Page 113 of Knot All that Glitters: Part 1

The door opens again, and Tic comes out, his eyes wide. “Where is she?” I straighten as he barrels toward me, fisting my shirt, tugging me out of my chair and into him. “Where the fuck is she?”

I shove him back. No fucking clue why he’s coming after me like this. Hale shifts, moving closer, but he doesn’t intervene. “She’s taking a fucking shower, dude. Take a breath.”

Tic gives a sharp jerk of his head. “She’s not in her room. She’s not in her shower. Where is she?”

Hale grips Tic’s shoulder just as Jude comes barreling out of the house, too. “Jesus. What the fuck is happening?” I snarl, my alpha on edge from their pheromones, anxiety ratcheting higher. “What happened?”

“She saw the fucking spreadsheet!” Jude shouts, hands gripping his hair. Then repeats quieter, “she saw the spreadsheet and the videos, the pictures, the points.”

All the blood drains from my head and I sway on my feet. “No. No, she didn’t because you wouldn’t have been stupid enough to leave your computer unlocked, right, Jude? You wouldn’t have fucking left it open for her to see, right?”

He shakes his head. “I thought I did. I thought I locked it. But I just checked, and it was open, and the pictures, the videos… She saw them. It wasn’t her computer she picked up.. it was mine. They look the fucking same. She didn’t know.”

“Fuck!” Hale shouts, his rage a boiling, bubbling thing, poisoning our pack bond. “You had one fucking job, Jude. Make sure she didn’t see that shit.”

“I told you to delete it,” Tic says, folding his arms over his chest. “I told you to get rid of it.”

The bond between us strains under the weight of the accusations being flung around. I should warn them it’s close to snapping. But at this point, I don’t fucking care. I only care about Haven.

“It never should have existed,” I say quietly. My rage is ice cold. The opposite of Hale’s. The argument around me stutters out in the face of it. They know what this means. “I told you as soon as we met her that it was a bad fucking idea, that I didn’twant any part of it. But you assholes pushed and pushed, saying it was the only way to get revenge. You know, it was bullshit. We have plenty of other pokers in the fire to take down Bell. But you just couldn’t fucking let it go.”

The three of them stare at me with various looks of regret and pain on their faces.Fuck them. Haven is the one we need to worry about.

It’s the middle of the night. She’s an omega alone. Her father is hunting her. Hell, any alpha who comes across her could bark her into submission. Take what they want from her. Anything could be happening to her.

“How long ago did she leave?” I ask Jude.

He shakes his head. “I didn’t check. I didn’t check the cameras. I thought she was still here. I just… I needed to find her. T-to tell her-”

“Check the security feed,” Hale demands, cutting him off. “Find out when she left, and what direction she went in. Tic, call Florence. See if she’s heard from her. Creed and I will hit the streets, see if we can find her.”

I’m already moving toward the door, hooking my coat from where I tossed it when we realized we couldn’t find our girl. Those moments were torturous, running through the house, heart thundering, panic trying to take over.

Bell had asked us to stay at the club, had tried to wheedle us into fucking some poor omega…withhim. Sick fuck. We met him to convince him we don’t have Haven with us, that when she left his house she went far, far away from here. The other side of the country.

The more time he spends looking for her, the less he’ll pay attention to other aspects of his life. But… when we’d come back to a silent house, most of the lights turned off, and no fucking Haven, I’d feared his attempts to get us to stay longer had meant he sent someone into our pack house to take her back.

After we’d promised her he’d never get his hands on her again, the thought was too much, the panic very real. But this is even fucking worse.

Because now we’re the villains just like her father. We’re the ones who used her, and she knows it. She won’t come to us willingly. Will probably run if she spots us. She’ll do everything she can to avoid us.

Hale’s on my heels as we head to the garage. Without talking, we know we’ll take different cars, cover more ground that way. Tic and Jude will do the same. “Why didn’t she say anything?” Hale mutters, snatching his keys off the hook.

I pin him with a glare. “She realized we thought of her as a tool, as something to be used. Just like her father.”

His face pales. “She thought we’d bark at her to keep her compliant.”

“Got it in fucking one.”

“We promised her we wouldn’t do that, wouldn’t use our barks to harm her.”

I yank open my car door. “Why would she trust anything we said to her, Hale?” Not waiting for an answer—it’s a rhetorical question after all, and I don’t want to sit around and have a lengthy chat—I climb into my car and back out of the garage.

Tension radiates through my body. Rage is heavy in my chest. I’ve never hated my pack mates before. They’ve annoyed me, enraged me, made me want to rip my goddamn hair out with some of their antics, but there was always the underlying feeling of love. This… This makes me hate them, makes me want to cut ties with them. Find Haven and bundle her up, away from all of this, from all of them.

They can stay and handle Frederick Bell. They can get revenge for Janie and what her loss did to us. I’ll keep Haven safe, even if it means keeping her from my pack.

Chapter 29: I’m screwed

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