My gaze fell on a hair comb made by Millie, my best friend, my source of strength in college. The one person who didn’t believe omegas were less. Who insisted I was not less. Pulling back errant strands, I tucked the comb in and looked in the mirror.
Millie would be so disappointed in me. I knew I was.
If I am a good omega, follow the rules, and don’t make waves, I’ll lead a happy, fulfilling life.
Chapter Six
York
I could barely breathe. It took every drop of control I had over my bear not to let him out. He wanted his mate. He didn’t give two shits about the constructs of human society. Didn’t care if she was married or not.
She belonged to us, and we belonged to her.
It would be one thing if she was happy and in love. Still difficult to accept, but whatever was going on in that mansion wasn’t as beautiful as the outside was.
“What the fuck!” I screamed as loudly as I could once Cashel turned onto the road. His knuckles were white. His jaw ground as the vein in his neck popped out and throbbed. I only saw that the few times he became angry.
How he managed to drive away was beyond my understanding.
His breaths were ragged, and once we were at a good distance, he pulled the truck off to the side of the road and got out, slamming the driver’s side door so hard I thought the damned thing might come right off.
“What do we do?” I asked myself, mostly, as I got out of the truck after him and Lyon last. I leaned against the front while Lyon paced, grumbling something to himself. Something I couldn’t understand but I would bet I knew the gist.
The omega was ours. I closed my eyes and tried to picture her again even though we only saw her for a blip of time. She had long brown hair in a dowdy bun at the nape of her neck. Her clothes were three holes away from being rags. Shoulders rounded. There was no denying how she cowered as her husband spoke to her.
The way he spoke to her made my skin crawl. My bear wanted to maul him, consequences be damned.
Her scent carried grief and pain and emptiness. Betrayal. None of the usual sweet smells of an omega.
Her omega had been abused and had gone dormant.
“Cash.” Lyon finally stopped pacing and turned to our alpha. We were all alphas, but Cash had emerged as the alpha of our sleuth once we decided to band together. He stopped pacing as well, and they stood on opposite sides of the road, staring at each other. “She’s ours. You know she’s ours.”
Hearing him say it out loud broke me. “She’s married,” I whispered.
“To an asshole who clearly treats her like shit, and he’s got a side piece living in the house! He was playing grab ass with her while we were measuring.” His bear roared as though having another woman in the house made it worse than cheating in the first place.
It kind of did.
Cash blew out a breath and tugged at the roots of his hair. “We don’t know a lot. We are making a lot of assumptions. We had a thirty-second blip into her life. And yes, I’m insinuating all the same things, but she’s married to this man. We have to respect that at some level.”
“The lowest level,” Lyon protested, fists balled at his sides. “I want to rip his head off. Then she wouldn’t be married to him anymore.”
I almost laughed. Almost. But then my fear of losing my life got the better of me. Lyon scared me. He would never hurt us, but he was a vicious grizzly.
Closing my eyes, I reached out to my bear.
She’s ours. She’s hurting. She’s in pain. Go get her. Find her. Take her back to our den.
Well, that cleared things up.
“I’m glad we’re all on the same page, but we can’t walk away. I have to know if she’s okay.”
“What do you suggest?” Cash asked. This wasn’t the way things went in the movies and books. We were supposed to meet our omega, court her, and have her be ours.
I shook my head. Life wasn’t a fantasy. It was real with tumbles and stumbles, but I had to trust Fate had a plan.
Now, we needed one.
