Page 22 of Worth Fighting For

Breathing a little easier that the two others didn’t seem to believe the one guy, Renzo continued to slowly follow them. The only problem was, without risking discovery, he wasn’t keeping up, making it more challenging to hear them.

“Because these were electric lights.”

The moment the first guy announced that little tidbit, Renzo knew Sanctuary was in trouble. Okay, so technically, he already had known that when he’d overheard them to begin with, but there was no way the other two wouldn’t help find the town at that point. Electricity wasn’t an issue east of the Mississippi, but from what he’d overheard from the Alphas who’d kidnapped him, it hardly existed west of the river.

Glancing east, he shook his head. As much as he hadn’t wanted to torture himself by being around Coleson, Renzo knew he had to go back and warn the others. Who was he kidding? He had to return and do whatever it took to keep his Omega safe.

CHAPTER 15

“Why don’t you just go after him?” Ford asked as he rubbed his growing belly. It wasn’t that large yet, but there was a definite swell to it.

He’d only been back for a day, but already his best friends had cornered him and confronted him about his crankiness. Wilder had told them all about the fact that for the past week and a half, he’d been biting the heads off those on the trip with them since Renzo left. When asked, he’d refused to talk about it, but his friends weren’t about to let him get away with that for long.

Apparently, not more than one day. Hell, it was less than twenty-four hours ago they’d returned with their haul. Admittedly, it wasn’t a great haul, but that was most likely due to the others insisting they return early because they couldn’t stand to be on the road with Coleson any longer. Not that he could blame them.

He rolled his eyes at the suggestion of heading out to search for Renzo. “In case you missed it, I’m the one who didn’t want him around.”

Okay, so that hadn’t been exactly true, but none of them needed to know that. Right? It wasn’t any of their business that he’d been heartbroken to watch Renzo walk away from him like he didn’t matter.

Then again, after the way he’d acted… Did he? As much as it killed him to admit–if only to himself–he probably didn’t matter. What was worse was that his friends, who’d he’d known since he was a toddler, knew better. Worse, he could already tell his friends knew the truth.

“Like any of us believe that shit.” Halston said.

“You act like we don’t already know you,” Ehen added

“Are you fucking kidding?” Ford exclaimed just as the others stopped talking. “It’s like you think we don’t know you at all.”

Joah rolled his eyes. “As much as you’ve tried to say, I think we all know…” He gestured around the room. “But do you actually believe we don’t know you?”

Honestly? Yep. Sure, they knew each other’s…fuck not really true. Before, he would have assumed they knew each other inside and out, but in that moment, he knew better. Not because of the others, but himself. Sort of. Right?

That was the biggest question he kept asking himself. If only it were that easy.

Ever since Renzo had turned away from him… No. It went even before that. It was that moment when he’d stiffened up after the greatest orgasm he’d ever had.

Refusing to dwell on that, he decided, the best way to deal with his friends’ invasiveness was to redirect. The only issue… he had no idea how to do that. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Fuck you,” Ira spat out. “Do you really think any of us actually believe the shit you’ve been spouting since you returned?”

“You mean yesterday?” he challenged, to deflect. Yeah, he knew it most likely wouldn’t work, but he really didn’t want to talk about Renzo.

“Exactly,” Ford exclaimed, holding up a finger and pointing at it with the other hand. “In one day you’ve yelled at Tessin until he ran crying his eyes out and still won’t come out of his room.”

Oops. Coleson hadn’t meant to do that.

Then Ford put up another finger. “Threw a stapler because you claimed it wasn’t ‘working,’ which was only because it didn’t have staples in it, and ended up putting a hole in the wall of our supply room at the hospital.”

Okay, that might have been dramatic of him, but it wasn’t as bad as Ford was making out. “It was only a dent,” he defended.

Every single one of his friends gave him that ‘are you kidding me?’ look. “The stapler was embedded in the wall,” Halston pointed out.

Maybe not his finest moment, but he’d had a long, tiring trip. Was it really that unrealistic that he was frustrated?

That was when Ford put up another finger. “And you told Rinus, who had just been thrown from a horse and had broken his leg in the process to ‘walk it off’ when he dared to mention we no longer had a doctor when he needed to have it casted.”

“It’s not like we couldn’t just go find another doctor,” Coleson yelled at his friends, knowing the moment the words were out of his mouth, he’d fucked up.

Ira walked right up to him and hugged him, hard. “I’m sorry he broke your heart.”

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