Page 85 of Scent of Home

He finally whirls around, and I see the nightmares in his eyes that I’ve only had glimpses of before.

“Erin…” he breaks off and starts to cry. “Alpha, please, save me.”

Everything in me goes still. “Tell me everything, Omega.”

Locke has cried himselfout, and he’s sitting beside me. I have his hand in mine, and our bodies are touching all the way from thigh to shoulder.

He’s been trying to start the story for twenty minutes.

Whatever it is, I’m wondering if I have the willpower to withstand this story and keep my calm.

I have no choice.

If he can live it, I can bear witness. Whatever my omega needs.

“My mother wanted me to be a popstar. She took me to auditions, made me learn dance and all sorts of music. It was terrible. I hated every minute of it – the music, the other kids, the judgement of the adults – because Cara Raine’s son didn’t have the same skill she did. They hated me because they were envious, angry they lost, jealous, insecure. It doesn’t matter, they just hated me. I didn’t get to have friends or a childhood. We traveled too much, and people suck.”

Locke lets out a laugh that makes my skin crawl.

“I hated it, I can’t say that enough. Maybe if I didn’t, what happened wouldn’t have happened. I didn’t want to sing pop songs, I wanted to create something cooler. My style differed from my mother’s, and she hated it, and the more she hated it, the more I leaned into it. So, when Alpha Labels approached me when I turned seventeen to join a new band they were creating, I jumped at it.”

I tense.

“I’m the front man of the band Derision.”

My eyes widen. I know them. Holy crap, do I know them, the entire world knows them. And now that he’s said it, I can’t unsee it. Hell, I have one of their albums that I listen to all the time.

“That’s why you look familiar,” I breathe out. My head is still reeling.

“Yeah,” he says in exhaustion. “That’s where it all went wrong. I was seventeen, my mother disowned me as soon as I signed, my manager gave me a contract that I didn’t understand. I didn’t have an agent back then. So, there’s no way I can get out of it. It’s not a good contract.”

This isn’t the nightmare. The truth is still coming, and he shifts away from me, putting space between us. I understand he’s doing it to protect himself, but everything in me wants to erase that space and destroy everything that has made him sad.

“What happened, Locke?” I prompt softly when he doesn’t speak.

He inhales, opens his mouth to talk, and then chokes on the words. Gags on the words.

Finally, he spits them out.

“The band is composed of five members. The other four are a pack, and part of my contract is that I’ll say I’m part of their pack. I’m Locke Raines, the beta of Pack Derision.”

I let out a savage growl. No! No! No! This is not happening. I’m not losing him. No. Not now. “You’re mine, now. They can’t have you.” The savagery in my voice makes me sound borderline insane.

But for some reason, that makes him feel better, the panic and fear easing through the bond. It doesn’t last long. He gets up and moves away from me. When he speaks, he sounds like he’s talking about the weather. Only the still way his shoulders are held and the burnt sugar drowning out the forest’s natural scents tells me how much pain those words cause.

“She said I wanted it. I was flirty, and…”

I’ve gone completely still. She?

“Sometimes, I’d wake up with people, and I’d known things had happened, but I don’t know how I got there. I had no memory of that night. She would come in whenever, and I had no choice. I couldn’t say no. Sometimes, when I was sleeping or…”

Why is he trying to explain? Why is he justifying himself?

My rage is a living, writhing beast beneath my skin.She? I’ll skin her alive. I’ll cut her clit off and feed it to stray cats. I’ll destroy her.

“Rape,” I say the word succinctly.

“No, she was female, I was-”

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