fetch my clothes and bringing them to put on the corner of the bed near me. “I’ll go with you. We can confront him together and I can facilitate. I just don’t like the idea of your own twin doing something that will potentially hurt you.”
I drew in a breath, accidentally catching Saint’s sandalwood scent with it. Weird though it was, with Saint there to encourage me, I felt like I could actually do it. I might actually be able to confront Lucas like I should have years ago and convince him to stop with his pranks and whatever other dangerous things he might be tempted to get up to.
There was something else going on, too. It might have only been ten o’clock, but that was still too late to pursue family counseling. Saint was filled with energy about the whole thing, though. If I didn’t know better, I’d’ve thought he had some sort of ulterior motive for getting me and Lucas to talk. I didn’t think he was a bad guy. In fact, I thought he was an incredibly nice, caring guy. The way he’d taken care of me through what should have and could have been a deeply scarring event had me feeling all sorts of feels. But I also felt like, in some unknown way, this was personal for him.
“Alright,” I said at last in a tiny voice. I wasn’t actually convinced, but something deep within me didn’t want my acquaintance with Saint to be over so soon. “I’ll get dressed and give you directions to the beach house.”
“Good,” Saint said with a nod and a smile. “You can use the bathroom, if you’d like, or I can go wait in the bathroom or somewhere else until you’re changed.”
“I can use the bathroom,” I said, shuffling over to grab my clothes, which was awkward as I was trying to keep the blanket wrapped around me at the same time. “I’ll just be a second, I said over my shoulder as I headed into the bathroom.
I wasn’t entirely certain what I was getting myself into by rushing off to confront Lucas in the middle of the night, but the visceral omega in me was desperate to trust and obey the alpha who had come to my rescue.
CHAPTER FIVE
Saint
In the back of my mind, I knew I needed to stop for a second and question my motivations for taking Linus away from Kincade Slopes to confront his brother. The part of me that liked to insist I was a rational, healed alpha insisted the confrontation was important to keep Lucas from throwing Linus into some sort of even worse situation in the future. Lucas needed to learn boundaries and to see that his actions had consequences.
A greater part of me called bullshit on that reasoning. I waited as Linus dressed and protectively ushered him out to my car, the overnight bag I’d intended to use for the weekend slung over one shoulder, scanning the darkened forest around the lodge like it was filled with wolves. No omega had ever made me feel such a visceral urge to protect him. Maybe it was Linus’s small frame and overall air of innocence, but I would have torn anyone who tried to touch him limb from limb.
Even that wasn’t the deepest reason why I tossed my things in the backseat, then rushed around to hold the passenger door for him. The coil of tension and remembered panic that always snuck up on me at this time of year squeezed that part of my core that would always be a frightened ten-year-old boy crawling out of twisted metal and carnage into the rain. I had to focus on something else, control something else, to stem the tidal wave of old emotions that had never really left me.
“Is that my car?” Linus asked before sinking into my passenger seat, glancing across the dimly lit lot.
I turned to look, but I didn’t know what kind of car he drove. “Probably,” I answered. “It’s my understanding that the organizers move all the omegas’ cars up to this lot and bring their things into the room where they’ll be playing after the whole thing starts for you guys.”
Linus glanced to me from where he’d been studying the parking lot, then shook his head. “I still can’t believe this whole thing is fake, or that omegas willingly put themselves through all that.”
I flushed a little and shut the door for him, then walked around the car. How did you explain why you enjoyed kink to someone who clearly didn’t? The things I’d done with past omega play partners would probably make Linus blanch.
Which was a shame, because a big part of me really wanted to play with him, to show him how good I could make him feel.
I grunted before opening the driver’s side door, then pushed all that aside as I got into the car and started it. “People get off in all sorts of ways,” I answered his statement with a shrug. “Adrenaline can be really sexy.”
“If you say so,” Linus said tightly.
I peeked at him for a second as I pulled out of the parking lot, then drove to the road that would take us down the mountain to the highway. I don’t know what it was, some kind of instinct,but I suddenly had the feeling that Linus wasn’t as white-bread as he maybe thought he was. His twin was reputedly a hard player, and maybe there were some genetics involved in the whole thing? There was a certain something that I couldn’t put my finger on that whispered Linus might be up for a bit of sexy play, if the timing was right.
It definitely wasn’t right tonight. A lot of things weren’t right. Driving off to confront the omega I’d been supposed to play with at his family’s beach house with his identical twin brother at my side was definitely in the realm of things I shouldn’t have been doing. But I needed to get to the bottom of this. I needed to protect my omega. I needed to feel like I was in control of something.
It was probably for the best that Linus fell asleep in his seat after giving me the address of his family’s beach house for my phone. He’d been through a lot that evening, and his body was probably wrung out after all the adrenaline. And honestly, I needed a couple hours of silence to think about what I was doing and why. I wasn’t about to change my mind, but I did at least feel sheepish for pushing someone else’s family issues to get a grip on my own spiraling emotions. Any other time of year and this wouldn’t have been a problem.
Linus woke up just as I turned onto the long, gravel drive that wound through a small wood and led out to the beach house. It wasn’t even close to what I’d been expecting. When I thought beach house, I imagined the sunny houses along Barrington’s popular and expensive beach district. But Barrington was in the far northeast of the country, and the gorgeous and actually pretty huge house I parked my car in front of would have been right at home up in the mountains. From what I knew of that area, and from the little I could see in the dark, the beach was probably more like a rocky outcropping, not a sandy playground.
There was an outbuilding that looked to be a large garage off to one side, and a large, white van parked in the drive. I had to be careful not to hit it with my car door once I opened it to get out. The van was one hundred percent the sort you would expect people to commit crimes in, but I didn’t have a chance to investigate.
“Who are you and what are you doing here?” a sharp, omega voice demanded from the front of the house.
I whipped around to find an exact replica of Linus charging down the stairs wearing nothing but plaid pajama bottoms, pointing a gun at us. My instinct to protect flared and I dashed around to Linus’s side of the car, which was closer to the house, ready to throw myself in front of a bullet.
“Linus?” Lucas said a second later, lowering his gun. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be at Kincade Slopes getting your rocks off.”
I’d reached Linus’s side by then and could see the frustration in his expression despite the dark. The beach house had floodlights that had clicked on when we’d approached, but they only made everything look washed out and dreamlike.
“It was a prank,” Linus said, slamming my car’s door and starting forward, hands clenched at his sides. “You sent me to a situation where I thought I was being kidnapped and that I would be raped and murdered.”
“What?” Lucas asked, then added a weak laugh. “It was all fake. It’s the Dark Fantasies Club omega auction event. I knew your heat was coming and I thought you could use a little playtime so you could have some fun instead of hiring a boring old B&M alpha.”
