Page 3 of The Alpha: Part Two
“You look like shit,” she says, trying to keep Dutch in her arms. Dutch couldn’t look more like Trent if he tried. Talia finally gives up and puts him down so he can run to me, screaming his version of my name.
When I bend over to pick him up, the first thing he does is rip my eyepatch off and try to put it on his head.
Talia reaches us and takes it from his chubby fingers to tie a knot in it so it will stay in place over his eye. It takes up a quarter of his small face. “Okay, little man, you’ve stolen the goods, nowbegood.”
I hug him to me, smelling his wild scent that is a mix of his parents in his equally wild hair before I let her take him from me.
Iris waves enthusiastically from her perch on Corso’s shoulders and I wave back at her as I take my spare patch from my back pocket. I fully anticipated Dutch’s thievery, he almost always steals my eyepatch the minute he sees me. I’m glad he still wanted it after me being away for so long. Zetty, ever serious, peers silently at me from Jasper’s arms. That’s better than the stink eye she usually sends my way. She can look at me however she wants, I love her stinky little eye.
“Don’t listen to them,” Talia smiles, trying to lighten the air. “They’re excited about all the different foods they’re about to eat.”
I smile back at her, but we both know how unhappy her pack is with what’s happening right now.
“We have a couple good ideas,” she continues. “We need to get to the rental, though. I need a nap or three, and these three need to run off some energy.”
I nod. I explained the basics of the situation to her in various texts and calls as they were traveling. She knows what I’m fighting for, what I’m asking her pack to help me fight for. It doesn’t hurt that the Flores pack is possibly in the center of a lot of the omega abductions and trafficking. Nathan is especially anxious to find out exactly how much they’re responsible for.
The sound of Nathan cursing draws my attention to the back of the plane. Case after black, hard-shell case has been unloaded and piled with the normal luggage along with several giant black duffles. It looks like they may have raided the COT weapons depot before leaving. It is a great possibility this is all from their own stash too. With Alex and his penchant for mayhem, any number of things could be in those boxes.
I get a glimpse of hard density foam and the flash of a camera lens before Nathan zips it back up after making sure nothing was broken when the airfield employee tossed it from the hold. Glaring at the guy, who is handling the remaining cases much more gently, he grabs an armload of straps and takes off for the back of the SUV to load his own equipment. All those weapons are another reason they needed a private jet.
I lost the diplomatic privileges of a council distributed house and vehicle to use while I’m here the minute Minos heard from the leaked information source that I’m a monster. The conversation he had with me was short and full of regret. I’ve been staying at the twins’ house. It smells like them and Desir’ee. It’s been the only thing that’s eased some of the empty ache eating its way through me. There’s not enough room at the house for Talia’s pack, and I don’t think Desir’ee would appreciate her home smelling like strangers when we get her back, so I found them a place on the other side of the neighborhood. It’s a vacation rental with plenty of bedrooms, a privacy fence, and no pool. That was the deciding factor, the other places I looked at had pools, and I couldn’t stand the thought of one of the babies falling in. My chest is tight now just thinking about it.
“I got you guys a van for the kids and an SUV. Should have got you a cargo van if I had known you were bringing all that.” I hand Kaleb the keys. “I’ll text you the address of the house, and you can follow me over. I looked it over, I think it’ll be okay. If it isn’t, I can find you something else. Thank you for coming. Thank you so much. I know I shouldn’t have asked, but I didn’t know what else to do, and –”
“It’s fine, Seth,” Kaleb cuts in. “Well, it isn’t. But it’s going to be. Let us get rested up, then we can go get your girl.”
“Then we’ll get the twins. Talia says they’re identical?” Corso asks.
I nod. “They are. Michael is the asshole and Ben is full of shit. Actually, they’re both full of shit, and they’re both assholes, so that’s not really helpful. I couldn’t tell them apart for an embarrassing amount of time.” I smile when I say it, and I catch Talia smiling back, but my smile fades when I think about the possibility of never seeing them again.
“We’ll find them, Seth,” she assures me. “We’ll get them back.”
Chapter four
Lopez
It’s only been three weeks. There’s no possible way Desir’ee could be as comfortable with us as Ernesto is trying to force her to be. I’ve spoken with him about it on multiple occasions but he won’t be reasonable.
To be perfectly honest, I’m far more concerned about her than I thought I would need to be. On paper, she’s sensible, responsible, sound; but the sallow omega sitting at the end of our table is a ghost of her previous self. She barely eats, and she’s taken on enough shifts at the hospital that true exhaustion is beginning to show. I know my worry is genuine.
I’m worried for Desir’ee’s health and wellbeing, but Ernesto seems only to be concerned about her next heat cycle and reminding her about the fights scheduled for Benjamin and Michael. He seems to enjoy her discomfort more than I ever anticipated he would. I know he wants her to be our omega, but for him I think it’s less about having an omega than it is about having control over an omega. I also think he enjoys the discomfort that keeping Desir’ee, specifically, causes.
It’s my mistake, really. He would have probably chosen a different omega if he didn’t know how much of an interest I’ve kept in Benjamin and Michael. I started keeping track of their lives after the mess with Rafe. I thought keeping up with them and helping them when I could was the right thing to do, but I overestimated my ability to keep it mostly secret and I underestimated Ernesto’s propensity to pick at wounds and hold grudges.
Ernesto has always been a jealous person. He’s jealous about power and attention. My attention more than anyone else’s, apparently. I wanted to help my sister by helping her son, and he was taken from us. I tried to help the twins the best way I was able to attempt to make up for that loss, and now their omega is wasting away a little more every day under my roof. Ernesto doesn’t care about anything but power. It took me years to fully understand that, but by then I was so deep into the underbelly of his goals that I couldn’t get out.
“You will eat, Miss Romero. If I have to command you to do it, I will have no trouble doing that,” he chides as he cuts into his steak.
“I’m not hungry,” Desir’ee responds quietly in a muted voice. She’s lost so much of herself in such a short amount of time. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She was supposed to be understandably sad for a little while, then perk back up.
“I don’t care if you’re hungry or not, Miss Romero,” Ernesto says, smirking and tilting his head to the side. “Put some food into that pretty mouth of yours or I’ll do it for you.”
“Don’t,” she whispers. “If I eat anything I’ll be sick. I’m tired. I just need to go to bed.”
I watch Ernesto’s lips flatten and his nostrils flare. He isn’t used to defiance at any level, especially not from an omega.
“She could have something after she rests. We don’t want our omega unwell,” I suggest in an effort to remind him that she is, in fact, supposed to be ours and well cared for.
