Page 54 of The Alpha: Part One
“I don’t believe it,” she argues, her voice still thick with tears. “He couldn’t have. He could barely sit there and let me… It doesn’t make sense.”
It really doesn’t, but it doesn’t matter if it makes sense or not.
Then she shocks the shit out of me.
“We need to leave,” she says. “We need to go. You marked me, but you don’t have a third. The council could override your claim and I’d have to pick another pack or have one chosen for me. We need to leave.”
Michael pulls her into his lap and starts purring. “That won’t happen. We won’t let it. We can leave for a while and come back. We can go to the Eastern territory, even though Seth’s on the council. It doesn’t matter. We can be a pack of three without another alpha. We won’t stay wherever he’s at, we’ll be on the other side of whatever. We won’t have to see him.”
Desie nods, but starts crying again. “We can come back, though, right? I can’t stay gone. I need my family.”
“No, baby,” I reach over and run my fingers through her hair, “we won’t stay gone. We’ll come back when we can. It’ll be alright.”
We made our escape plan that night. Desie is scheduled to work tomorrow. She’s going to pack up her essentials and have them in her car, then we’ll pick her up and leave.
“I’m going to park on the top level of the parking garage. By the time I’m out it should be cleared out. I park up there sometimes so it won’t be out of the ordinary. You guys can meet me up there and I’ll leave a note in the car for Mateo. We’ll be gone by the time he finds out we’ve left.”
“Are you really going to be okay with leaving?” I ask, knowing the answer. I can feel her heart breaking through our bond. It isn’t just for her family, her distress about Seth has been a constant crackle.
“No,” she says. “No, I’m not. But there’s no other choice, is there? I don’t understand any of this. I don’t know why Seth didn’t just tell us. He must have known it would come out eventually.” Desie’s bites at her bottom lip, her eyes thick with tears. “I thought…I thought he wanted to be with us.”
Michael and I exchange a glance. Seth did want to stay with us, it was obvious that he did. But if we’d known about his past, we never would have lined ourselves up with him and we sure as fuck wouldn’t have allowed him near Desie.
“We didn’t vet him hard enough. It’s our fault, precíosa. It was irresponsible and dangerous. We never should have let him near you,” Michael says.
The flow of her emotions abruptly stalls and hardens. “Again, Michael,Ilet him touchme. I’m not getting into this with you right now. I want to concentrate on getting us out of here before anyone finds out and tries to stop us from leaving.”
Fair enough. That’s probably the best thing any of us can do. We need to get ourselves together and get out of here before Lopez, and Flores, have time to stop us or catch us. We don’t owe him that much more money after the last fight, but I think it’s been about more than the money for a while. I think there’s something much deeper, much darker, that Lopez wants to keep us around for.
With the best plan we can come up with laid out, we go to bed with our hearts heavy and our minds spinning. I can feel the urge to talk about Seth tugging at all of us, pulling at our subconscious. We all thought he was going to be part of our pack. Everything about him fell so naturally into place with us. Neither Michael nor I have ever wanted a lead alpha position, and there’s always a lead alpha in a pack. It might be the twin thing, but I think it’s more of a personality thing. We don’t want it.
Rafe was going to be our lead alpha, he was older than us and we just lined up behind him accordingly. It was starting to happen with Seth, too; regardless of his obvious issues. But how could we possibly follow him as our lead knowing he’s capable of committing such an atrocity as what was lined out in that record? I didn’t want to believe it, didn’t want to see it; I definitely don’t want Desie to see it. It’s bad enough that she knows, especially after she let him be with her. I can feel her heartbreak.
I had no idea things between her and Seth would become as serious as they obviously have. When we get out of here, we’ll help her work through it. An explosion is coming, it’s how it goes with her. She pushes her emotions back, keeping a white-knuckled grip on them until she gets to a point where she feels safe enough to finally have the reaction she’s let simmer; and then the building emotions boil over and she gives in to the release she so badly needs.
The next morning, we get Desie off to work without more than a few hiccups. She wanted to take all her favorite blankets, but we only have room for a few. Some omegas need laundry, some need pillows. Desie needs blankets. It was rough, feeling her weigh each blanket against the other, feeling the rush of regret and guilt that came each time she put one aside in favor of another. Michael and I promised to get her as many blankets as she needs once we get somewhere safe. We’ll go as far as we can go and pray that she won’t go into heat before we get there.
Michael slams the trunk closed after he puts the last bag inside. We aren’t packing much, mostly essentials, just a few extras. Desi’s shift is over in a little less than an hour, we didn’t want to draw too much attention or give word of our impending departure time to spread. He opens his mouth to say something when his phone rings.
“Lopez,” he clips, as he answers. He pulls the phone away from his ear to put the call on speaker.
“Going on a little trip, boys?”
Michael’s lips tighten, his jaw ticking as he counters. “What do you need, Lopez?”
Low, coiling laughter comes across the line. “Put the bags back in the house, Michael. You’re not going to need them.” Then the call goes dead.
Fuck.
Chapter twenty-four
Michael
"Go faster, Benny." I don't want to scream at him while he's driving, but now isn't the time to give a fuck about speed limits.
"If I go any faster, we'll go off the road. I'm trying. Maybe we should have taken the truck."
Maybe we should have, but all our shit and Desie's things are loaded into the car. The idea was to grab her when she walked out of the hospital after her shift and take off. She was going to bring everything she could from her locker at work without drawing attention to it and then we were taking off for somewhere out East. After finding out that two alphas and one omega qualifies as a pack there, we'd be stupid not to get there as fast as we can. She didn't even tell her brothers. I know it's killing her to hide it from them; but telling them might put them at risk and she'd never want that.
