Page 91 of Running on Empty

“Couldn’t think of anything more I’d like better,” Ronan said, his sharp grin echoed by many of the men here.

So with that, we all piled into the troop carriers and made our way out of the city.

I’d been doing sowell.

No flashbacks, no memories had plagued me when I was with my mates last night, but… As we drove out of the city, the sun slowly setting in the sky, my eyes followed the flash, flash, flash of the broken line markings on the road and that highway hypnosis brought something forth I would have otherwise kept stuffed down.

“Fuck…”The first thing I heard was Jack Spencer’s purr.“Who’d have thought we stumble upon grade A omega pussy on fucking Howlr.”My hand went to my throat as his did in my memory.“I thought you would be some bloody beta, pretending to be an omega to catch our eye, but there’s no mistaking this.”

Blaine or Snake, one of them had drawn me closer, bending down to claim my mouth, kissing me even as my numb lips fought to follow his lead. He pulled me tight between him and Jack, forcing my spine into a straight line, right as Jack’s hands landed on my hips. My pants were pulled down.

No, this wasn’t right, my wolf whined.

Rough fingers slid up my now saturated thighs, then shoved themselves inside me with little grace. The alpha I was kissing laughed, as I yelped at the sudden intrusion.

“Is she wet?” he’d asked Jack.

“Slick enough to drown the both of us. I’m not even sure she’s gonna feel it when I knot her.” A hand slapped down on my arse. “What am I saying? Of course she will.”

“What’s she feel like?” the other alpha has asked. “Never had fresh omega pussy before, not on Rush.”

“Hot.”

Jack ground his fingers harder inside me to the point of pain, but when I’d made a sound of protest, he’d just laughed and his brother had shoved his cock in my mouth with no preliminaries. The both of them chuckled as my cries were choked off, the cock surged forward, ready to block off my—

I jolted in my seat, wedged in the middle between Jax and Ash on the front bench seat, the two of them glancing down at me in concern.

“We just need to get this done,” I told them by way of explanation, glad when they just nodded in response.

I’d watched the estate appear on the horizon, it looking like some kind of citadel of old. The walls around the vast estate were tall, gleaming pale in the dying light. Night was coming and so were we, the many cars wending their way through the narrow back roads. But by the time we arrived, parking the vehicles off in a nearby field, darkness had fallen, the cows looking at us sleepily for a moment before lowering their heads again.

“Dad,” Ash said down the phone line. “How close are you?”

“Close enough that you should be able to hear the bikes,” Blue replied, the tinny rumble coming through the speaker augmenting the faint, far off sound of them approaching.

“We’re going in,” Ash told him. “Don’t fuck around. Hit the gate with thermite before you’ve even come to a stop.”

“Of course, numbnuts. We’ll be using the bikes to get us the fuck away from the bomb blast as the gate goes up. Now get your arse in there and do your fucking job. That cunt doesn’t get to see another morning for what he did to Stevie.”

Blue’s voice sounded alien and muted from the phone speaker, but as he spoke those words, everything I’d been through was shoved aside, and replaced by this.

“No, he’s not going to.” I said the words as I stared at my alphas and these big, scary looking strangers. “I need everyone here to swear that’s the way it’ll go down. Promise me.” My voice cracked on the words and Charlie took a step towards me, but I shook my head. I could see the empathy there in her eyes, but the time for that was after, not now. “Promise me he won’t live another fucking day—”

“Perhaps we should—” Charlie started to say.

“Not this time, love.” Archer turned to his omega, his whole pack following his lead. “We love you more than life itself and everyone here recognises that you have a better understanding of what’s going on than anyone, but…”

He was silent, they all were, willing her to understand, but I didn’t have that kind of patience.

“You want to talk,” I said, shouldering forward. “You want me to tell my story, thinking it’d be like pulling a splinter from an infected wound. The pus would ooze free and then there’d just be me.” I shook my head slowly, realising something as I spoke the words, which kinda gave credence to her point, even as I pushed past it. “But that’s not what’s going to happen.”

I’d fought hard to get to this point, struggled past trauma and mistrust until I stood here, in a herd of fucking cows, my eyes sliding towards the towering wall that stood between us and Jack fucking Spencer.

“This is me now.” There was a strength in that and that surprised me. “What they did and who I am, it’s all the one thing. The Stevie of before, she’d never have considered striking back like this and now? We’ve blown up houses, slit men’s throats.” I looked back at Charlie, my eyes locking with hers, pleading for this strange woman to understand. “And that’s been better than twenty odd years of eating shit sandwiches and being told it's good. I won’t anymore.”

Her chin jerked up, her eyes glittering silver and every one of my muscles tensed, waiting for her to try and shout me down. But then she smiled, that burnt out and ghastly smile that only fellow trauma survivors could sport.

“Then make it good,” she said. “Strike back at the people that hurt you the most.” Her gaze flicked momentarily to her alphas and the way they paled? I got the feeling that she and I would have a few words to share over a beer if we ever got the chance. “Get it all out in any way you can, Stevie, because you don’t want to carry that kind of poison with you, when it was never yours to bear in the first place.”

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