Page 15 of Truth or Pack

"Did you bring a backpack?" Holt questioned me.

"Yeah, but it's in the car. Why?" I countered.

"Let's go see if we can liberate it," Ash said. "We need another pack for groceries.

"I don't know if I like the sound of that," I told him.

The three of us filed out of the house and I got my first look at what the storm had truly done. There were trees and debris everywhere. Not just on our car, but all around us. A cabin down the street lost part of its roof.

"You let her walk to town in this mess?" Ash asked Holt, eyes flashing in anger.

"Let her? No, but if you would've seen how angry she was you would have let her go as well. She threw a branch at me, what would have been next?" Holt asked as he approached the SUV. “We don’t even know this omega.”

Ash clenched his jaw but didn’t argue as he stopped in front of our ruined vehicles. The storm made damn sure none of us could run from this.

"Shit, I don't think that’s going to buff out," Ash joked. "I might cry for real.”

Holt just rolled his eyes at him. "Where in the car is the backpack?"

"Back seat. You want me to try to get in there from the back? I'm the smallest of the three of us,” I offered. I’d rather not, but the thought of getting our omega fed was the only thing keeping me together right now.

We all walked around the back and it looked as if the lift gate was intact, so Holt gave it a tug and it opened up. Our other luggage tumbled out onto the soggy drive, the sound of tinkling glass following it down.

"Be careful, there’s a lot of glass in there," Ash warned me as I moved forward to climb in.

"Aye, aye Captain," I said as Holt threw his large jacket down to give me a safe place to start.

And he liked to act like he wasn’t a softy somewhere deep down.

"Brat," I heard Ash muttered as I crawled towards where my backpack was wedged.

The roof was almost touching the backseat but there was just enough room for me to reach my arm through. I felt over to the front of the seat and my hand hit my backpack. When I tried to pull it up and over it got stuck.

I'd have to unzip it and dump some stuff out. That meant my favorite jacket, extra chargers, and laptop were about to get wrecked, but they likely already were.

After carefully unzipping it and shaking it a few times, it was flat enough to pull through.

There were still little bits of glass on my bag, one digging right into my palm where I gripped it. Wincing, I climbed out of the trunk and shook it off on the pavement where glass was already resting.

"Good thing you didn't pack your underwear in there," Ash joked, trying to make us laugh now that a somber silence had drifted over us. We’d survive and replace what we could, but this damage was intense. And ours wasn’t even the worst of it.

"Always the comedian, huh?" Holt asked dryly.

"Someone needs to lighten the mood," he replied with that cocky smile of his.

"Let's head to town and surprise her before she gets back. She won’t avoid us forever," I stated before I followed her lingering scent toward town. Or maybe that was wishful thinking.

Not even five minutes into the walk and I was wishing I would've worn boots. This walk was going to ruin my white tennis shoes.

"Did you start on that list?" Holt asked as he took the lead.

"Yeah, but do you want to add to it? You're the chef," I reminded him.

He started listing off ingredients and I quickly added them into my phone’s notes. I should have just hit the dictation button and let him talk into it. He was getting more upset with each time I've said ‘huh?’

"That should do it," he concluded after over a hundred things were on the list.

"Are you sure that we can carry all of that in three backpacks?" I asked as I looked over it again.

---