Page 6 of Drown My Sorrow

I curl my hands into fists.

“Keagan!” I growl and close my eyes, taking a few seconds to calm down.

I lost my ability to fear. Until her. Now I know intimately what fear is. Losing her. Aspyn getting hurt. Aspyn needing us. I fear for that little omega, and it drives me wild.

“I’m on it.”

Keagan runs off to talk to the other stall owners. Not that they will be much help, but he has to try. We have to try.

Fuck, I’ll destroy everyone on this island if I have to. I’m not losing her.

“She’s down the beach!” Beau shouts.

I frown even as a bolt of terror slams into me. What’s she doing down there? She hates the beach. Aspyn is terrified of water. Why would she go there?

It takes us a few minutes to get to the shore. The white sand stretches in both directions in a picture perfect view, the ocean glittering like a gem, the sun sending warm light on everything. It is a postcard view.

The warmth of the morning is spreading, and more and more people are getting up, invading our home with their nonsense holidays. Kids race down to the water and build sandcastles, digging holes that will break ankles later tonight. The parents sit with thick glasses, hiding their bloodshot eyes and stinking of booze.

I walk straight up to the only local in sight. “Bodie!”

He stumbles backwards, his eyes wide. “I didn’t do nothing.”

“I don’t care what you did. Have you seen Aspyn?”

Bodie shudders, and I grab him by the shirt, dragging him right up close to me.

“Use your fucking words, Bodie, or I’ll feed them to you. Where is our girl?”

He lifts a shaking arm and points down the beach. I frown. The water is always calm here, but, in that direction, the ocean gets rough. There are currents that can suck you out in seconds, and the waves that break there are almost impossible to fight, and when they crash on the beach, they often surprise people by coming in higher than people expect.

There are signs everywhere.

That’s where the surfers go to catch their waves.

I start marching in that direction, scanning everywhere just in case she went somewhere else or she’s in trouble.

We shouldn’t have left her. She only came out of her heat two days ago. She’s always a bit more sore and uneasy after. Why would she come to the beach?

I swallow hard. I’m not ashamed to admit just how afraid I am for her. It’s not safe. This whole fucked up island isn’t safe for her. These people and this pack are at war, and it all revolves around my omega.

It’s not just the fact she can’t swim, is terrified of water and rain, but the people. They have given her hell. More than hell. They treat her like dirt and get bolder every day.

We give it back, but we’re only so many, and we can’t stop them all. Though we make the ones we’ve caught pay dearly for the pain they’ve inflicted upon her.

Beau hums and bends, picking up sand and letting it slip through his fingers. He’s got the attention span of a flea ninety percent of the time, but when the hyperfocus sets in, you can’t move him. His whole being is chaos, and I love that about him.

“What did she come down to the beach for?” he asks with his lyrical accent.

“Fuck knows,” Keagan says darkly; a tourist goes white and snatches her child up and hurries away.

I might be scary, but I’ve got nothing on Keagan. He’s got long blond hair with tanned skin and pale blue eyes. Keagan has had the kind of fucked up childhood that turns you into a scary son of a bitch.

Mine wasn’t clean, neither was Beau’s, but, then again, our families didn’t just leave us. When we found him, he had no one. He didn’t even have a home.

I spot the surfers coming down to the beach and groan. The last thing we need is the pretty air-headed surfers taking up every surface in town. I ignore them and continue my desperate search.

I think I spot her through the crowd and sprint.

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