Page 115 of Captive Omega

When Vaughn came looking for a job, it was after every company he’d applied to had turned him down.

He’d initially hidden his spotty past, probably as a result of those job rejections. All he wanted was one chance to earn enough money to send back to his mom and sister.

It had taken me fifteen minutes to uncover the string of arrests that led to his detention in Meadow Juvenile Detention Center.

I thought Garrison would turn Vaughn away like everyone else must have. Instead, he called the potential new hire back and told him he was giving him a week. No pickpocketing. No thefts. One week to prove himself. But he liked him.

He’s been with us ever since.

I close the laptop, hiding the photograph I wish I could unsee.

Vaughn nods at it. “So, what do you think we should do about that?”

“We have to tell her,” I eventually say. “They’re getting married in Mexico soon.”

Vaughn shakes his head. “Who says we have to tell her? There’s time for the fiancé to have a painful and unexplainable death.”

Garrison looks at Vaughn. “No.”

“Or we say nothing. He gets married, and Resa no longer has a fiancé we need to kill,” Vaughn says. “And she stays. Then we all win.”

“She needs to know,” Garrison says flatly.

“So she has a reason to hate betas as much as alphas?” Vaughn raises a brow. “Cause this will do it. I vote we kill him.”

“This isn’t a democracy,” Garrison bites out. “And that is not what we do.”

Vaughn leans across the table. “He hurt her. In my eyes, that’s a killing offense.”

In the silence that follows, I think about today.

Resa was having fun. She laughed. Vaughn was smiling. I was in the gym with someone instead of always on my own. And for a second, I had a flash-forward of Resa staying and the three of us hanging out in the gym, laughing, sparring.

Then I hear it.

Footsteps sound on the stairs. The tension in the room ramps up.

“We can’t tell her,” Vaughn hisses.

“She needs to know,” Garrison says quietly. “The sooner the better. If she finds out we knew and didn’t tell her…” He leaves the suggestion hanging.

Alphas hurt her before. Abused her. Keeping secrets would teach her another life lesson about alphas. Namely, that none of them, not even her scent matches, are worth trusting.

Her footsteps are fast on the stairs, and the ends of her hair are damp as she enters. She’s beautiful in a black sleeveless dress and a smile on her lips. It grows when she sees me. “Blaine, I wanted to ask you about Dexter’s assistant. I was thinking…”

She keeps talking. I’m only distantly aware of it. I’m more aware of her smile of greeting, of the way she’s pulling a chair back from the table and dropping into it, talking to me with not so much as a sign she’s paying my scars the least bit of attention. As if she doesn’t see them, and as if me being an alpha is no longer a barrier to her entering the room.

I don’t see her knife, which means she left it upstairs. Is she even aware of that?

Her voice trails off. “Blaine?” Her gaze bounces from me to Vaughn to Garrison.

None of us have spoken a word since she walked in. Garrison has shoved the pregnancy book under a newspaper. There’s a quiet tension in the room that Resa notices for the first time.

“What is it?” Her smile fades. “What’s wrong?”

Who will be the one to break her heart?

I’m almost not surprised when Vaughn gets up. We’ve had our fair share of arguments over the years about things big and small, but for a reformed pickpocket, he’s surprisingly selfless.

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