Page 112 of Knot All that Glitters: Part 1

She smiles sweetly, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “I’m gonna go take a shower. I still feel cold.”

I frown, watching her move away from me. There’s something else, something she’s not telling us, somethingimportant. My alpha tells me to bark at her, to demand that she tell me what’s really going on, but I made a promise to never use my bark on her. And I refuse to break that promise.

So instead a trail after her as she leaves the sauna, the gym.

She disappears upstairs, heading to her room. The guest room. We haven’t shown her the nest yet. I want to. Fuck, do I want to, but I’m not sure she’s ready for that. I’m not sure we’re ready for that yet. We shouldn’t give her that kind of hope until she knows everything.

We’d planned to do it soon, to give her our truth, the real reason we approached her, while also reassuring her that while it started out as a way to hurt her father, now we care only about her. About her happiness and safety.

If she can overlook the truth of who we are, can forgive us, then we can start building a life with her, move her into the nest, talk about bonding her.

But this, coming home and finding her pale and shivering in the yard because of something her father said to her? The man who has abused her her entire life?

We’re going to have to wait now. She’s not emotionally stable enough to handle knowing what we did. Right now she’ll undoubtedly react first, scream and rage and cry. Leave us. Or worse, she could go back to not speaking, staring sightlessly ahead, ignoring our pleas to just say anything.

An hour of that was bad. I’m not sure I could take the same from her for longer. Days, weeks, months.

I shake my head and push to my feet, going in search of my pack members. We need to talk about what happened, come up with ways to protect Haven from this bullshit in the future. My alpha is clawing at me, enraged that we let her get hurt, that we weren’t there to keep her from hurting herself. From giving up.

It’s a wonder that she hasn’t gotten sick or caught a fever. By the time she left me to go upstairs, she her temperature feltnormal. And she was sniffling yes, her nose stuffed, but that was likely from the tears she cried.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt to have a doctor come and check her out.

As I move through the house, I hear the shower running upstairs, letting me know Haven is where she said she’d be. Jude is in the basement, I think, likely trying to find a scrap of information about what set Haven off. I have no clue where Tic is, probably anxiety cleaning his bedroom or something. It’s the way he handles stress, and finding Haven like that was fucking stressful.

I pause in the living room. A waft of smoke floats by the double doors that lead to the back porch. I follow it to find Hale, slumped in a chair, staring at the spot where Jude found Haven, so still and quiet and pale. For a moment, I thought she was dead.

I slouch into the chair next to him, reaching for the pack of cigarettes on the table between us. He doesn’t glance at me, doesn’t look away from the patch of grass, like he can still see her there.

“That was… That was fucked up,” he mutters after a moment. “What if we didn’t come home when we did? What if we stayed at the club like Bell wanted us to? She could have been out there all fucking night, Creed.” He sounds wrecked by that idea. “She could have frozen to death. Caught hypothermia. Pneumonia.”

I nod. “I know. But wedidcome home, and she’s warm and… she talked to me. Moved. Carried herself upstairs to take a shower.”

“Good. That’s good.” He blows out a relieved breath before swiping his hand over his face, taking an extra moment at his eyes. My prime hasn’t cried since Janie. Hasn’t let himself care enough about anything to cry over it.

He glances over at me. “You saw it.”

My brows jump. “Saw what?”

“How special she is, how fucking perfect. You saw what she would become to us and I didn’t. I couldn’t.”

“Refused, more like.”

“I’m sorry, Creed. I should have listened to you. I was just so focused on protecting my pack. Protecting Janie, even if it’s too late. I need to do right by her.”

“We will,” I reassure her. “We will. But you know Janie would want us to be happy, too.”

He swallows thickly and nods, his gaze going back to the spot where Haven collapsed, unable to keep his attention away. “I called in Dr. Hynes. She’ll be here soon to check Haven over, make sure everything is actually okay with her. That she didn’t make herself sick.”

“Good. Thanks, brother. We’ll all rest better knowing she’s healthy.”

We’re quiet for a while, both staring at the yard. “What’d she say?” Hale asks, taking a drag of his cig.

I shake my head. “Said her dad sent her an email, spouted more of his poison about how she’s a shit omega. No one wants her. How we’re going to ruin her.” The irony isn’t lost on me. If Haven isn’t the typical omega, it’s because he molded her not to be. Shaped her into a beta, suppressed her instincts, turned her into an automaton.

He blows out a breath of smoke and shakes his head, offering me a drag. “We need to kill that fucker.”

I tip my head back and blow out a ring. “Its gonna happen.”

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