Page 8 of Scapegoat

Why now? That’s what I wanted to ask. As my eyes scanned the table, I wanted to know what was so special about tonight. But I couldn’t, because that’s not what we did in my family. We kept quiet and accepted what was, so I just nodded. Jay dropped a big slotted spoonful of the carrots on my plate and that seemed to start the three of them off. Meat, bread, potatoes, mint sauce, it was all piled on my plate until I was forced to say something.

“Enough.” I blinked, realising that my words must sound completely ungrateful. “I mean thanks, but… I can’t eat that much. It’d just be a waste. And it smells amazing. Thank you so much for letting me stay for dinner.”

“Of course.” Jenny smiled as one of the dads started to put food on her plate. But as a small hum of conversation started to build, I just gripped my knife and fork tight. “Eat,” she directed with a nod. “We don’t stand on ceremony here.”

And so I did.

It shouldn’t have tasted as good as it did. Like, the food was top notch, because Jenny and her two mates prided themselves on their cooking. She’d given me plenty of tips over the years to improve my own skills. But… there was more to it. It was the feeling of just being able to sit there and eat, not push past my own hunger to cater to everyone else’s, not feel tired and sweaty and slightly nauseous from cooking all day for my family, only for my efforts to be critiqued mercilessly. Tonight, I ate for pleasure, for the taste, because I was given this food by the guys, because their family nodded and smiled as I did, seemingly benevolent witnesses to the simplest of pleasures.

“Let me help you with the clean-up,” I said, once the meal was done, instantly getting to my feet and grabbing my plate.

“No, you stay here.” Jenny waved me off with a wink. “The guys will help me in the kitchen.”

“We will?” Greg said, copping a dark look from Jenny before he smiled. “Of course, we will.”

“You sit with the boys and keep them company, or maybe you want to go up to their room?” she suggested.

“What the fuck is going on?” I hissed at them after we’d traipsed upstairs. “Usually it’s all ‘keep your door open and no getting up to anything naughty’.”

“Mum knows,” came Atlas’ response, prowling around the room before coming to a stop by his bed. “Everyone knows.”

“Knows what?” I asked with a frown.

“Kai…” Xavier sounded tired or frustrated or…? I struggled to read his expression as he stopped in front of me. “You know.”

“Know what? This is the second time I’ve asked and…” Whatever I had to say, it all trailed away as I felt fingers at my nape, pulling my hair back from off my neck, but I hadn’t felt a thrill when Jenny did it, not the way I did as Jayden did.

“Need us to spell it out?” Jay’s voice was low and hoarse, right before he pressed a kiss to my skin. I sucked in a breath then, a little shiver running along my skin, my eyes flicking to the other guys. Because this had never happened.

All of the kisses I’d had before had been small, stolen moments with one brother or another. Kisses that hadn’t been seen, they’d been kept secret from the other brothers. Never like this. But as I felt Jay’s arms go around me, cradling me closer, his mouth making a very blatant, very thorough inspection of the back of my neck, I knew they saw. Atlas, Xavier, they moved closer, eyes changing from blue to silver as they watched me tremble then gasp, as Jay kept on kissing me. I felt like I was being stretched thinner and thinner, becoming less a girl and more just a fine thread of consciousness, made up of everything I was thinking.

And everything I felt.

“You were always the one for us,” Xavier told me, staring with the eyes of the wolf. As he edged closer, so did Atlas. “We’ve always known you were the only woman we’d consider as mate.”

“You’re our princess,” Atlas said and then shot me a lopsided smile, bringing me back to then. When we were kids and left to roam around in a paddock of wildflowers as both our sets of parents worked on preparing a BBQ. The boys had collected up handfuls of flowers for me, depositing them in my lap as baby Anna grizzled. I’d shown the boys how to make daisy chains with the stems and they’d been apt students. Crowns and necklaces and even bracelets, we’d made them all, bestowing them upon each other, then made childish vows.

“You’ll be my princess forever,” a reedy-voiced, five-year-old Jayden had declared, putting my crown on my head.

“Forever,” a child Xavier agreed, putting a necklace around my neck.

“Forever, remember?” Atlas said now, stepping forward and twisting his finger in a lock of my hair.

They’d lured me out of my house today, seduced me into playing hooky for the whole day, avoiding all of the things I was supposed to be doing. They offered me an escape. But none of us had any business offering anyone anything. Our future was to be determined, not by us, but by the pack. The Campbell boys were sure to become alphas and, as soon as they caught scent of their omega, they’d forget about everything.

They’d forget me.

My throat worked, ready to deliver my mother’s wisdom, to repeat the same words she’d told me over and over, but right as my breath hissed past my lips, I heard it.

“Is she in there?” My mother’s voice floated up from outside, muffled, but no less strident for it. “Is she with them?”

“Now, Abigail—” one of the dads said.

I jerked away, breaking the hazy spell I was under to rush over to the window and stare out, watching my mother square up to Greg.

“Don’t you ‘now, Abigail’ me. Where is she? Where is my fucking daughter?”

Chapter 6

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