"Let’s go home," he said in a tone that didn’t invite alternatives.
"What happened?" I asked. “It’s… it’s really bad, isn’t it?”
The look on Cameo’s face was a mix between anger and anxiety. It was clear that he didn’t want me to go inside. “Someone broke in.”
“No shit,” Indigo said quietly, earning a positively scathing glare.
“It’s my apartment,” I argued, shaking Indigo off in an attempt to push my way inside. “I want to see. I can handle it.”
Cameo caught my shoulder. "You don't need to," he said, a note of pleading in his tone. "You and Indigo can go back to the car, I’ll collect some things for you. Have this dealt with.”
“Yeah, like you dealt with turning my stream off?” I snapped, shaking the alpha off. “I’m going inside, Cameo.”
"Please, go to the car, Eva. Let us deal with it."
I shook my head, though the more that Cameo pushed back, the less I found that I wanted to argue with him. The problem was, with the way the alpha was acting, my mind had already gone to the worst case scenario. And, if I knew Cameo and his hatred for mess, it was probably nothing more than a bit of mud on my carpet and some smashed plants.
"I need to see what they took so I can file a police report. It’s not like you have a catalogue of every item in my place, right?
“I—well—no, but?—”
“Exactly.”
He sighed, sharing a look with Indi that almost made me change my mind.
But I was stubborn, and Cameo was decidedly an unreliable assessor of mess.
"Fine,” he conceded, giving my shoulder a squeeze. “But on the condition that you will, as quickly as possible, pack a bag. Indigo and I will be taking you home, and you will be staying there until we find out who did this.”
A big part of me wanted to argue. What kind of insane alphahole bullshit was getting me fired and then deciding that I was formally moving in the same day? But Cameo’s face wasn’t the impassive mask that I’d come to expect from the alpha, and the barely concealed emotions making his scent into a forest fire set my teeth on edge.
“Fine.”
Cameo took a deep breath through his nose as though he was preparing for impact, releasing my shoulder. “Fine.”
Without the door knob, the door had nothing to latch it shut, a gentle push with my fingers enough to make it swing open with an eerie creak.
It was nothing like what my anxiety had conjured; it was a million times worse.
I screamed, my hands flying to cover my mouth in horror.
“Fucking—fuck—” Indi muttered behind me in disbelief. “What the?—”
“Fuck?” Cameo finished grimly. “Eloquent as always, Indigo.”
On the other side of the threshold, my cozy, tidy little one bedroom had been completely ransacked. My TV was broken, it looked like with something blunt, like a bat. My trinket collection was smashed on the ground, every one lookingbroken. A knife had been taken to the couch and split, and my shelves all knocked over.
Indi was there in an instant, hugging me close as I sobbed. All of my things, this life that I built, was destroyed in front of me. And thescentwas all wrong.
"I'm going to pack a bag," Cameo said, probably more to Indi than me.
He let me stay there as long as I needed, rubbing small circles around my back.
I wasn't sure how much time passed before I was peeling my tear-stained face from Indigo's now wet shirt.
"Can I see my room?"
"I don't know if that's a good idea," Indi said.
