Irritation set Emily's blood to simmering. How could Cade be so dense?
For months, she'd followed a few simple rules: don't provoke an alpha. Don't disagree. Don't ask for anything. Apologize for everything.
But the time had come for a new set of rules.
"You don't know what you're talking about," she snapped, loud enough for the other omegas outside to hear. Emily didn't care. Let them whisper to each other, let them go home and tell their mates. Hell, let them and everyone else in this place give Emily the side-eye for the rest of her life.
Better to be known as a broken, disobedient omega than a dead one. Better for Cade to take a little shit from his brothers than end up a battered and bloodied corpse, torn apart by a vicious pack of alphas from the uplands.
As angry as she was, the image caused Emily's stomach to twist. She couldn't—wouldn't—let anything happen to her alpha.
Emily grabbed Cade's hand. If her words couldn't get through to him, maybe her touch could. If he could feel her racing pulse, the heat of her fear, maybe he would see that she was serious. That she knew what she was talking about.
When he looked into her eyes—really looked, so that she could see the confetti swarm of gold in his irises, some of his alpha swagger left him. "Emily…"
"You don't know Sloan," she insisted.
"I don't have to."
He still wasn't hearing what she was saying. Emily took a breath and let it out slowly, and then she did something that took every bit of her courage and her will.
"If you won't listen to me, I'm leaving. I'll get in your truck, and I'll drive. If you won't let me take it, those omegas out there will take me to the border. You can come after me if you want, but the first chance I get, I'll leave again because I will not stand aside and watch you be killed because of me."
When she was finished speaking, Emily felt ill—because she knew two things that the stubborn alpha in front of her didn't:
First, that she wouldn't be able to leave him without every bit of her nature resisting, tethering her to her alpha.
Second …she'd go anyway. Even if it killed her. Because at least then only one of them would die.
He was looking at her in disbelief. "You can't."
The words weren't even out of his mouth before she snarled, "I will."
Maybe it was the animalistic sound of her growl that did the trick, the fact that Emily was no blushing brand-new omega, but one willing to show her claws. But Cade blinked.
And then he backed down.
"What the fuck is it with this guy?" he asked, with none of the swagger of a moment ago. "Come on, Emily, he's flesh and blood just like the rest of us."
"No, Cade." She looked deep into his eyes, praying he would see past all her pain and trauma to the hard core of sheer will it had forged in her. "You really don't know anything about him. He's not like you."
"What are you talking about?"
"I mean that Sloan didn't go back home and round up his friends just to spend a few days picking fights in a bar a couple hundred miles away."
Cade's expression darkened. "You really think another alpha is going to come on my land?"
Think it? No. "Why do you think he wouldn't?"
"Because every alpha knows that land is sacred."
"Nothing is sacred to Sloan. Nothing."
"Maybe not," Cade said, a trifle less certainly. "But he knows the law. He has to know what would happen to him if he trespassed. He knows that he would be liable for any damage done."
Emily had to resist a bitter laugh. "Sloan doesn't care about laws or rules. As far as he's concerned, none of that applies to him. Do you remember what I told you about the night when he grabbed me?"
Cade's eyes narrowed. "Yes."
"What I didn't say was that I wasn't even over the boundary line." She waited for this to sink in, taking no satisfaction from Cade's look of shock and anger. "None of us were. We stayed a few feet back. They were the ones that crossed it—Sloan and the other alphas. They grabbed us and pulled us over the line."
"And if he'd cross that line," Cade said, biting off the words, "you're saying he'll cross into my land to get to you."
"All I know is that Sloan doesn't play by the same set of rules that you do," Emily said. "But even if he did, it wouldn't matter. What would you do if someone stole your omega from you?"
"You're not his," Cade responded instantly. "You never gave him your claiming bite, so he could never mark you. Hell, you didn't even fight when I took you away, that's how little you bonded."
"You think he cares about any of that? Sloan hates me. When we left his house, he told me he would kill me if the trip down here didn't whip me into shape."
"Then why would he fight so hard to get you back?"
"Because this isn't about me. I'm just a possession to him, and he doesn't want someone stealing his stuff."
"So what does he want me to do?" Sloan said with obvious disgust. "Pay him off? What's the value of an omega these days?"
Emily shook her head. She only wished it were that easy. "It's the insult he can't stand, the blow to his pride. The way he'll see it, the only thing worse than another alpha taking me would be you and me being happy together—because that would be proof that I wasn't the broken one. That he was. And he would never let that stand. So…there's nothing you can do."
"'Nothing I can do?'" Cade echoed. "The hell there isn't. I can tear every last one of those bastards to shreds. Let him bring an entire fucking army—I can make it so they can never hurt you again."
An odd thing happened. As Cade finally started to believe her and his anger grew, Emily's own receded.
He was so sweet in his own way—hell, even those omegas outside knew it, obviously not intimidated by him at all. It was clear to her now that all he wanted to do—all he'd ever wanted from the start—was to protect her.
But that didn't mean it was going to work.
"Cade," she said softly. "You can't take on a whole pack of alphas."
"Watch me," he snarled, the tendons standing out in his neck.
But Emily could be just as stubborn as an alpha. "If you try, you'll be forcing me to watch you die. What do you think that would do to me?"
"I won't die," he said, but he seemed less sure of himself, some of his anger replaced by fear—not for himself, but for her.
Emily pressed her advantage. "There's no way you can win this fight. The only thing you can do is disappear for a couple days. Once Sloan has come for me, and this whole thing has blown over, you can come back. It's better this way."
Before her eyes, Cade seemed to transform, his fists clenching and every muscle in his body going rigid as he howled with rage. Emily had never seen anything like it—not even from Sloan—and she couldn't help but cringe in the presence of this inferno, fearing the storm that would certainly be unleashed by the power of his anger.
But it didn't come. No objects were hurled through the air, no fists crashed through walls, no furious words deafened her.
Instead, Emily heard a woman's voice.
"You're wrong."
She turned to see the very pregnant omega standing in the doorway, hands resting on her huge belly, looking serene despite the scene she'd walked into.
"There is a way we can win this fight," she said, addressing them both calmly, as if Cade hadn't just shaken the ground with his roar. "You just need a little help."
"It's not enough to trespass on my land," Cade thundered, "you have to invite yourself into my fucking house, Hope?"
"You're both being loud enough for everyone in the Boundarylands to hear," Hope said, tossing her hair. "So what difference does it make if we listen to you inside or out?"
Something about her flippant comment reminded Emily of someone. It took her a few seconds to realize that person was herself—only a few months ago, back before she'd lost her freedom. Before she'd given up trusting, she'd been every bit as sassy and confident as Hope.
Maybe it was time for that
old Emily to make her return.
She faced the other omega, taking a deep breath.
"Hope, you say you can help us. I'm willing to listen."
Hope nodded. "The way I see it, if you have a pack of alphas coming to harm you, then you need another pack ready to fight them off."
"Where would we get a pack?"
"Our alphas," Darcy said, walking in the house, Jocelyn following right behind.
"Great," Cade said. "Why don't you just invite everyone? Do you want me to make tea, too?"
"Thank you, but we don't have time for tea," Jocelyn said crisply. "We need to strategize."
Cade gave a bitter laugh. "Listen, you three, there's no way in hell your mates would help me with anything."
"You're probably right," Darcy said. "Zeke wouldn't, not even if you asked. I doubt Aric or Maddox would, either."
"You can be a real asshole, Cade," Hope agreed.
Emily watched the exchange with a mixture of surprise and an urge to defend her alpha. He didn't seem to be insulted, but how could they think that of him?
"That's why you're not going to ask them," Darcy told Emily. "The three of us are. And trust me, we know all the ways to get an alpha to say yes."
Emily blinked, at a loss. "You'd do that for me?...But why?"
"Because that's what we do around here," Hope said, slipping her arm through Emily's. "We omegas help each other out. No matter who we have the misfortune of falling in love with."
Chapter Fifteen
No matter who we have the misfortune of falling in love with.
Emily stood on the porch watching the omegas' truck head back down Cade's drive toward the Central Road, kicking up a dust cloud in their wake, Hope's words ringing in her ears.
Love.
Even the word made Emily uncomfortable. It seemed like another lifetime in which she had dated what seemed like an endless stream of interchangeable men. They'd all been fine, and she remembered some of them fondly enough, but none of them had made her feel the butterflies in her stomach that she'd heard her friends talk about.
There always came a point in the relationship where she faced the fact that she couldn't imagine being with him for another year, much less a lifetime…and so she ended it. It had happened so often, Emily had finally decided that love simply wasn't for her.
In fact, she'd come to dread weddings, which was why she'd had so much champagne the fateful night she first encountered Sloan. Drinking eased the pain of seeing yet another couple say their "I do's" with a look of bliss in their eyes that Emily had never felt.
She hadn't known the meaning of pain then, of course.
When Sloan touched her and activated her nature, Emily had experienced the incredibly powerful chemical reaction between pheromones that unleashed a voracious sexual need—but that was nothing like what was brewing between her and Cade.
It was the most powerful emotion she'd ever felt. The sex…oh God, the sex, so hot that even the briefest memory of what they'd done together set her pulse racing and her slick flowing. But that was physical need. What her heart experienced was something else, something separate, even though it was entwined.
Emily couldn't bring herself to call it love—not yet, at least. After all, she had only known Cade for a little over a day.
Time had lost its meaning after Sloan took her…Even measured by the strange tempo in the Boundarylands, one day was not enough to start throwing those three little words around.
Still, Emily knew that what she and Cade were experiencing was…well. That was the problem. She didn't have the words to describe it. A fated bond? Destiny written in the stars? Or just another, different chemical reaction?
But the strange thing was that she didn't really care. All that mattered was that she had never known comfort like when he wrapped his arms around her, passion like when he entered her…or relief like when Hope had promised that their alphas would help Cade. That together they would fight Sloan and keep Cade alive.
Emily shuddered at the thought. She couldn't bear it if anything to happened to Cade. Somehow she knew that she wouldn't be able to go on if Cade was killed. She would rather die herself.
Emily gasped at the thought, at the clarity of this new knowledge. She would sacrifice herself over and over if it meant that Cade could go on living.
Was that what love really meant?
Emily shook her head as the last of the dust cloud settled back onto the road. Inside the house, she could hear Cade moving around. This problem could wait; she didn't need to give a name to what she was feeling to know that it was real. Hope could call it love if she wanted to…or destiny, or hormones. It all came back to the same thing: she didn't want to leave Cade.
As if summoned by her thoughts, he appeared on the porch, carrying two plates of food and two tall glasses of ice tea on a beautiful tray inlaid with several kinds of wood.
"You should eat something," he said. "We both should. We've got to be ready if this is really happening."
"But we don't know when Sloan will come. Or who he'll bring or how—"
"That's right." Cade silenced her mid-sentence, setting the tray down on a small table between two rocking chairs facing out over the forest. "All we know is that he's going to see this through to the end. And all we can do it wait."
"I—I don't know if I can stand it." Knowing Sloan was on his way back had Emily so wound up that she felt like she was crawling out of her skin.
"You can," Cade said simply, and she experienced it again, that soothing calm that radiated out from her core whenever she felt the rumble of his deep voice. "Now, sit down and eat."
Emily sank into one of the chairs, the back molding to her spine, the curved supports rocking smoothly on the porch floor. It was possibly the most comfortable chair she'd ever sat in. She looked down at her plate—a simple sandwich of dense, seeded brown bread mounded with savory roasted meat and creamy yellow cheese—and realized that she was starving.
Cade watched with amusement as she took a huge bite and moaned with pleasure.
"Everything is better here in the lowlands," Emily sighed after taking a sip of the cold tea. "It's so much nicer than the uplands. Even the omegas here are kind."
"All omegas are kind. Too kind, if you ask me—always running around getting in people's business."
"That's not true, actually," Emily said quietly. "The ones up north aren't."
Shew knew they'd probably had their own problems to deal with. Still, not one had offered to help or even talked to her when Sloan brought her to the local bar, not even when her eyes were blackened or her lip split.
Cade cast her a sharp glance. "You're right. I can only speak for the ones down here. Look…I know they mean well, even if they were way out of line to come here."
Emily nodded and took another bite. She believed him, even if it was hard not to be wary of their friendly nature. The past two months had choked the trust out of her, and it was going to take a little time to get it back, to remember the fun-loving, outgoing girl she used to be.
"Do you really think they'll be able to convince their alphas to help us?" she asked.
Cade set down his sandwich. Despite urging her to eat, he'd barely finished a quarter of his. She could tell from the rigid tension in his muscles and the way he kept scanning the trees that he was every bit as wound as she was.
"Oh, they'll meet us tomorrow at the bar," he said with a dark laugh. "Though whether to help out with Sloan or to kill me for talking to their omegas is anyone's guess."
Emily felt the blood drain from her face. "You don't think they'd really—"
"No." Cade reached for her hand as casually as if he was reaching for the salt, but when he squeezed it, Emily felt a rush of warmth. "Then again, you never know. Those guys can be pretty protective when it comes to their omegas."
Emily allowed herself a smile, relieved that he was joking. At least…she was pretty sure he was joking.
"Then those omegas don't know how lucky they ar
e," she sighed. "It doesn't always work out that way."
"Always seems to around here," he said.
Yeah, Emily guessed it did. It had been impossible to miss the love and devotion that shone in the omegas' eyes when they talked about their alphas, the strength of their friendship when she'd first seen them back at the bar. Emily couldn't help but feel a little envious. It felt like a lifetime since she'd had a girlfriend she could talk to.
"Maybe I'm just the unlucky one then," she said, aiming for a light tone to cover her melancholy.
But Cade pressed her hand a little more firmly, forcing her to look at him. The simmering heat in his eyes stirred the embers of their marathon lovemaking session, startling her with its intensity.
"Not unlucky. I refuse to accept that," he said, in a voice so low it was almost a growl. "You just took the long way around. But you ended up in the right place."
Emily squeezed Cade's hand back. He was right. Her craving for his touch, the comfort of his presence, left no room for doubt.
But still…
There had been something different about the women who just left. A confidence that couldn't be explained entirely by a strong bond with a mate. A warmth that flowed through them that distinguished them from even the nicest and most generous beta women she'd known in her old life.
Emily struggled to put her finger on it, but she didn't have the words.
But maybe Cade did.
"If I ask you a question, will you promise not to get angry?"
"Nope," he answered matter-of-factly. "I can promise to never hurt you, and I can promise you the truth, but I can't promise emotions."
Emily turned over those words, letting them settle into her brain. No man had spoken that honestly to her before. And that kind of honesty went a long way to building trust.
And that trust allowed her to ask anyway. "What is the difference between those omegas and me?"
Cade searched her face, frowning. "I don't understand what you mean."
"The way they talk about their alphas. It's so…intense. It's like even when they aren't together, they're still—" she shrugged helplessly, frustrated that she could describe it better. "Connected, I guess."
Cade: The Boundarylands Omegaverse Page 11