Page 83 of Into the Fire: Before

I nodded toward Taryn in the middle. “Tell her,” I breathed.

He met my gaze.

“She knows, deep down,” I assured him with a hand on his forearm. “But omegas…they need to hear it.”

His brows drew together, and he looked back into the room as though surveying a steep cliff face he was required to scale. Slowly, silently, he stepped toward the edge of the bed, crouching down on the balls of his feet.

He reached toward her but hesitated. Maybe he was afraid to confess so openly his feelings for her, for us. Maybe he just wanted her to keep sleeping. She looked so peaceful, so pure and untainted by the horrors and dangers of the world. I wished we could just stay here, away from it all, where she could always look so content.

Finally, though, Caine’s hand completed its journey, brushing a stray lock of frizzed hair behind Taryn’s ear. Brooks slept soundly behind her, his arm hooked around her waist with Lin behind him, flat on his back but face turned toward Brooks mass of curls, as though even in sleep he craved the scent. He must’ve moved after I left the room.

Caine brushed his fingertips down the line of her cheek, tracing the edge of her jawline. His face was soft, eyes tender in a way I’d never seen them before. He repeated the motion, fingers just barely grazing the skin of her face. She stirred then, eyes scrunching together before blinking slowly open. Before registering who knelt before her.

Before she could move or speak, Caine caressed her face a third time, swallowing as the muscles in his face tightened. “I’m sorry,” he breathed, barely audible.

Taryn frowned, sitting up slightly against her pillow. “Caine—”

“I’m sorry.” He cupped his hand on her cheek. “I’m used to Brooks and Lin just…just knowing what we are, without needing to tell them or put on a happy face and pretend. It’s not fair to have held you to that standard when that kind of trust hasn’t been built yet.”

“What are we, then?” she asked softly.

Caine looked back at me, Taryn following his gaze. I didn’t move, neither forward to help Caine, nor back to leave him on his own. I gave a small smile, and I stayed put.

He turned back to her. His thumb ran absently over the apple of her cheek. “You’re home,” he said. “Both of you. Same asBrooks and Lin. You’re…all of you, you’re the only part of the world I want to live in. And I’d burn every other inch of this fucking globe if it meant this little piece of it would be safe.”

Taryn’s chin wobbled as emotion threatened to overtake her. She broke eye contact, looking down toward the mattress.

Gently, Caine pulled her chin back up so he could see her eyes. “I’ve kept myself on the outside all my life, because it was safer that way,” he said through a thick voice. “But you and Brea…Brooks and Lin…you make me want to be part of something.

“I grew up mostly alone. I was in foster care at nine, and I was just…angry, and scared. I met Lin in school that year, and something about him quieted the noise in my head. He was my best friend, the one good thing I could see in my life. All my firsts were with him. First drink, first cigarette, first kiss. First all of it.”

It spilled out of him, all the details it had taken weeks and weeks of patience and directed questioning for me to get in his sessions.

His aging out of the foster system, leaving school, leaving Lin and his family, the only stability he’d had. Answering a sketchyhelp wantedad only to realize it was for AlphX trafficking.

“It went like that for years,” he said softly. By this point, Lin and Brooks were awake, eyes open but bodies unmoving. “I was making close to ten-grand a week, and still living in a dump, barely making it. Ten-grand buys a lot of fucking drugs, Taryn.”

He paused for the first time, steeling himself for the worst of it.

Then he told her about Melody, the strung out omega he’d met in the trade. How she’d begged him again and again to try AlphX, even though it was fatal for omegas, especially with prolonged use. How he’d refused, even keeping his stash out of the house.

And he told her about the day he returned home and found Melody stroked out on the floor.

Taryn’s face was tear streaked. Caine’s was too. “I didn’t love her,” he whispered, eyes still locked with hers. “But at the time, I thought shooting each other up and passing out on the floor together was love.

“Going back to Lin, bonding with him and Brooks…that’s how I knew I didn’t want to die. If I hadn’t joined them, if they hadn’t taken me in, I would’ve found some lethal dose and drifted off in an alley somewhere.”

Taryn stroked his face, her other arm holding the sheet up to her chest. “Why are you telling me this?”

He mirrored her, cradling her cheek with his hand. “Because packs know these things about each other.” Taryn’s eyes squeezed shut as Caine pulled her face toward him, planting a long kiss on her forehead. “And you’re pack for me, Omega.”

Five

Lin

Iwasgoingtostrangle this client.

I normally was fairly immune to the bursts of alpha aggression. When I’d first presented, it took a long to time accept my designation because I felt so different than the other alphas I knew. Where their new hormones pushed them into brawls and arguments, moods swinging wildly back and forth at the drop of a hat, I just…didn’t. Even into adulthood, even after finding and bonding Brooks, my alpha remained calm and in control.

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