Page 39 of Sawyer

Sneaky gamma. Somehow, she knows I curbed my desire to get her somewhere safer, and in the next breath, she appealed to my alpha need to provide for her by asking for that pastry.

Rumor and Sin step up behind me as I enter her apartment fully. It really isn’t much to look at. A studio, really. On the left is a corner kitchen, and in the far corner is a small television and a sitting area. I’m assuming Sawyer entered the only bathroom, because it’s the only door other than one I believe to be a closet.

Where the hell does she sleep?

“The couch,” Rumor answers my unspoken question by lifting a small pillow and a comforter.

“Sin, the lady would like a pastry,” I tell him, because he looks like he’s going to burst.

“Fine.” He turns to me, ready to blow a gasket. “She isn’t coming back here,” he whispers in a dangerous voice.

The alpha is dressed like an omega male, but he leaks so much testosterone my nose stuffs up. He’s mostly seen as a trickster or a joke to the council, a rockstar with a drug problem, except there’s so much more to Sin. I’ve seen him debate the council until they do what he wants while believing it’s their idea all along.

He walks out of the apartment, slamming the door behind him.

“Does he have to dress like that?” Rumor crosses his arms. The two of us are dressed similarly, in black T-shirts and black cargo pants.

Sin dressed in high-waisted, burnt orange pants, a black turtleneck, and dress shoes. I’m not sure what he’s trying to pull with that outfit, but I’m not so certain I want to know.

“He needs to control himself,” I reply instead.

“Sin does what he wants.” Rumor crosses the small studio apartment to check the locks on the windows.

“Rumor.” I step up to the window next to him and find the lock broken. Again, I resist the instinct that Sin is allowing to control him. “Do you remember—”

“Yes,” he answers before I even get the question out. “I scented her when she stepped up to my caution tape.”

“You said nothing?” I whisper, moving to the next window. This one overlooks the street below. The lock works, but I can bust through it quickly. It slides without making a noise, and there isn’t a single screen.

“What was I supposed to say?” he hisses, moving to the closet with bifold doors. They creak open as he peers inside, finding nothing besides winter coats and shoes.

So many shoes.

“I don’t know.” Entering the kitchen, I look through her cabinets, finding them empty. “I thought you’d give her a hint or something.”

Rumor runs his hands through his hair. “We were supposed to be watching the alphas that night.” He enters the kitchen with me, tilting his head in my direction and keeping his voice low. “Not joining their orgy.”

“You don’t regret it.” I know he doesn’t.

“No,” he answers, fast enough to tell me he’s speaking the truth. “I couldn’t regret her. I also thought I’d never see her again.”

That disturbs me. “Why?”

“I’m aging faster than you, faster than her and Sin. Not once did I believe I’d make it past my twenties, and here I am. I never thought I’d ever find a mate, let alone a pack, and make no mistake, our combined scents smell like pack.” His tone holds awe.

His words, however, strike me deeply. “Pack.”

When we are young, before our designations are revealed and even after, many of us form bonds with other males. We gravitate toward one another like moths to a flame. We can’t help it. Packs form long before we turn twenty-one and can apply for an omega.

That never happened to me.

I only ever felt that pull once all those years ago, when a specific nosy reporter stumbled across a bunch of males late at night, essentially fucking around. It was one giant circle jerk.

She recorded it all.

Instead of addressing that word that hangs over us, because not one of us has a pack, I ask him, “Do you think she still has the video?”

“I don’t know. If she watched it, then she’d know,” Rumor says, just as Sawyer walks out of the bathroom looking…

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