Page 38 of Knot the Alphas' Feral Omega

Killian seemed to sense my reservations. “I just came from there,” he snapped. “I saw her there myself. I spoke to Katrina about it, and she was the one who told me where Lilah was—no thanks to you.”

The punch of emotion was acute and painful from Killian’s words, and Emmett stared between Killian and me, his brow furrowing as he clearly tried to pick up the thread of the conversation.

“How...I mean...” I stumbled over my words, trying to come up with the thread of conversation myself. Killian arched an eyebrow at me, folding his arms over his chest, and finally, I gestured helplessly, whispering, “What do you want me to do?”

The sudden helplessness I felt would have sent a better alpha to his knees, and quite frankly, it was still a close call. The way Killian looked at me with such disgust and malcontent made my stomach twist with guilt.

Not just because of the way he was looking at me, either. I might have thought I did the right thing by removing Lilah from our pack, but still...I could feel her absence just as acutely as I had felt Killian’s absence while he was away. The fragile bond she had formed with my pack was still intact in my chest, and it tugged on my emotions occasionally, making me irritable. I would have thought thatthatparticular connection would have faded after a few days of not being around each other, but no—it still remained, making things infinitely more difficult and flooding me with guilt andlongingat the most inopportune times.

Killian scoffed, pulling my attention back to the conversation at hand. He spun on his heel to walk away, running his hands through his hair before he turned around and jabbed his finger at me again.

“I want you to admit you were wrong,” he demanded. “I want you to recognize that you made a hasty decision and should have consulted both meandEmmett before you rejected Lilah. I want you to apologize for making a decision that has impacted our pack for the worse and giving me a fuckingmessto clean up now. Lilah hasn’t shifted out of her wolf form for over a week. The doctors at that place are abusing her. They have her cuffed to the fucking floor, Oliver. The cuffs are on her so tightly that her skin is starting to die underneath. If we don’t get her out of there right away...”

I swallowed as he trailed off, his eyes glinting meaningfully at me. The revelation that Lilah had been in wolf form for more than a fullweekdidn’t sit well. I couldn’t think of any situation where her conscious mind wouldn’t have tried to shift back once she realized she was no longer in danger.

The only situation would have been if she had been drugged enough that her magic and mind were fully dulled to her situation, and given the rumors about Melvin Rehab...

No.I didn’t want to think about the horrific things that might have been done to her while she was out of it, unable to consent or tell them to stop if it hurt.

It was too fucking much.

Oh, god.

What the fuck had Idone?

“I didn’t know,” I whispered. “How was I supposed to know?”

Killian laughed humorlessly, and a hand landed on my shoulder. I looked up, seeing Emmett’s mildly more sympathetic expression looking at me.

He shook his head. “You’re allowed to make mistakes, Oliver,” he said quietly. “But this is a big one you must make up for. You can’t just brush this under the rug and expect us to be okay with it.”

Emmett’s words, spoken without any of the vitriol or anger I was coming to expect from Killian, landed even harder. The raw, honest way he laid out my wrongdoing felt like a punch in the gut.

And in that moment, I could see things so clearly. I could see how I was scared and had made a horrifically rash decision. I wasn’t going to apologize for that—being scared was part of life—but admittedly, I had given into my primal instincts toprotectandrunandsavejust a little more than usual lately. And that was wrong—not only for us, for the pack that I cared about so deeply...but for Lilah as well.

But that didn’t mean I couldn’t make up for it now.

I straightened up slowly, determination settling in my chest, and looked at Killian, who was still looking at me like he wanted to attack me.

“What do we need to do?” I asked, my voice low and firm. “I’ll do whatever is necessary to get her out.”

His eyes widened, and I saw that I had taken him off guard. Killian had expected a fight, a battle between the two of us in which he continued to berate me and tell me all the ways that I had failed them while I stubbornly defended my actions.

Not this time, though. This time, he was entirely in the right, and I was going to do what I could to make my pack happy.

And if that meant groveling to the omega I’d brutally rejected from our pack without a second thought, well...that was what I was going to do.

19

Killian

It took two days to get our ducks in a row. Then, I returned to Melvin Rehabilitation, Oliver by my side this time.

I hadn’t expected Oliver to give in so easily when I told him we were bringing Lilah back. I had expected him to give me a little bit more pushback, and the entire speech I’d created in my mind to convince him that I was in the right had faded away when he had so easily acquiesced to me.

It was unsettling, but at the same time, I’d seen the moment that Oliver realized how badly he had hurt the two of us. I hadn’t expected Emmett to be so clearly on my side, but he’d always held his cards close to his chest, so it didn’t necessarily surprise me that he’d been hurting and keeping it to himself. It was how he’d been basically the entire time we had known each other.

Today was the day, though. I had called Katrina that morning and got her verbal consent for Oliver and me to retrieve Lilah—assuming I could get her to shift back to her human form. Katrina’s consent wasn’t strictly necessary—Lilah was an adult, and technically, Oliver, as her prospective Prime Alpha, had more authority regarding her release—but it made Katrina feel better to know she had an active role to play.

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