Page 64 of Lying Lainey

“Yes,” I whispered, a tear running down my cheek. “You have no idea what they’ve already done to me without provocation. I can’t even fathom the fury that will come down on me if they know I’ve told you about them. There is nothing they care more about than keeping themselves a secret. It’s why they drugged me, kidnapped me, dragged me from Marlios in the middle of the night, and brought me here.”

My hands started to shake as I removed them from Kerian, and I tried to take a step back to give him some space, but my legs gave out. Instantly, Kerian caught and settled me on his lap, keeping his hands on my hips.

“Lainey, I think you need to tell us the whole story. Not about your childhood but from the point they took you and how you ended up here,” Kerian instructed.

I wiped away the tears that wouldn’t seem to stop and nodded. “Okay, I can do that.”

Quintin appeared before me with a tissue in his hand and a box of more in his other. I took the offered tissue and tried to clean myself up before trying to stand, but Kerian didn’t let go of his grip.

“You don’t have to do this. I know you hate me right now, and you don’t like to be touched when you’re upset,” I said, trying to give him the out so the others wouldn’t judge him. “I’m used to managing on my own.”

Kerian practically growled at that last statement. “Well, you’re not on your own anymore,” he stated. “Also, for the record, anger is the last thing I feel toward you right now, Lainey. I’m confused, hurt, and desperately want you to be the woman I believe you to be. The woman who I’m falling for so fast that it scares the shit out of me. It’s like there is a war between my heart and brain about what to do and how to handle this. Let’s just say I’m not managing them well.”

“I understand that more than you know,” I murmured, ducking my head. “That’s been a war I’ve been losing since the moment I knew you were all my scent-pairs.”

Halstead swore under his breath, drawing my attention. “That’s why you lied to us and didn’t admit you were an Omega. Did the Syndicate make you hide what you are?”

A harsh bark of laughter burst out of me. “Oh, fuck no, quite the opposite, in fact. You want to know why my heat was so bad and my scent was overpowering? Well, the Syndicate didn’t like that I was posing as a Beta and suppressing my heat, so they took it upon themselves to force me to take a mysterious medication. Believe me when I say I tried to avoid taking it, but my driver, who was also being blackmailed by the Syndicate, made it clear that I took the medication, or he’d do it himself.”

“That day I saw you get out of the car…” Quintin commented as full realization came to him. “You were furious, and now I can absolutely see why.”

“Yeah, you caught me right after it happened,” I confirmed. “When you sent me back to my place to get clothes, Halstead, I had the driver stop at the pharmacy after I learned that the medication would strip me of my suppressant. There, I was able to get another one, but it didn’t work. Maybe it held it off, but I don’t really know… the doctor I talked to wasn’t forthcoming about the details of the drug. I pretty much got told that I needed to accept I was an Omega and proudly display my designation instead of hiding it.”

Kerian leaned down and kissed my head before resting his cheek against it. “Are you okay now? Is there anything else we need to worry about? Should we get a doctor to come look at you?”

His question had my stomach clenching at what they’d told me yesterday. If I told them this, then there was no way I’d be able to walk away, no matter what danger I might bring to them.

“I don’t think I’ll need a doctor as of yet… but we will need to get something from the store,” I admitted.

“Another suppressant?” Quintin inquired.

“No, a pregnancy test,” I whispered as I rubbed my fist along my sternum with how tight it felt, to the point I wasn’t sure I could keep breathing.

Cool hands cupped my face and urged me to lift it so I stared into Quintin’s dark green eyes behind his glasses. “Are you saying you might be pregnant?”

“Yes.” I sobbed. “They told me yesterday the drug made me ten times more fertile than normal, and there was an extremely high chance I would be pregnant. Quin…” I cried, grabbing his arms. “They told me I had to have this baby, and if I didn’t want it, they would take it from me. I can’t go to jail… they will take my child, I just know it. Please don’t let that happen. They don’t deserve the life I had… no child does,” I pleaded, tears streaming down my face as I let him pull me from Kerian and hold me against his chest.

Soon, two more bodies wrapped around us, smothering me in their comforting scents and shielding me from everything I feared. I might not have planned to have a child, but I’d be damned if I didn’t do right by them. Even if I might not be the mother of the year, I knew these men had more love in their little fingers than some fucked-up organization like the Syndicate. Every child brought into the world deserved the best we could give them. They didn’t choose to be born. That was a choice we made, and if we also made the choice to complete the pregnancy, then we had the duty to ensure they had a good life.

“Lainey, I know you’re scared, and you’ve been dealing with this all on your own, but I want you to know that we believe you,” Halstead told me as he brushed tears off my face and tucked hair behind my ear. “We will protect you with all we have at our disposal, even if I have to sell my soul to make it happen. If we learn you are indeed pregnant, then I pray to God no one tries to harm a hair on your head. Not only would they be endangering our Omega, but our child as well, a sin I will never forgive.”

“You believe me?” I asked, the desperation in my voice making me hate myself just a little with how pathetic I sounded. Gone was the woman who could look down at the world and give it the middle finger. These men had found all the cracks in my wall and wriggled their way into my heart with each and every touch and sweet word.

“I do,” Halstead affirmed.

Twisting, I looked at Kerian. “Do you?” He’d been the one who’d been outwardly hurt by my lies, as he should be, but I needed to know if he had doubts. “Ask me whatever you like, and I’ll answer it. If you want proof, I’ve got all the documents they sent me back at the apartment, and I can let you look at the phone they gave me with all the communications I’ve had since this started.”

“There is only one question I want to know the honest truth about,” Kerian said, taking my hand in both of his. “Do you want a life with us?”

“More than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life,” I confessed. “All my life, I’ve only wanted one thing, and that’s a family, but no one ever wanted me. So I decided it was easier to stop hoping it would ever happen and told myself the only person I could trust and rely on was myself. Then the three of you showed up, and the next thing I knew, you wanted me to be part of your family. I didn’t know how to handle that, so I got scared and tried to hide behind the job, but that didn’t work either. You kept fighting for me even when I wouldn’t fight for myself.”

Kerian pressed a kiss to my trembling lips, nose, and each eye before a final kiss on my forehead. “Thank fuck because I want nothing more than to fall in love with you, start a family, and spend the rest of our lives as the four, possibly five, of us together. So what do we need to do to make that happen?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. My whole purpose was to destroy the code while you were still working on it. Apparently, its true purpose is to scour the dark web to find the syndicate so that Reuben can destroy it,” I explained. “I have no idea why he knows about them or what they’ve done to make him hold a strong-enough grudge that he’s willing to go to such lengths.”

“I only gave it to him yesterday afternoon, so he hasn’t had much time to do anything with it. If we go to the office, I should be able to create a virus through the link that was created to share information between our companies. The files were too important and far too large to transport any other way, so I created a secure connection I can use against him,” Kerian revealed.

“Are you saying there’s a chance we can pull this off?” I pressed.