Podcastpulledmeinsideof his room where I was immediately greeted with the view of a long desk. It was filled with enough new machinery on it to make my head spin. I only managed a glimpse of the rest of the room which was filled with dark woods and jewel tones before he tugged me through another door and into his nest.
Podcast’s nest was a stark contrast to the main bedroom. It was full of fluffy white bedding and lots of long, vining plants that were pinned up on the walls to create a ceiling of greenery above our heads. On the far side of the nest was a set of large windows that let in the glow of the setting sun, bathing the room in a golden hue as Podcast pulled me down amongst the soft materials.
Someone had cleaned the bedding recently and it smelled of the same detergent that the BBs had used to wash the clothing that they’d given me over the past week. But even with the clean nesting materials, the rest of Podcast’s pack still lingered in the room. The scents were dizzying as I picked them apart. Podcast’s calm eucalyptus, Doc’s sturdy sandalwood, Storm’s wet earth, and finally Rex’s sweet berry scent swirled around me enticingly.
The only scent that was missing was Bat’s, but I wasn’t completely sure of what Bat’s scent actually was. He rarely ever came close enough for me to get a read on it. The few times he’d come into my space I’d caught hints of something salty and fresh, but he always moved away before I could put my finger on what it was.
“Bat doesn’t come in here very often does he?” I asked as we settled in together.
Podcast shook his head and pulled his laptop out from underneath one of the many pillows, opening up a blank white page so he could type more easily than with his phone.
‘MY RELATIONSHIP WITH BAT HAS ALWAYS BEEN PLATONIC,’ he showed me and shrugged before continuing to type. ‘I’M SURE YOU’VE REALIZED HE’S NOT THE EASIEST TO GET CLOSE TO.’
It was true. Most of the time I didn’t actually knowwherehe was in the house because he usually kept to the shadowy corners, only popping out to scare the living daylights out of whoever was walking by. My mind went back to his admission earlier. Itshouldhave bothered me that he had hurt and killed others, but when I looked at Bat I didn’t feel scared. At least not the same way that Tug had shaken me right to my core.
I yawned, the combination of scents making me feel drowsy. It had been a long day, our trip to the Manor feeling so far away that I could hardly believe that they happened on the same day.
“What did you want to share with me?” I asked, leaning back into the fluffy bedding and staring up at him. I was itching to reach out and comb a finger through his brown locks, but I kept my hands to myself. I needed to learn how to deal with the attraction that I felt for Podcast. I’d never been attracted to anyone before, let alone another omega. His scent and the rest of the pack’s were confusing all of my senses.
Packs with a bonded omega weren’tsupposedto smell good to an unbonded omega like me. Their scents should have smelled slightly soured due to the closeness of their bond, putting me off. However, instead of sour, they all smelled deliciously forbidden. It was starting to turn my inner-omega, who was generally quiet, into a wanton hussy. My instincts were telling me to claim them all and make them mine, but my brain was struggling to catch up.
I’d once asked my mother why packs didn’t have more than one omega. She had patiently explained that omegas were territorial creatures. They were fine with being shared, but not with sharing what they viewed as theirs with others. I fully expected to feel that way as I got to know Podcast and the rest of his pack. But I found myself wanting to slot in beside them and let them do the things that I only ever read about in the romance novels that I’d snuck into the manor.
Podcast showed me his screen again. ‘I’LL TYPE IT ALL OUT, GIVE ME A FEW MINUTES.’
I nodded and let my eyes drift shut to the sound of his fingers tip-tapping across the keyboard of his laptop. It felt as if we had crammed an entire week into one day. My head spun from all of the revelations that I had learned, and if I was being completely honest, learning about the pack’s past was the least surprising thing about the whole mess I found myself in.
I may have been a sheltered rich girl, but even I could see that the alphas of Pack Steele oozed danger… and I found that I wasn’t scared of it. It was the opposite. I actually found it quite thrilling. I wasn’t sure what that said about me as a person but I was, as Storm often said, going with the flow.
Finally, after a few minutes, Podcast gave my hand a gentle tap to let me know that he’d finished what he was writing.
Opening my eyes, I sat up on my elbows and looked up at him. His green eyes were nervous, and a little damp like he’d been fighting off tears as he wrote. He looked so vulnerable that my heart squeezed with sympathy. I reached up and brushed my fingers along the curve of his cheek, sweeping up some of the moisture with my thumbs.
“Don’t cry,” I whispered, sitting up fully so that we were face to face.
Podcast sniffed, blinking away the tears.
‘Too much,’he signed, looking so sad about whatever he had written that I almost wanted to tell him that he didn’t need to tell me anything at all. That we could just live in the safe bubble of the pack house for the next three months and ignore the world outside entirely.
But I needed to know the last missing piece of the puzzle and what had been the catalyst for them to leave a life that they had always known. My nature was too curious to leave it be. If I didn’t learn about it today, the itch of not knowing would drive me insane.
Podcast put the computer in my lap and signed for me to read. He’d written his story in the form of a letter, so it started with my name.
JUNEAU,
It’s a little weird to be writing to you like this, especially when you’re sitting right next to me, but it’s also nice to be able to write everything out in my voice. Between typing short sentences on my phone or signing only the words you know, I think it may be hard to understand me sometimes.
I was born with vocal cord paralysis, it has a long fancy name but it just means that my vocal cords don’t work to make sound the way that most people can. My biological mother was a beta in the MC that was strung out on heroin and couldn’t handle having a kid like me, so she ended up leaving me behind with Legs, Wren, and Taz. They became surrogate mothers to me, teaching themselves sign language so that I could communicate. They also taught Rex and he helped to teach the rest of the guys.
As you can imagine in a rough and tough biker gang, a tiny beta who can’t speak is a prime target for bullying. The Titans don’t tolerate weakness, especially in the form of a motherless brat who can’t contribute, so I spent a lot of time hiding away in nooks and crevices.
My only friend for a long time was Rex. His mom was best friends with the BBs, so it was natural for us to be around one another. It was obvious he was going to be an alpha from the start, but he didn’t act like most alphas. For one, he was ridiculously kind.
Even though Rex was five years older than me, he always made time to bring me treats stick up for me when the others tried to torture me. He brought the other guys into the fold as well. First Bat, then he met Storm at school, and eventually he brought Doc before they left for the military after his mom died. Before I knew it, we had formed a sort-of pack.
When the other guys left, Storm stayed behind and protected me from the majority of the bullying. The four years that they were active duty military were some of the longest of my life. They came back after I turned eighteen and everything just kind of clicked into place.
Our friendship suddenly shifted into something a bit different that we couldn’t quite explain since I was a beta at the time. There wasn’t any reason for them to revolve around a skinny beta with no voice like me. No one else understood it either, but we formed our own little bubble inside of the MC. We eventually got a little apartment in town. It was close enough to the MC’s home base that they wouldn’t protest, but far enough that we could start our own lives. Things were as close to perfect as they could be.
