Page 86 of Scent of Home

“It was rape. If you didn’t want it, Locke, it was rape. If you said no, if you were drugged, if you were incapacitated so badly you couldn’t say yes, then it was rape. If you were sleeping, it was rape.” The words snap out of me, sharp and furious.

He finally turns to look at me, his blue-green eyes hurt and full of pain. So lost.

“Erin…they tried to bond me. She made Wiley bite me, but it didn’t take. We’ve been pretending. I don’t know why he’s doing it, but I’m grateful. When I woke up to my mansion on fire, I just ran.”

I snarl. “She tried to force another alpha to bond you?” The sickness of that. The fear he must have had.

Locke nods, his expression so full of despair that I can barely breathe with the need to tear them apart. Now is not the time to tell him about our bond. Not while he’s vulnerable, but I feel uneasy keeping it a secret.

“And your mansion was on fire? How often have things like that happened?” I’m reeling, reeling. So many threats, so many different attacks. He’s been living in a war zone, trying to survive while he entertains the entire world.

He shakes his head. “A few.”

I stand up and grip his hand, pulling him back to the fallen tree I’ve been sitting on.

“Locke, I need you to go back to the beginning and tell me everything.”

I pace in frontof Finn, Bray, and Shane.

“Locke has asked me to tell you so he doesn’t have to relive the details again. He’s sleeping in our bed.” Not the nest. He wanted the dark. He needed to hide. Where he was safe and couldn’t be seen.

The fury in me won’t be still.

“Is he okay?”

I laugh ruefully and run my hands through my hair and pull at it. “No. No, he’s not.”

“Perhaps we should-” Finn looks at the door.

“You should sit down and listen,” I snap.

Finn shuts his mouth with a snap.

“Sorry, sorry. Fuck, this is a mess.”

“Erin, just tell us.”

“Our omega is contractually tied to a band where he is, at best, being taken advantage of, at worst, being abused by them and multiple thems,” I say with a growl.

Finn blinks rapidly, but Bray and Shane don’t move. The dangerous side of an alpha rising to the surface, I see myself reflected in their eyes.

“Further, it was not us but memories that had Locke freaking out this morning. The band masquerade as a pack, and a particular beta named Delilah has been abusing Locke for years. Physically, sexually, financially, and I strongly suspect she may be responsible for the five accidents that almost killed him.”

All three of them become laser-focused on me. I can feel the weight of their rage.

I stand there and tell them bluntly, painfully, everything Locke told me. I talk to them about the drugs in the food and drink. About him waking up in pain or covered in cum, with strangers in his bed. I tell them about the way she ties him up, and the things she says. How she takes him when he says no. How this bitch rapes my omega. She uses drugs or coercion and just takes what she wants.

I explain about how when Locke went to his manager, he was called a liar. How the head of Alpha Labels, Locke’s uncle, had laughed and told him to enjoy it and stop whining. His mother refused his calls. And then, when it came to a head, the band backed Delilah, who is a good five years older. Locke looks like a trouble-making teen. A liar.

No one believed him.

No one would help him.

And I stand there while Shane breaks and starts to cry. Huge tears of pain that disappear into his beard.

I bear witness as Finn empties his stomach, over and over. And while Bray stands up and walks out, his emotion, his rage so potent that I shiver.

When they all come back, I look at them. “Locke is our omega, whether he chooses this pack or not, I’m not leaving him in this situation for this to continue.”

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