Page 15 of Wolf Lost

“The omega—”

“Has a name,” Sawyer hissed, lifting his head to glare at the man. “Call me Sawyer, or don’t talk about me at all.”

The beta rolled his eyes and didn’t bother looking at Sawyer, and Dez had the urge to wipe that scowl off the man’s face.

With his claws.

Despite the fact that his hand spasmed again, he moved to take a step in that direction. He had a left hand that would work just as well. But Sawyer’s arms tightened around him.

“He belongs to my alpha,” the beta informed Gavin, again like he was talking about a thing and not a person. These assholes were from the fucking dark ages.

“Assuming you’re talking about Sawyer,” Gavin answered, voice calm and flat, “you’re incorrect about that. Even if it were possible to own a person, which it is not, your alpha has no hold over Sawyer.”

“He’s a part of our pack,” the beta insisted.

Gavin looked at the beta for a long, silent moment. It was an interrogation technique he’d mastered and then some. When the beta started to look nervous, Gavin turned to Sawyer. “You belong in his pack?”

Sawyer didn’t speak, just shook his head and buried it against Dez’s chest again, inhaling deeply and squeezing his eyes shut.

“You saw that,” Gavin told the man. “Sawyer says he’s not in your pack.”

The beta had a surprising amount of fight in him for someone who was already beaten. He tried again. “You can’t—”

“And even if he hadn’t said it,” Gavin interrupted, “Sawyer couldn’t possibly be a part of your pack. He’s a part of ours.”

Ash and the strange beta both gasped, and Sawyer went very still in Dez’s arms.

Dez worried for a second that Sawyer was bothered by the claim, but then he realized that Sawyer was still breathing, still clinging to him. He hadn’t frozen; he’d stopped trembling in terror.

Dez looked up at the stunned beta and gave a growl to get everyone’s attention before speaking. “You go back to Bakersfield and tell your pitiful excuse of an alpha that Sawyer is a part of the Kismet pack now. If he wants him, he’ll have all of us to go through.”

The beta glanced at each of them, eyes lingering on how Dez had wrapped his arms protectively around Sawyer, and then looked at Gavin again. “Does that mean I can go?”

Gavin gave Ash a nod, so Ash slowly set the man back on his feet. “But you’re not welcome in Kismet,” he said as the man turned and started inching his way toward the door.

He didn’t speak, but he also didn’t turn his back on them for a second, as though that would protect him if they wanted him dead.

“Ever,” Gavin continued. “You or your partner. If either of you sets foot in our town again after dawn, you’ll never leave.” Gavin followed slowly, step for step, crowding the beta out of their home. When the man reached the edge of the terrace, he flipped over it, turned, and ran.

11

Someone New

Their pack. Gavin had claimed him for their pack.

More than that, Sawyer’s instincts had accepted the claim. In an instant, the tenuous, fading bonds to his old pack were gone. He’d expected it to be painful, or at least to feel something about it, but it had been like erasing the marks on a whiteboard. One moment they’d been there, the next moment not.

In a way, it made sense. He hadn’t felt like he was a part of the Holt pack since they’d turned a blind eye to the barbarism of the challenge. They had all turned their backs on him and his father. It had been stranger that the bonds remained at all than that it didn’t hurt when they were gone.

Something warm and soft settled in him with their disappearance. Not just the wild hope that maybe he’d found a place he could be safe for a while, but a calm sense of belonging. Like maybe he’d found a place he could be safe forever.

That was silly though. Wasn’t it?

He looked up to see the beta disappear over the huge stone wall around the property. He hadn’t felt much of a pack bond for him before, but there had been something. Now, it was a blank.

He looked at the alphas, who were watching the wall, tense, waiting, like they expected the beta to come back. Sawyer could have told them that beta would never willingly come back to Kismet. Maybe not all of Colorado, with that much alpha disapproval hanging over his head.

Three alphas in a single pack, their wills united, was incredible to experience.

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