by Marcy Jacks
“Tim, why were you running?”
Tim stood out of reach of Lightning and Storm now that he was free of the dragon’s grip.
He shivered as though he were naked in the snow.
David went to him. He put his hand on the man’s shoulder, ignoring the jump. “What happened?”
Tim shook his head, backing away from David.
Lightning snorted. “He wouldn’t want to talk to you any more than he would want to speak to me.”
“What’s going on? I’m tired of this shit!” Storm snapped.
“I won’t hurt you,” David said, trying to reassure the omega through his own annoyance.
He knew he wasn’t doing a good job, but he couldn’t just leave a distressed omega alone like this either. It wasn’t in his nature.
Except when Tim tried to run again, it was also in David’s nature to reach out and snatch the man by the arms, preventing him from getting very far.
“Let me go!”
“Relax, relax. No one’s going to hurt you.”
The man still struggled. He struggled as hard as David struggled when he thought someone was going to hurt Aiden.
Storm shook his head. “Jesus Christ, Lightning, what did you do to him?”
“I didn’t do anything! Stop that! Let him go!”
Lighting smacked the back of David’s head before grabbing the back of Tim’s neck one more time.
Tim gasped, and David could hear the man’s heart racing. As if he thought he was about to face his last moments.
Only this time he was looking at David as well as Lightning.
Lightning rolled his eyes, as if the entire thing was nothing more than a bother to him than anything else. “For the love of God, will you stop it? I won’t let him kill you, and I’m not going to kill you either.”
Tim cringed. He didn’t look at Lightning. As though he was too frightened. As though he didn’t believe him.
Then David caught that last part. “Why would I want to hurt him?”
He looked at the omega with renewed interest. “I don’t know you. Why would you think I’d want to hurt you?”
“Baby.” Storm put his hand on David’s shoulder. He tried to turn him away. “Come on, forget it. Let’s go.”
Except he couldn’t go. Everything was adding up here, and the fact that this involved him somehow, that there was some kind of secret involving him, was something he just couldn’t ignore.
“No, tell me. What’s going on? Were you a prisoner with the Dog Catchers? You smell familiar.”
He just didn’t understand why the omega would assume he would care about something like that.
Now Lightning was the one to growl. He glared down at the omega. “You idiot. Look what you did.”
Tim looked up at the albino dragon like a deer caught in the headlights. “I…I don’t want to be here anymore. I want to leave.”
“Yeah, well, too damned bad. You’re supposed to be sticking around here with me, remember? You’ve still got shit to answer for.”
David was about to lose his damned mind. These people wanted him to forget that they were just talking about him, but he wasn’t going to forget. He was still right here, and he could still hear everything. “What the hell are you all talking about? Why would you think I’d want to hurt you? I’ve never hurt you before.”
It was kind of insulting, actually.
Of course, the fact that David’s mate was right next to him and covered in blood probably didn’t give off the impression that David was a nice and normal guy waiting to make friends or anything.
But now it wasn’t just that omega and the albino, who had previously been acting strange toward each other, who were trying to back off from David. Storm took David by the shoulder and leaned in. “I’ll explain later. Come on.”
He couldn’t. David just couldn’t.
His brain put too much together. That omega’s familiar smell, why David had never seen him before coming to this territory, and now why the man seemed terrified to be anywhere near David.
“You were in that building, weren’t you? With the Dog Catchers?”
David waited for the man to deny it. The omega ducked his head.
A shameful expression that couldn’t be ignored.
“Were you a prisoner?”
The predator in David’s gut, the one that rarely made an appearance, surged to the surface as he awaited his answer.
An answer he was pretty sure he already knew.
“You weren’t a prisoner there.” Which could mean only one thing. David stormed forward, his instinct to protect an omega being overridden by the instinct to kill the one who had some involvement with the death of his wife.
“You little fucking—”
Lightning stepped in the way of the omega. David was ready to go through the dragon if he had to before Storm got in his way, his hands up. David tried to move around him, but Storm insisted on staying in the way.
“Move!”
“Baby, calm down.”
“Don’t you fucking tell me to calm down!”
“I didn’t want to be there! It was a mistake! I didn’t mean to!”
“Don’t you talk to me! I will kill you! Do you understand me? I will fucking kill you!”
His claws came back out right then, and not even the sight of his bloodied mate was enough to bring David down off the enraged high he’d found himself on.
He wanted to rip that omega apart.
“Baby, we questioned him, Lightning questioned him. He came from Lightning’s old clan.”
“So fucking what? I bet he was helping the Dog Catchers. They always have one or two omegas and betas helping them sniff out the ones in hiding. Emily is dead, you little piece of shit! She’s dead, and it’s your fucking fault!”
“You don’t even know if that’s what they were using him for!”
David punched Storm across the face. Hard. He barely realized he’d done it until Storm’s face jerked to the side.
Weirdly enough, despite his pounding heart, despite the adrenaline still surging through him, that was enough to make him stop.
He’d just hit his mate, and now Storm was looking at him very much as though he was getting ready to attack him back.
“Storm…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”
“I know you didn’t.” Storm looked back at Lightning. “Get him the hell out of here. I’m in a fucking bad mood, and if I have to look at either of you right now, I might just let David go after you.”
“Uh-huh. We’ll just be going then.” Lightning narrowed his eyes at David, his lip pulling back in a short snarl.
David’s ire didn’t rise this time, but in a strange way, he still didn’t want to back down either as Lightning took Tim by the back of the neck and kept moving with him.
David shook his head. “Storm, if that omega had anything to do with Emily’s death—”
“We don’t entirely know what Tim’s about. He’s involved with Lightning in some way.”
“So that means he gets a free pass for killing my wife?”
Just saying those words out loud was enough to make David’s hackles rise up again. He wanted to run after Lightning, and he wanted to grab that little omega and shake the man until he forced the words out of his mouth, forced a confession.
Then he wanted to kill him.
He could still smell Emily’s body, so close to his own. He’d held her long after she had died and had to be pulled away from her by the few other betas and even more omegas in that cage with him.
They’d been worried about disease. They’d also been kind enough to use what little extra clothing had been available to them to wrap her body. Which had been more than what most of the other dead had received when their time came.
The fact that he had to stay in that cage watching his wrapped-up, dead wife for days, had been the worst nightmare than anything else he could ever imagine. He’d halfway hoped he was having a terrible dream before the stench of her body, and
the bodies of the others, finally made him sick enough that he hadn’t noticed when the fucking building was on fire.
He wanted to kill that omega for doing that to him. For depriving his son of his mother and for making David as crazy as he was now.
Storm had apparently been talking with David, trying to calm him down as David paced like he was still a caged animal.
Storm had apparently had enough of that, as he finally reached out and grabbed David by the shoulders, stopping him.
“Listen to me. Tim was the one who helped Aiden escape in the first place. He was with Aiden, and that was why he got caught. Your son is alive because of what Tim did, regardless of anything else.”
David blinked, trying to take that in, but he just couldn’t.
His knees gave out, and he collapsed to the ground.
Chapter Ten
Lightning slammed the door behind him when he got back home. Tim tried running up the stairs.
Lightning grabbed him by the back of the neck, putting a stop to that plan in a hurry. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”
Tim cringed as Lightning yanked the man back around to face him. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
“Don’t give me your sorries! Do you have any idea what you just did!”
“It was an accident!”
Lightning lifted his palm, and his arm trembled as he struggled against the urge to slap the man hard.
He growled and dropped his hand and the omega. “You’re fucking lucky you’re so much weaker than I am.”
Had Tim been a beta, or another dragon, Lightning would have wasted no time in knocking his stupid lights out.
As it stood now, he couldn’t do that without feeling like a monumental prick.
“It was an accident.”
“That guy lost almost everything. I don’t know much about you other than you’re a little secret keeper or some shit, but now David knows where you came from. He’s going to want your head, and I’ve got to say, right now, I’m sorely tempted to let him have it.”
Tim cringed, and then Lightning was all the more furious for being made to feel as though he was the one doing something wrong here.
He wasn’t. He hadn’t done a damned thing wrong, and he didn’t want to be made to feel any sense of guilt just because he was the one talking sense.
“I asked some basic questions, and you ran out the fucking door. What are you hiding from me? You tell me right now, or I’ll toss you outside, and this time if David does come for you, I won’t stand in his way.”
Something twinged in Lightning’s gut for saying that. Not quite guilt, but something very close to it.
A denial. A denial of that very threat.
Whatever. He would force himself to do it even if he didn’t want to. He was done putting up with Tim’s weaknesses and fears.
“I…” Tim swallowed hard. “I am from your old clan, but you’re right. I wasn’t a servant in your house.”
He fucking knew it.
Lightning crossed his arms. “All right. So what are you? One of my stepmother’s brats?”
“Sort of.”
Even though Lightning had feared this and had realized it would be a possibility, he was honestly shocked to hear something like that.
“Are you? Yes or no?”
Tim shook his head. “No. She wasn’t my mother. She was my aunt.”
Lightning blinked. “What?”
Tim finally looked up at him then away again. He gripped his arm, as though ashamed of himself.
Lightning growled, realizing the man was still naked.
“Don’t move,” he barked then went to the hallway closet. He pulled out one of his bigger towels and came back, wrapping it around Tim’s shoulders, giving the man some sense of dignity.
Tim’s eyes widened, as though he honestly hadn’t seen the act of kindness coming.
“Start talking. Why did you lie about that?”
Tim clutched the towel a little tighter around his shoulders. “I was…I worried you would hurt me. I know how much you hate…everyone.”
“Not everyone, just your bitch of an aunt and her piece-of-shit offspring.” Lightning paused. “I didn’t know she had other kids she was taking care of.”
Tim nodded. “Most of them were hers. I had a sister, as well. We were the only two not directly related to her. I…I was the one who got your bedroom when your father kicked you out.”
The little muscle beneath Lightning’s eye twitched. He honestly felt the need to start punching things.
“You got my bedroom?”
Tim nodded. “I shared it with my sister. I got your bed, and another bed was put in there for her. Everyone else, my cousins, all got their own bedrooms.”
Tim pressed his lips together. “I didn’t want to tell you because I was worried you’d…hurt me.”
“Uh-huh. I still kind of want to, to be honest.”
Tim flinched.
“So that’s what all this was about? You cook my meals, clean my house, and do my laundry, and you think I will forget everything? Treat you all right?”
“I’m not a bad person,” Tim insisted. “I was a kid back then, and when I was with the Dog Catchers, I didn’t have a choice either. We had to help them find other omegas, or they would throw us in the cages with the rest. They barely got any food, it was filthy in there, and people were getting sick and dying.”
“You mean like David’s first mate?”
Again, Tim flinched.
Lightning pushed his fingers through his hair. “I really should just throw you out to him. Honestly, he probably won’t leave either of us alone now until I hand you over.”
“Please don’t do that. I don’t want to die.”
“Yeah, I didn’t want to get tossed out of my house at ten years old either. David didn’t want for his wife to be taken from him, and you…you’re just a liar. And despite your reasons, at the very best, you’re a coward. Stop crying. I’m not saying anything that’s not true.”
“Not crying,” Tim muttered, glaring as he wiped at his eyes. Those watery, angry eyes that looked up at Lightning. “And I cleaned your house and let you treat me like shit so I could make up for what my aunt did to you. I don’t know why she was like that. She was always good to her own children and to me and my sister. She was good, too.”
Lightning snorted. “Whatever. You’re lucky she’s dead now. Otherwise, I’d find her and slit her throat in front of you.”
“She was like a mother to me! It’s not that easy for me to judge her!”
And it was true. He didn’t know why she behaved the way she did. Everyone gave themselves permission to do what they wanted to do, so she must have had a reason in her mind that made throwing a child out into the cold acceptable.
Because she had been good to her own children, and she’d been a loving mother figure to Tim and his sister. He could still remember her staying by his bedside whenever he was ill, spoon-feeding him medicine and soup, and he wasn’t even her kid.
Maybe she really did believe in the bad luck that came with albino dragons. Maybe she had felt guilty for convincing her new husband to cast out his son, or maybe she feared…
Whatever her fears and reasons, she’d made a terrible decision. A monstrous one. A woman that Tim had loved as a mother had been a monster to other people, and that would never make sense in his head.
And Lightning didn’t seem remotely moved by Tim’s words either.
“How do I know you’re not lying about her being dead? You could be covering for her so I won’t go looking.”
“Two of her five sons were alphas. They got hit with the brain disease. They ripped her apart. Trust me, she’s dead.”
Lightning raised a brow. “So you saw that?”
“Yeah, not that you care or anything since I’m such a lowly piece of shit, but that’s why I stopped coming around to feed you.”
Lightning jerked back at that. “What are you talking about?”
�
�What do you think I’m talking about, you complete asshole!” The omega was clearly infuriated. “I was the one coming around and feeding you, bringing you clothes in the winter and sneaking you into the sheds on the colder nights. I did those things because I didn’t like what my aunt was doing, and I didn’t want you to die! I should have let you die! You were the one who cursed my cousins with that stupid disease and ruined everything!”
Lightning’s hand snapped out. He didn’t mean for it to happen, but it did. He grabbed the omega by the throat and held on tight.
The omega let out a short, choked sound, his hands finding Lighting’s wrists and scratching at them, desperate for Lightning to release him so he could breathe.
Lightning barely noticed. He could hardly see the man in front of him.
The only thing he did see was himself, once more as a child, a helpless little kid that had no control over his life, no say in his future or the way he was treated.
He saw himself knocking on the doors of the adults who lived within his clan on the colder nights, only to be turned away. He saw himself being chased off the properties, out of the garages, barns, sheds, and treehouses where he’d been found. Sometimes chased away by adults with their fists shaken and other times with dogs or pellet guns.
Then he saw that boy. It had been so long ago that Lightning had forgotten what he looked like, but now that Tim confessed to him, Lightning could see those brown eyes. His hair had been almost blond back then, but everything else, his nose, his ears, it was all the same.
Lightning had looked forward to seeing him. Sometimes the boy had stayed and spoken with him or brought his Gameboy over so they could play together for a few hours before he had to leave. In the summer months, it wasn’t so bad with his help.
But in the winter…
In the winter, Lightning had not only looked forward to seeing him but had sought him out, had sighed with relief when Tim had opened the back door to let him in or left the attic window unlocked so he could sneak inside.
And there had always been blankets waiting for him, blankets with canned food, clean spoons, and occasionally a thermos of hot chocolate.
Tim had been his only friend, his best friend, and to hear him say he’d wished he’d let Lightning die…