Page 38 of Wild Omegas
He is here.
I sense someone behind me and whip around, my fist up and ready to strike.
Brooks catches it in his own hand and chuckles. “Hey now, it’s just me.” Then his expression falls. “What’s wrong?”
But I have no breath. My mouth is dry.
Damien was here.Might still be here.
My heart pounds in my chest. I pull my hand back from Brooks’s hold and place that hand over my thunderous heart. “I…” Tears sting my eyes and slip down my cheeks. There’s no more avoiding this.
Brooks closes the distance between us and holds my hands in his. “What’s going on, Josie?”
I pull out the wrapping paper from my pocket and nod to the open box on the ground. “He sent me a clipping of the newspaper article.”
“Who?” Brooks asks. A deep worry line scores his brow. He glances around and spots the clipping on the ground a few feet away. He grabs it before the wind can carry it further and reads. “Josie?”
“An alpha lived upstairs,” I say slowly as I stare past his shoulder. Memories of the fire hit like a sledgehammer to plaster as tears continue to fall. The smell of smoke is so real I crinkle my nose as the memory takes me. Dark smoke, cinders floating down, debris falling as more and more furniture caught on fire.
Thick ash. Burning lungs.
And me, just sitting there. Hoping it would all end.
Instead, it’s all gotten so muchworse.
“An alpha?” Brooks is trying so hard to reach me. That much I recognize. “Why would an alpha be sending you things here?”
“Because he’s a crime lord,” I whisper. “And I burnt down his safehouse and revealed it to the public in the process. I don’t know how he escaped arrest.”
All attention was on me, that’s how.
Brooks’s eyes go cold. His scent lingers around me, a mixing of campfire smoke with that of a burning fire. There’s a distinct difference. Or, there should be. I’ve never scented the latter on Brooks but I do now. “Why would he be haunting you?”
“Revenge.” I ruined everything right after I failed to end my ruined life.
My freeze state shatters at that realization, and that Damien has obviously trekked all the way out here to Wild Skies to ruin the new life I’m trying to build. To burn it all down just like I accidentally did to his safe house. Like, yes, I’d been a fool to assume no other buildings would burn, too. But I wasn’tthinking straight and it had been an accident and no one got hurt.
There isn’t a lot in life I did right, including setting that fire. But I think I’m starting to do things right here.
Damien will win before I succeed.
Brooks pulls me into a tight hug. “He won’t hurt you here. He’ll never hurt you again, I promise you that.”
I wrap my arms tightly around Brooks’s chest and inhale his scent. It’s still far too much like a burning fire, too specificallywrong. “I know. I’m just scared he knows I’m here.”
“We’ll take care of it.”
I believe him. He’s ex-law enforcement, and Carson has enough money to will problems away if he wants to. But the fact Damien found me and traveled all the way from New York to deliver this makes my stomach churn.
“Wherearethe others?” I ask, looking around.
That’s when we both hear one terrifying word shouted.
“Fire!”
CHAPTER 20
Josie
