Page 40 of Knot All That Glitters: Part 2

The other alphas in the room let out a breath, like just hearing it eases them. It’s a knife to my heart, a sharp stab of pain that almost has me curling over. Instead, I hand the phone back to Jude and step away from him, from all of them.

“You told me she was your sister.”

He shakes his head slowly. “I didn’t. You made an assumption, and I didn’t correct it.”

I guess that’s true. I couldn’t come up with another reason he would have a picture of himself with another girl, when it felt to me like we were building a future together. Now I know everything was a lie. Why bother hiding their other perfect omega from me? This was all bound to fall apart, anyway.

My mouth screws up, pinching tight around the accusations I want to fling at him. Not correcting me is a still a lie of omission. But it’s by far the least important one they’ve told me.

“Where is she?” I hate the question as soon as it’s out of my mouth. It’s not any of my business. Nothing about them is anymore. I shake my head, folding my arms around my stomach, fingers digging into my sides with a bite of pain. “Nevermind. It doesn’t matter-”

“It does matter,” Hale says, his voice turned deadly soft. “It does fucking matter, little mouse.”

“She’s the reason we’re all fucking here,” Tic’s voice matches Hale’s. Soft, dangerous, a clear warning. For me? Or someone else? Probably me. After all, I’m the one that they used in some sick game. I’m the one they won’t let leave. They probably still want something from me.

“She’s dead,” Creed says bluntly, making me flinch and turn wide, shocked eyes at him. “She’s dead. She died before we could bond her.”

My mouth drops open, even though I shouldn’t be surprised. I’m intimately familiar with all of their bodies. I know they don’t have any mating bites. It would have raised too many questions if they did. It’s why I never considered they would have had an omega before me.

Jude hisses at him and then turns his attention back to me. “She was taken from us the same day she presented as an omega.”

I blink at him, sorrow for them filling my chest. My tongue feels heavy with sadness with questions I want to ask, but don’t feel like I have the right to.

“She was seventeen,” Tic says, drawing my attention over to him. “She presented when we weren’t with her. At a movie with a group of girlfriends of hers.”

“As soon as she realized what was happening though, she called me,” Hale says, hands fisted at his sides. “She left her friends and called me to come get her. Stood outside the theater as far from everyone as she could get.”

He drops his gaze, stares blindly at the floor at my feet, like he’s watching it play out in real time all over again. “I was too late, though. Arrived just in time to catch her scent and see her shoved in the back of a car. I ran after them, ran to get my car, but I couldn’t fucking catch them.”

Oh, fuck. My heart aches. It aches so bad for him. Having his omega taken from him right as she presented must have been truly awful. Especially since he was there to witness it.

“Hale,” I whisper his name, wait until he lifts his haggard gaze to my face. “I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine what that must have been like.”

I really can’t. I’ve always known it’s not safe to be an omega. We need protection of people—alphas—we trust to thrive. But unfortunately, there are too many people out there that view omegas as commodities, things to be bartered and sold, used up and discarded. More omegas go missing in a year than betas or alphas.

“Not your fault, mouse.”

“I know.”

“Then don’t apologize for it.”

My nostrils flare with the willpower it takes to keep from snapping at him. This has to be hard for him, hard for them, reliving the last time they saw their omega. It’s bound to make him a little gruffer, a little harsher than normal.

“We met Janie when we were all kids,” Tic says, eyes glazed over and far away, reliving those early days. It’s at this point I realize that they’re going to really drive the point home that I am not their omega, that I was never going to be. I know how it ends, but they want me to know how it started, too.

I don’t think I’ll be able to stand here and listen to them, so I move into the living room, feeling… jerky and strange, disconnected. My legs give out and I plop onto the couch, fingers linked in my lap, knuckles white with how hard I’m gripping myself. Holding myself together to keep from falling apart all over again.

“She was two years younger than us and we wanted absolutely nothing to do with her,” Jude says, that same dreamy expression on his face as the rest of them have as they follow me.

I sit and listen to them tell their story, tell how as they got older, they didn’t mind having her around so much. How they grew to love her. How they all dated throughout high school. How they knew without any doubt that she belonged to all of them. That she would be theirs and they would be hers for the rest of their lives. They tell me funny stories about growing up together, and while I’ve always been curious about how they met, how they became a pack, voracious for any tidbit of information they could give me, I understand now why they never told me anything about it. Janie is too wrapped up in their pack history for them to have been even remotely honest with me.

I suppose they didn’t want to lie about it.

She’s too precious a memory for them to disrespect her like that.

They keep going for what feels like hours, spilling their past over me. Not one of them looks at me, words falling from their lips striking my skin like the blade of a knife, each one ending in a tiny wound. One I could handle, two I’d probably be okay…. But this?

This is how I die.

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