Page 67 of Pucking Feral: Part Two

Plague hesitates, but he doesn't argue.

Thane groans.

"I know you guys want to keep me safe," I continue, my voice softening. "And I love that about you. But I can't spend the rest of my life hiding behind alphas."

Wade made me feel fragile. Breakable. Like I needed him to survive.

I can't let anyone else—not even these well-meaning alphas, who I'm pretty sure I'm falling for despite my best efforts to keep my walls up, in major part because they respect those walls—make me feel that way again.

And that's the thing. I know they will respect this, too, even if they moan about it like Whiskey is right now. He's groaning like I'm killing him, throwing his head back and staring at the sky as if the gods themselves might come down and convince me this is a bad idea.

But he isn't trying to stop me.

Wraith rumbles, dragging his hands through his dark hair. He seems to be struggling the most with this, which isn't a surprise, but he's also the one least likely to argue with me. His first encounter with Valek was… messy, to say the least.

D-A-N-G-E-R-O-U-S, he signs, the movements stiff and anxious.

I walk over to Wraith, reaching up to frame his masked face with my hands. He goes still immediately, those blue eyes locked on mine, and I stroke his cheekbones through his mask with my thumbs. He leans into my palms with a low, tired sigh.

"I'll be okay," I promise him softly. "And if I'm wrong... well, you guys are right upstairs. One scream and you'll come running." I grin at him.

"Damn right we will," Whiskey says. "Wraith, you can pull knife psycho limb from limb, right? Turn him into a human torso?"

Wraith gives an affirmative growl.

"Gross," I say flatly, but I have to bite back a laugh.

These alphas are so fucking dramatic.

Thane drags a hand through his shaggy dark hair, clearly wrestling with every protective instinct in his body. "Fine."

"I'll be careful," I tell them again. "I'm just going to talk to him. Find out where his head's at. That's all. If I'm not back in ten minutes, you can come down, okay?"

Whiskey snorts. "Ten minutes is more than enough time for him to carve you up into a million pieces."

"There's a fire extinguisher downstairs," I remind him.

That earns me another grin, at least.

But the threat looms in my head as I descend the fire escape. The climb down feels longer this time. Maybe because this is the first time I'm going to come face-to-face with someone connected to my past.

And I'm going to out myself.

My hands shake slightly as I grip the rungs. Not from fear—okay, maybe a little bit from fear—but mostly from adrenaline. The kind that floods your system when you're about to do something monumentally insane but necessary.

The ground floor hallway is quiet when I reach it. Too quiet.

I pad down the corridor toward the common areas, trying to remember which room Thane said was Valek's, when movement catches my peripheral vision.

I turn around.

Valek leans against the kitchen doorframe like he materialized from shadows, his silver eyes locked on me.

"So," he drawls in a smooth, accented voice. "You're the omega the Ghosts are hiding."

"And you're the alpha I knocked out with a fire extinguisher."

The words come out steadier than I feel, but I'm not about to let this tall drink of murder know my heart just tried to claw its way through my throat.