Page 89 of Defiant Beta

“You don’t have to…” I start, but he shakes his head, and I fall silent.

“We’re from a small town. Nothing to see. Nothing to do. We’d all graduated from high school and were figuring out where we wanted to go when she went missing. Then cops found her body near the highway out of town, naked from the waist down.”

Her life had barely even started, and someone ended it.

I’ve never lost anyone before. My dad doesn’t count because I never knew him to lose him. And even when Lawrence took Everleigh, I knew she was still alive. But this? I can’t imagine how it would have felt to lose the equivalent of your soul mate so young, and so violently.

A wave of intense fury washes over me. “I’m sorry.”

Vincent shakes his head. “Nothing for you to apologize for.”

“It’s why he became Dexter Pieter,” Levi adds. “Cops were next to useless, and we didn’t have money to hire a private security company. He figured if he became the most powerful man in the city, it would open every door, and we’d easily find her killer.”

“Instead, I wind up drowning in bureaucracy when the killer is hiding in a school for omegas.” Vincent snorts.

I wince as guilt twists my gut. “You spent all that time looking for her killer, and an idiot beta derails your hunt?”

“You’re no idiot,” Vincent says softly.

He’s wrong.

Because of me, they aren’t at the school hunting for a killer. I was so focused on me that I never stopped to look around. “The killer is smart.”

Vincent cocks his head. “What makes you think that?”

“Where better for an omega killer to hide themselves than in a school for them?” They could never kill at Haven. All it would take is one murder to shine a spotlight on them. “And they have incredible self-restraint to surround themselves with omegas and not slip up once.”

Vincent smiles slightly. “Smart.”

I scrunch my nose. “The killer?”

He shakes his head. “You. It took us months to realize how perfect a hiding place it was.”

I dip my head, hiding my pleasure until a thought strikes me. “How do you know you’re on the right track?” I ask.

“Someone tried to kill Levi,” Vincent says.

I look at Levi. “How?”

“The sauna.”

“Thesauna?” I stare at him. “Weird.”

He nods, smiling slightly. “I thought so.”

I try to figure out how, then I give up and ask him. He tells me about the towels stuffed into sweatpants in the corner of the sauna to lure him in.

“So, they know you’re onto them?” I ask.

Levi shrugs. “Not sure. Ms. Arkwright fired me right after. It could have been her or someone else.”

“Why would anyone want to kill your omega?” I pose the question that’s been repeating in my mind.

Omegas are rare. Too rare for someone to kill for no reason.

“None of us knows,” Vincent says.

“It’s rare for a pack to form so young,” I say, picking up my mug but not drinking from it. Vincent said they’d graduated from high school and were getting ready to build a life together. I’ve never heard of a pack forming in school before.

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