by J. L. Wilder
“Do we know what their...er...goal might be?” Bill asks. “When it comes to Jacie?”
“I’m sure they want her back alive,” Caleb says. “She’s too valuable.”
“We won’t let them take her,” Tony says, a growl ripping out of his chest.
“No, of course we won’t,” Mary says. “Jacie is family.”
A shudder of relief passes through me. I knew Caleb would never let me go, and I didn’t think Tony and Ty would either, but the others? I have to admit, I wasn’t certain. Would Mary and Bill feel safer without me here? It’s my fault this threat is descending on their city. But after hearing Joe defend me so staunchly, after Mary stepping up and saying I’m part of the family, seeing Bill’s crossed arms and defiant stance, I know there’s no way any of them are going to let me go. Whatever happens now, we’re in this together.
“What do we do?” Alex directs her question toward her brother.
He opens his mouth, and for one joyous second, I truly believe he’s got the plan that’s going to save us—and then something strikes the door, loud and with tremendous force.
“Open up in there!” a voice shouts. “We know you’ve got our omega, and we’ve come to take her back!”
Nobody moves. Caleb makes shushing motions with his hands. Bill’s eyes flick toward the kitchen light, and I know what he’s thinking—we should have turned it off. But there are a lot of things we should have done. We hardly had any head start at all.
The voice comes again. “Jacie, are you in there? I know you’re in there. Open the door, Jacie.”
It’s honey-dipped this time, rich and sweet and compelling. I could fall into that voice. I could swim in it. But it’s full of sharks. I know better than to obey willingly. At first, I think I’m not going to obey at all. I’m not part of that pack. That isn’t my alpha’s voice.
Then my foot steps out, leading me forward without my consent.
Ty sees what’s happening and dives forward, wraps his arms around me, pins me to his chest. I struggle against him. I need to get to that door, to open it. Not to do so feels like drowning. As long as the door remains closed, I can’t breathe. I’m going to be sick.
Another crash hits the door. The wood splinters and the cold night air rushes in to slap at our faces and steal the breath from our lungs. The third assault on the door sends it flying off its hinges and onto the floor.
I stare.
I haven’t seen them in so long. They look so different.
Were they always this thin? This dirty looking? This wild? Sheldon looks like he hasn’t combed his hair since he’s been alive. Aiden is the most pulled together of the group, but he’s unshaven and the mud on the cuffs of his pants looks like it’s been there for a generation.
The door is open. I cease my struggles.
Aiden regards me and grins. “Jacie.”
“Aiden.” I’m surprised to hear the bite in my own voice, the fire. Last time I faced this man, I was terrified of him.
He addresses the others. “We’re just here for the omega,” he says. “We’ve got no beef with any of the rest of you. Actually, we should thank you for taking care of her.”
“Nobody did anything for your sake,” Ty snaps. I feel his arms grow tighter around me, and it feels both possessive and protective.
“Come here, Jacie,” Aiden says, and I feel it again—that alpha tug. I’ve been living without it for so long that it somehow feels stronger against my will than it ever has before. Much stronger than Ty’s arms. I slide free and walk over to Aiden’s side.
He places two fingers under my chin, tipping my face up and forcing me to look him in the eye. “Well, you look healthy.”
Not a question. Not a command. I don’t answer.
“Let her go,” Caleb barks, his words empty of all their usual gravitas. He has no power here and he knows it. The only way he stands a chance at enforcing his will on Aiden is by making this physical. And I know he doesn’t want that. Caleb could handle any one of these people in a fight, I have no doubt of that, but we’re not all fighters. Mary isn’t, for one. If something happened to her...
“Take it easy, now, brother,” Aiden says in a voice that’s clearly meant to pacify.
“I’m not your brother,” Caleb snarls.
“You must know she belongs to someone,” Aiden says. “Or hasn’t she told you who her alpha is? Go on, Jacie, tell him who your alpha is.”
The words crawl up out of my mouth like snakes. “You’re my alpha.”
“There, you see?” Aiden smirks and I want to sink my claws into his smug face. “She’s already got a family. We’re just here to take her back to where she belongs.”
“She belongs with us,” Caleb says, sounding tortured. “It doesn’t matter who her alpha is.”
Aiden laughs out loud. “Doesn’t matter! Of course, it matters! I’m dominant over her. Let me guess—you tried to bring her into your pack, and you couldn’t do it, am I right? You should have known it would never work, not while she belonged to someone else.”
“I’m not letting you leave with Jacie,” Caleb says. Ty steps up to his right shoulder, and Tony to his left.
Aiden doesn’t look cowed at all. “You think you could stop me? You don’t want a fight, my brother. You don’t want to see your people get hurt in the service of protecting this omega.” He says omega like it’s something filthy. He’s always said it like that, I realize suddenly. That used to be how I thought the word in my head, because that was the only way I’d ever heard it spoken. That was the way I thought it was supposed to sound.
“It’s him that doesn’t want a fight,” I say suddenly to Caleb. I turn to Aiden. “You’re not warning him against fighting with you. You’ve never done a charitable thing in your life. You’re not being sportsmanlike. You’re trying to avoid a fight because you don’t want one. Because you think you’ll lose.”
An ugly look crosses Aiden’s face. “Shut up, Jacie.”
I shut up. I’ve said what I needed to say. The words are out there, and no alpha power can force me to take them back. But a sudden, fierce rush of freedom is flooding through me, reminding me of nothing so much as that first night I broke free from this pack. Aiden may be the alpha—he may be my alpha—but I have power too.
I have the power to be brave. I can make bold choices, run away from situations that are stifling but known. I can risk my life for the hope of something better. I ran from Aiden, all those weeks ago. I was instrumental in overthrowing Dan and setting the Hell’s Bears free.
I have the power to be smart. When I realized I wasn’t under Dan’s thumb, I used my new information to leverage myself into a better, safer position in the pack. It would have been easy to just refuse the very next order he gave me for the satisfaction of seeing his anger. But I handled that wisely. And I can handle this situation wisely too. Aiden has power over me, and I’m not a good physical fighter, but nobody here wants a brawl. This is strategy, not wrestling. There are moves I can make.
And I have the power of the omega. It’s taken me all this time to realize it, but what I am—who I am—is an asset, not a liability. It gives me strength to see Caleb, Ty, and Tony, shoulder to shoulder, to know I’m tightly bound to all of them. It gives me confidence that all these people are here in this room fighting over who should get me. I have value.
“Don’t tell Jacie what to do.” Tony looks like he’s going to snap.
“Why shouldn’t I? I’m her alpha. Not that you’d know anything about leading a pack,” he sneers, and I can see he’s dismissed Tony as unimportant. “What concern is she of yours? Does your alpha let you play with his little toy when he isn’t using her?”
Ty lets out an incoherent roar. Caleb’s lips peel back from his teeth in a vicious snarl.
Aiden raises his eyebrows. “All three of you? Really?” He turns to me. “I never would have believed it if I hadn’t seen it, Jacie. I always knew you were a slut, but you turned out even dirtier than I could have imag
ined. I was right to never let you out of the house, wasn’t I?”
Wasn’t I? It’s not an order. It’s not even a question, really—Aiden isn’t looking for an answer. But I feel my tongue loosen in my mouth, Aiden’s words giving me permission to speak freely again. It’s an unlocked door. It’s the chance to walk to the end of the path and then just keep running. It’s my escape from Aiden’s grasp. And, once again, it might be the only one I get.
“Yes,” I say. “You were right.”
Gasps. All around the kitchen, eyes turn to me. No one—Not my family of Hell’s Bears, and certainly not Aiden’s pack—expected that answer.
“And now you’re too late,” I add, before he can stifle me again.
It feels like no one around me is breathing. Then Aiden speaks. “Too late? What do you mean, too late?”
I meet his gaze, even though it feels like everything inside me—bones and blood, muscle and all—is shivering. “I’m pregnant.”
A long silence. I don’t dare to look at anyone around me. I can’t imagine what their faces will betray, and I don’t want to know.
“Dirty skank,” Sheldon says, his voice a snarl, and Aiden holds up a hand as if to quiet his brother. Sheldon, though, won’t be silenced. “Who’s the father? Are they all the father?”
“None of your business.” That’s Joe, speaking from behind me, and I feel the reassuring presence of my pack now, my Hell’s Bears, closing ranks around me. “She’s expecting a litter. So, the question is, do you still want her? Do you want to raise someone else’s cubs, who won’t even be a part of your line?” He steps forward a little more. Now he’s in front of me, crouching into a defensive position. “Is she still worth fighting for?”
Aiden scowls. He looks from me to my old packmates, arrayed behind him, reading their faces, searching for advice.
“Spoiled goods,” he mutters finally, and turns toward the door.
“Be safe out there,” Caleb calls. “Snowstorm’s blowing in.”
“Oh, go to hell.”
We all press ourselves together as the Blind River bears retreat—hands on arms, hands in hands, hanging on. It’s too good to be true, too hard to believe, and yet it’s happening. They’re going away. They’re leaving us in peace.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“So, you’re not really pregnant?” Alex asks, sounding disappointed.
“Sorry,” I say. “It was a complete lie. I’ve just known Aiden long enough to know that he wouldn’t want me if I came with someone else’s litter. Even the value of an omega couldn’t trump that for him. You saw how ragged they are, how hard they’re living. The idea of another mouth to feed was too much to stomach. And if that mouth wasn’t even part of his line, if there was no chance of producing a new alpha for his pack—”
“Which could well have been the case, if you didn’t know who the father of your litter was,” Tony says. “I haven’t got any alpha blood, I’m pretty sure.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t make you take a test or something,” Alex says.
“I don’t think it occurred to him that I could be lying,” I say. “The pack just follows him. It’s the way Luce and Miles were with Dan. They don’t stop to think about the morality of his orders, they just do what he says. I’m honestly not surprised to hear they’re killing campers.”
“Not for long, hopefully,” Bill says. “I just got off the phone with a police deputy and gave an anonymous tip. Reported the place you said you saw them lurking around, Caleb. Someone’s going down there to check it out, and hopefully they’ll be able to connect Aiden and his gang with those killings.”
“Great,” Caleb says. “Are we ready to get started then?”
I squirm in my seat. “Are we sure this is going to work? It wasn’t exactly a huge success last time.”
“The problem is that everyone else we’ve brought into this clan has been a rogue or an abandoned child,” Joe says. “You’re the only one with any kind of allegiance to a prior pack.”
“Oh, trust me, I don’t feel any allegiance toward them.”
“Which is why, I think, we’ll be able to make this work. Lay back.”
I lie back on the same chair used for the Hell’s Bears’ tattoo ritual. Today there are no needles, there is no ink. Instead, Joe sits behind me, his fingers resting lightly on my temples.
“Clear your mind,” he says quietly. “Let yourself drift. You’ll start to feel sleepy, and that’s okay. Allow yourself to go under, to surrender to the pull of sleep.” His fingers trace slow circles on the sides of my head. To my very great surprise, I am feeling sleepy already. Usually it takes me longer than this to fall asleep, especially under pressure...
I’m alone in a dark room. It should be frightening, but it isn’t, not really. I feel as if this was a place I feared long ago, as a child, maybe, but now it’s just confining.
And I hear a voice, familiar and deep. “Jacie. Jacie. Jacie.”
Aiden. I would have expected to find this terrifying. His voice beats inside me, like my own heart. Even now, my mind calls out for him. My blood pulses for him.
“Jacie.”
A new voice speaks into the darkness. It’s a voice that has consoled me in the night, a voice that has spoken my name hoarsely, passionately, desperately when he thought I was in trouble. It’s Caleb, speaking over Aiden, turning my focus to him.
And it’s easy. It’s like breathing. Everything in me reaches for Caleb. My soul recognizes him as its mate. Caleb’s voice grows louder and stronger in my mind, and Aiden’s is drowned out, until eventually I can’t hear the commands of my old alpha at all anymore.
“JACIE. WAKE UP.”
I open my eyes obediently. Caleb is standing over me, brow furrowed, concerned. “Did it work?”
“Give her an order,” Joe says.
“Kiss me.”
I do, leaping off the chair and into his arms, kissing him so enthusiastically that Alex bursts out laughing. “That wasn’t a real test,” she scolds her brother. “She was absolutely going to do that no matter what you said.”
“But I feel it,” I say, and it’s true. It’s not just the pull of Caleb’s imprint anymore. There’s another tie, one that runs the other way—not from him to me, but from me to him. Alpha to omega, omega to alpha, we are finally bound as equals, and I am finally a real part of a family. And the best part is that it’s a family I love, a family I chose for myself.
I kiss my new alpha again and don’t stop for a very long time.
Epilogue
Caleb and I exchange vows in the middle of the woods, surrounded by our family. It’s strange to stand and marry someone flanked on either side by my other lovers, but the smiles on their faces are so wide and unrestrained that I can’t really question my choice. This is so obviously what they want—for me, for Caleb, for the whole pack.
Alex is my maid of honor. She looks beautiful in a shimmery blue/indigo dress, paid for after weeks of saving the tips she earns at the restaurant. “Don’t worry about it,” she laughed when I gasped at the price tag. “How many times am I going to get to see my brother get married? Besides, I plan to get plenty of use out of this thing.”
“You do?”
“There’s a guy who comes into the restaurant every weekday morning and sets up his computer at the counter,” she confessed, giving me a sly grin. “Super cute. I’m thinking of asking him out.”
“Another bear in town?” I couldn’t hide my nervousness. “Are you sure it’s a good idea? We need to be really wary about trusting bears outside the family.”
“Hey,” Tony objected, coming up behind me. “What’s wrong with outsiders coming into the family?”
“Nothing, sometimes,” I said, exasperated. “That’s how I got here too, remember? But after the trouble we just had with the Blind River Pack, don’t you think it’s better to lie low for a while?”
“You don’t have to worry about it anyway,” Alex interrupted us. “He’s not a bear.”
&nb
sp; “Not a bear?” Tony asked. “What is he, then? If you tell me he’s a wolf I’m going to tell Caleb and have him lock you down,” he adds playfully.
Alex rolled her eyes. “Of course, he isn’t a wolf. He’s a human.”
“Just a regular human?” I asked.
“I’m a beta,” she reminded me. “If anyone’s compatible with garden variety humans, it’s me.”
“But your kids—”
“Oh my God, Jacie, I’m talking about a steak dinner and sex, not til death do us part. I swear, ever since my brother imprinted on you it’s like you think the world is carpeted in rose petals.” She said this with a gentle jab to the ribs, letting me know it was well-intentioned. “Just because I’m not an omega doesn’t mean I don’t need to get laid too. Besides, Brian is hot.”
“It has a name?” Tony asked, raising his eyebrows.
“Don’t be a jerk.”
“Sorry. Older brother’s privilege. Maybe I’ll even tell him he has to beat me in an arm-wrestling match if he wants to date you.”
“Oh, I hope you do try something like that,” Alex snapped. “Believe me, you would end up wrestling me, not him.”
“You think you could take me?” Tony taunted.
And suddenly they were tussling, rolling over and over each other in the den. I reached for my soda, sipping it as I watched, highly entertained, and glad, above all, that Alex hadn’t yet put on her new dress to model it for me.
THE WEDDING CEREMONY seems to move very quickly. I’m in the tiny copse of trees that Mary and Alex transformed into my dressing room, and they’re helping me into my dress—a simple A-line, smooth satin, with a V-neck and slender straps. Mary wraps my hair up intricately and pins it into place on top of my head, then secures my veil on top of everything. Alex squats in front of me, tongue between her lips, carefully dabbing makeup onto my face. I sit like a statue, trying not to move a muscle until I’m given the green light to do so.