Good Girl by Sam Hall
Chapter 36
The dinner was bust, probably just used to validate our presence in the private room, but no one felt like eating after that. Ari sat there, completely miserable, tears streaming down her face, until Orion said he would take her home. Back to the shit that caused those tears, back to the people who would hurt her.
“Not long now,” he said, kissing the top of her head, then leading her out of the room. “The meal is paid for. Enjoy.”
“Come to the hotel,” I said, Orion freezing mid step. He frowned, then looked down at us. “After you’ve… If this is goodbye, you owe your mates more than food we can’t eat and a problem we have no role in solving. Ari…”
She turned to look at me, the misery on her face a fucking gut punch, and what the hell could I do? My own mother was alive as long as there was hope of me doing what Benson wanted, another reason for this dinner, I assumed. Like, it made sense, all of it, but fuck…
“I hope Orion makes it hurt, when he turns on Benson,” I said.
The tears stopped momentarily, a hard gleam rising there instead. She just gave me a sharp nod and then walked out with Orion.
And so there we were, staring at the spread before us, the shapes of the food incomprehensible lumps with odd smells now. It wasn’t that they’d changed. Anyone else in the restaurant would have been glad to have this banquet before them, but we weren’t the people that walked in the door not that long ago. Someone had told me that back in the sixties in the States, it was customary to call out the phrase ‘dead man walking’ when a prisoner was being taken to the electric chair. It seemed such a weird thing to do, but the phrase fit now. I looked back at the door where Orion had disappeared, and found the others doing the same.
If Orion did this, he wouldn’t make it out alive. He’d either be locked up, rotting away for the rest of his life, all that was him dying every day there were bars on his window, or… I could see it clearly, him emerging from the same darkened room Benson had led me into, hands bloodied, the security hired for the event raising their guns, shouting at him to get down as he walked closer.
I jolted back to the here and now at the sound of gunshots in my mind.
“Let’s get out of here,” Rhys said. “Bren, grab the envelope. Not leaving shit like that lying around.”
“Let’s go get you that kebab, love,” Brendan said to me, helping me to my feet, escorting me outside.
We did,but it lay in its aluminium foil wrapper on the little table inside the living area. Everyone collapsed onto the couch, clustered close, the TV on, but no one watched. It was the door that had our attention, then the knock came. Rhys got up first, moving to open it, Bren grabbing a gun he had sitting on the table and following him. But there was no Benson, no fucked-up alpha waiting there, just ours. They stood there, my two alphas, looking Orion up and down, and then Rhys nodded, opening the door and letting him in.
This wasn’t the same Orion. His tie was wrenched loose, his shirt unbuttoned, his cuffs rolled up unevenly over his forearms, but his face was the clincher. He stared at us, with eyes phosphorescent green, hungry eyes that stored away every detail. The eyes of a soon to be dead man.
“I wasn’t going to come.” He snorted at that, looking at the ground. “I wasn’t supposed to do so much. I wasn’t going to introduce you to Ari or have dinner. I wanted you to go into this having someone to blame. If you hated me” —his gaze flicked up, meeting each of ours directly— “then you could go forward with a common enemy. I was what got between you. It was my father that fucked things up. I was the problem, and then I would be gone and you would be free. That was the plan. It was a good plan, so why couldn’t I follow it?”
His eyes fell back to the carpet, his hands clenching and releasing, until finally, he shoved them into his pockets.
“I’ve failed at every damn thing I was supposed to do. I was to be the one who would legitimise and protect our pack with my name, and instead, I brought my father’s wrath down on us. When he pushed me towards Cyn, I was meant to keep her at arm’s length, introduce her to potential alphas, find someone with an important enough family to protect her, and then it wouldn’t be my fault when she found someone else.” He smiled, but it was a desperate dark thing. “But that was the first plan to fall by the wayside.”
He looked at Bren, then Rhys, something horribly vulnerable there.
“She saw you, scented you, and she wanted you, like anyone with any fucking sense would. And you wanted her. I thought it was just because she was an omega. Fuck, it would’ve been easier if that were true. That’s when it all went to shit for me—when I met you.”
Now I was on the receiving end of Orion’s gaze, and I had to admire the guys’ restraint, staying by my side as he stared. Orion looked broken, an aching need so intense there in his eyes that everything that had gone before didn’t feel like it mattered.
It did, I knew it did. Letting it go was stupid and potentially harmful to me, but this was part of who and what I was—I saw someone I cared about in pain, and I wanted to go to him.
“Cyn…” He frowned a little, looking down at the floor, then back. “Fuck, Cyn…”
“We know that feeling, love,” Rhys rumbled, but his hand held mine, keeping me where I was.
“I was supposed to protect you, but that fell apart the moment we walked into the club. You felt so small when I wrapped my arm around you, your focus completely on me when I explained the BDSM scenes to you. You were wide-eyed and naïve and critical and questioning all at the same time, and how was I supposed to resist that?”
He laughed, just one sharp bark, his head shaking.
“I didn’t even make it one day. I smelled your scent and theirs when we got into the office, saw Rhys talk you through things as Marcus pulled out my cock, that had been aching for you since we met. Our scents, they mixed into something I’ll keep with me until the very end.”
He stared out at us, Orion, seeing but not seeing us. This was it—his final goodbye. He catalogued everything he was walking away from, and it broke him.
“I’ve lived in a house my whole fucking life, one people point at and envy, but right then, I had never felt such jealousy. I knew then I couldn’t give you over to some other rich prick to protect, expecting his family to contain my father’s bullshit where I couldn’t. You watched Marcus suck my cock and Bren rut against Marcus and we meshed, and I knew then you weren’t getting away. My pack would have something I wouldn’t. I’d do this, bring Dad down, stop him from hurting anyone else, and what I’d leave behind would live on and get to breathe it in every fucking day.”
“What, Orion?” Brendan prompted, but there was something dark and intent in his gaze, like this was an interrogation, not a confession.
“We smelled like home. I didn’t know what was missing until it was there, in my fucking face. Marcus had meant the scene in the office as a test, and it was in more ways than one. It showed me, clean and clear, what we needed, what we had always wanted but had been too afraid to reach for. That’s when I knew what I had to do.”
He stared at his hands, twisting a gold signet ring around his finger.
“Trying to steer Ari towards an alpha who wouldn’t fuck her up, seeing Cyn with someone in a good family who could protect her—they were good plans, the right plans, but that day, I wanted more. I wanted my pack to have the perfect omega, I wanted my sister to walk free. I wanted it all, and I didn’t care what it took to get that. So I spoke to Marcus, came up with a new plan, this one.”
There was silence for a few beats, Orion shifting on his feet, and I saw then what appeal a younger version of him would have had for the others. He was beautiful, that was a given, but there was a curious kind of nobility, at odds with his dishevelled appearance and lifestyle, that just drew you in. Some born to rule bullshit that made you naturally want to fall in behind him.
The problem was, it really was bullshit.
I didn’t need an alpha to make all the decisions for me, to sacrifice themselves for my sake and keep me safe. I wanted love, protection, need, desire, knots that split me open and made me throb, and them. I needed them.
I got to my feet, moving close, Orion’s eyes tracking me the whole time, Rhys’ and Brendan’s on my back. I walked up to my knight errant, tugging the tie lower and off, then unbuttoned Orion’s shirt, for reasons I wasn’t entirely sure of. Maybe it was because all that perfect flesh had been denied me for so long, or maybe because I wanted to reach through time, to that memory of the forest, and touch something eternal. Maybe because right now, there was just Orion and me, caught in a timeless space, and I would always want to spend it touching my mates if I could.
Because that was what they were. It was all more convoluted, more complex than I’d previously anticipated, which considering that first day when I saw them all together, fucking like young gods in Marcus’ office, was probably an oversight on my part. As my fingertips skated over his ribs, as I felt the rapid thud of his heart, felt the expansion and contraction of his lungs, I knew then I didn’t want it to stop. But I was an omega, and I’d sweeten my alpha up before I voiced my dissent. Wide-eyed and breathing hard, Orion looked like he was afraid I’d disappear in a second, his arms twitching with the effort to hold them back from grabbing me and not letting me go.
“I did this for you. You’re mine, Cyn, and I’d do anything to protect that.”
“Yeah, I’m the same,” I replied drily.
I gripped his shoulders, forcing him down to his knees with a downward strike that came from Kai’s training and that inherent omega strength that rose when it needed to. The guys were on their feet, at my back, as I dropped down. Orion’s hands went to my hips, cradling them as I pushed his head to one side.
“Cyn, no!” he cried, then I placed the gentlest of kisses on his neck.
Omegas had fangs too, smaller, almost vestigial, but they were there. It used to be the thing to have an omega bite the alpha first, signifying their acceptance of the bond, and I suspected I’d have liked that more, riding Orion’s cock, working his knot deep as my fangs sank into his flesh, marking him as mine.
This wasn’t like with Rhys, a fever dream of hot, hot sensuality, with him claiming me as his. I hoped by doing this, Orion and I would have time to do that later, but right now, there were other things to consider. Orion thrashed when he realised what was happening, but Rhys and Brendan moved in, holding him close, stroking him through it. This was a savage thing, no longer seen to be appropriate for decorous young omegas. My teeth sank into Orion’s flesh, his blood rushing into my mouth as I made him mine. My tongue lapped at his skin, closing the wound, but when I pulled back, Rhys smirked, brushing away the drop of blood on my lip.
“Give Benson what he wants,” I said with a shrug. “Then we give him what he deserves. You’re mated to some kind of fucking criminal mastermind who’s orchestrated everything up until this point to get us right here, so let’s use that.”
“You don’t understand,” Orion said, struggling to his feet, his fingers going to the bite mark, his expression destroyed. “You don’t know what he’s going to do! The minute he sees this, the hits will go out on your mother, her company. I was doing this for you!”
“And I’m doing this for you,” I replied. “Going over your head, making decisions for you, to make sure you are safe.”
We blinked, looking at each other, probably understanding the other’s perspective for the first time.
“Fuck…”
“This is the way it has to go, mate,” Rhys started to say when the phone rang, all of them, cutting through the quiet like a clarion call, demanding to be answered. I pulled my phone out, hand shaking, the number blocked, but I pressed my thumb on the accept call button, then switched it to speaker phone.
“You’re all there?” Marcus asked, his voice somewhat tinny down the line.
“We’re here,” Brendan replied.
“Good. Now that Orion’s need for self-sacrifice has been negated, we can move onto the real game. The ball is tomorrow night, and the pieces are moving into place. I’ll have suits sent for the three of you, and Cyn’s dress will arrive at the same time. Strap the knife sheaths on her, make sure her bow is easy to reach, Bren. I don’t know if she’ll need them, but I won’t chance her going into this unarmed.” His voice softened. “Your mother is safe, Cyn. I have her protected. No one will get to her, nor your house, nor your precious forest.”
“I had eyes on her,” Brendan retorted.
“And competent ones too, but there’s a way. There’s always a way. That’s what makes the game so interesting and yet so fucking heartbreaking, all at the same time. What tiny little detail will trip you up. Or your enemy.”
He took a long breath in.
“But not this time. For the first time in my life, I am required to use every faculty, every resource, every bit of cunning I have to get us out of this, and I swear I will. I love you.” He didn’t specify who and he didn’t need to, the emotion there so fucking real, I could see his angel face wrecked by it, the tears beading, unshed, always unshed, in his eyes. “I have always and will always love you. I’m not any easy man to care for, I hurt everyone and everything that comes close, but I will do this. I will protect what’s mine. My pack, my mates, my family, my company, and my omega. I have to sign off now, but, Cyn, you did what you needed to, claiming him, but that’s just the first step. Don’t be afraid to take the next one. We’ll catch you, wherever you leap. Always.”
“Always,” the others muttered, looking just as shellshocked as me, but when their eyes turned to me, they were all possessive alpha. They reached for me as the phone went dead, like they always would, moving until I was wrapped up tight between them, claimed.