Page 57 of Sawyer

“Was this your mate?” Sawyer asks, and though there is hesitance in her tone, I want to know the answer.

The fates push packs together, but we form consensually. Bryn always felt like pack to me, and while this week was the first time I’ve met Sin, the moment I felt him in that club, I knew he was pack.

Which means the omega he lost is the omega we all lost.

I can’t grieve someone I never even met. Even though my gut cries for this woman, my heart thumps for Sawyer as though she is my omega. The entire situation is a juxtaposition I never expected and will be tricky to navigate.

“No,” Sin answers after a few moments of us all moving through the forest, not slowly but not too fast. We must remain vigilant for danger. “I know you all have questions.”

“We do,” Bryn says. “You owe us an explanation. Whether you want to admit it, you are pack to me, which means—”

“You all lost your omega,” Sawyer finishes. There’s a strength in her voice that contrasts her scent, which is jealousy mixed with grief. “He’s right, Sin—you owe them an explanation.”

“Wait.” I pause on the path my men have been forming. Rustling comes from ahead, and moments later, three deltas spill onto the path with a mage and a beta scientist.

“Sir,” a delta says upon greeting, “we got the call to leave.”

“We never saw you here.” Another one nods at us, and as one, they walk past.

Once more, we travel through the thick forest. Overhead, bare branches sway in a cool breeze. A few trees bloom with pink buds, and pines rustle underneath old leaves that crunch beneath my feet.

Sin waits until we are one mile in before breaking the silence. “I met Thea after sneaking into the castle one night. She was beautiful, an omega castle princess.”

“So spoiled.” There is a hint of disgust in Bryn’s voice.

Unlike our Sawyer, an omega princess would never willingly march through a forest to view dead bodies, and yet he calls Sawyer princess. I wonder if there’s more to that.

“She was, yes,” Sin agrees. “She hadn’t had her first heat yet—”

Again, Bryn cuts in. “So you had no proof she was a true match.”

“I just knew,” Sin argues, but there’s no heat there. “She smelled like cotton candy at a carnival. I knew she had to be mine, and I was willing to risk it all, and we did. We made a choice for all the right reasons at the wrong time. She was about to turn of age and enter her first heat.”

“On her birthday, the castle would have presented her to packs, and she would have been lost to you because you didn’t have a pack,” Sawyer says without an ounce of emotion. She’s shutting all of her emotions down, locking them up so she can have this conversation without pain or hurt.

“We planned to run away the night she died,” Sin says, pain evident in his voice. “She was supposed to meet me in the castle gardens, but when I showed up, all I found was her blood all over the walkway.”

“No body?” Bryn questions, the enforcement officer in him coming out.

“No.”

“No proof,” Bryn says.

“There is no way she survived,” Sin argues. “There was far too much blood, and another said he heard shots. A delta.”

Sawyer sighs. “She may be all right.” Before Sin can object, she carries on. “Listen, there is a lot of research I’ve been doing. As of right now, there are two dozen omegas at the castle, when there were once hundreds at any given time. That alone is suspicious, but there have been others who have gone missing from the castle.”

“What do you mean?” This is something I should have known about. As a delta, it’s our job to protect them, and at any given time, at least a dozen men patrol the grounds.

“I mean omegas who go to find a pack and are never heard from again,” Sawyer says. “I tried to follow up with several omegas after they matched with a pack. As you know, we print omega pairings in the paper. But something wasn’t sitting right with me, so I followed up, and some packs refused to allow me to interview them.”

“They could just be protecting their omega,” Bryn suggests. “Alphas can be very territorial with their omegas.”

“That’s a bunch of bullshit.” Venom blasts from Sawyer. “Omegas should be able to live, to work, and to go to dinner if they want without a scene, but they are too rare now. Either way, I watched their homes.”

“Sneaky Sawyer.” Sin chuckles. “What did you find out?”

“That there was no omega,” she replies. “I took a suppressant this time and broke in after all the alphas went out one day. There was no nest and no evidence of an omega.”

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