Podcast still looked pale and shaky, but he nodded.
I glanced over at Bat and Storm who were standing together off to the side, Bat holding a piece of his t-shirt underneath Storm’s bloody nose. “Let’s head back to the house so I can take a look at that nose and you can explain why the hell you brought two omegas out into the city by yourself.” I didn’t mean to growl, but it just slipped out. Storm winced, shooting me a guilty look as he turned to head back to the bikes. I stood with Juneau in my arms, she kept her eyes closed as I carried her back over to my bike and put my helmet on her head.
“Hang on tight, okay?” I murmured and she nodded, looking completely miserable.
I climbed onto my bike and pulled her arms around my torso. “It’ll be okay, Juneau, I promise,” I told her quietly before pulling away from the curb.
“You put not only yourself into danger by going to Wilde Manor, but you also put Podcast and Storm into a real shitty position with their pack,” Rex scolded as he paced in front of the couch like a caged beast. He was twenty-minutes into the lecture of a lifetime and the rest of us were quietly waiting for him to finish.
He’d already scolded Storm for taking the omegas out into the city without backup, and Podcast for going out knowing that the betas from the Titans were crawling all over the city working the streets. Now he had moved on to Juneau who looked equal parts angry and upset.
It was clear something else had happened on their excursion today because Podcast and Juneau were plastered together onto the couch, shoulders and legs touching as they waited for Rex to finish his rant.
“I’m not a child,” Juneau finally cut in, finding her voice again for the first time in an hour.
Rex glared down at her, his face red. “No you aren’t, which makes it even worse. You don’t know what the world outside is like, especially the modern world. You were a sheltered princess even by 1915 standards, so what makes you think that you can just waltz around a fucking city without more than one alpha to protect you,” he bit out, his chest heaving.
That was my cue to step in. I stood from where I’d just finished setting and taping his broken nose and stepped in between them. “Hey, man, that’s enough. She doesn’t understand the danger because we haven’ttoldher about said danger yet.”
We had decided to give Juneau the CliffsNotes version of what the Titans MC motorcycle club was. She thought that it was just a group of people who got together to ride their motorcycles, which ittechnicallywas. But the Titans MC also had its fingers in the honey pot of most illegal activities. When Apollo was still alive, he relegated the MC to arms dealing and drugs, but ever since Orpheus had taken over as Prez, he had shifted into selling flesh.
The betas, many of whom had grown up in the MC, were now commodities to be bought and sold to line the pockets of Orpheus and his trusted circle.
I didn’t know how the fuck I was supposed to explain that to Juneau who, like Rex had angrily pointed out,hadbeen sheltered.
Secretly, I didn’t want her to know about our past. While we’d never actively participated in Orpheus’s new business model, my pack was forever tinged with the taint of it. I didn’t want Juneau to see me as someone who would take part in that sort of thing. She looked at me as if I was her protector, the same way that Podcast did. That was my weakness when it came to omegas, and she was tugging on my heartstrings hard.
I’d never cared what people thought about me before. My parents had instilled a strong sense of self in me from a young age. They were pacifists at heart, so they didn’t always agree with my choices, namely my involvement in the military and eventually with the MC, but they still respected and loved me anyway.
The only other people I interacted with were the people in the club and my pack, and we were all in the same situation together, so there was no room in the dark to judge.
But Juneau was oblivious to all of it. Not only because she was out of her own time, but as the only daughter of one of the richest families in history she was never exposed to the seedy underbelly of the world in any time.
“We can’t tell her about everything,” Bat said suddenly, his eyes widening as he cut in. He had the most to hide out of all of us and I could see his face twist with anxiety as he glanced from me to Juneau.
Juneau, not able to see the change in his expression, turned to glare at the alpha. “I deserve to know whatever it is you are hiding from me. All of it.”
Juneau opened her mouth to say something else but stopped, her brows coming together as she frowned, her eyes seeming to glaze over.
“I’m not hiding anything from them,” she said to no one. “Well, I don’t know what it is either, so how am I supposed to explain it to them?”
It took me a moment to realize that she was probably talking to the voice in her head, the one that had summoned her to the future.
Another beat as she listened before she let out a snort. Her eyes met mine again. “The voice in my head says that I need to tell you what happened today.”
Podcast’s head whipped toward her and he shook it furiously.
“It’s going to come out eventually, Podcast, I’m not very good at keeping secrets,” she told him and gave his hand a comforting squeeze.
“I feel like I’m getting only half of the damn conversation and I don’t like it,” Rex muttered from behind me.
Juneau stood up, wiping her hands on the black yoga pants that she was wearing. “We probably want to go outside for this, I don’t think I can control it completely.”
As we quietly followed her to the backyard, I tapped Podcast’s arm to get his attention.‘What’s this about?’I asked, signing so Juneau wouldn’t hear me. The ground was wet and muddy from the rain that had fallen earlier, but Juneau didn’t seem to notice it as she moved to the center of the backyard.
Podcast shook his head.‘Just watch,’he signed back.
“You all may want to stay back a bit, for your own safety,” Juneau said as her eyes fluttered closed.
