Page 68 of Shades of Scars

I twist, wrapping my good arm around Kate just in time to see her slam into the wall of alpha, stopping her from tearing my throat out. There is a feral sort of animalistic rage sparking in the whites of her eyes when she looks at me over their shoulders,battering her fists against their chests, but they hold firm. In the few times I’ve interacted with her, I’ve never seen her this furious.

“Back the fuck off, Raven!” Apollo’s alpha bark rings out with so much dominance that my knees quake, and surprise ripples through me when he shoves her back hard enough to make her stumble a bit.

“How can you protect her?! Ant is fucking dead because someone wants her dead! Instead of being tucked away like she’s supposed to, she came out tonight and put everyone at risk! This is all her fault!” Raven continues to rage, and that familiar sense of crippling guilt washes over me at her words. I’m so consumed by it, I don’t even feel the moment Caito arrives in the hallway, but I sure feel it when he wraps his arm around my waist and pulls me into his hard, warm body. Then, I am surrounded by the scents of three out of my four alphas, and my inner omega calms a little more.

“You two handle the situation on stage. I’m going to take our omega and Kate up to Wren’s office, where it’s safe until we can get the building cleared.” His voice is a soothing rumble of alpha dominance, and I am so exhausted that I just sink into him. His arm tightens around me as the adrenaline quickly fades, leaving me trembling.

Raven snarls and roars more insults my way, but my head buzzes while another wave of dizziness washes over me. Caito turns us with Kate clinging to my other side, and I barely register anything when we take our first steps away.

My world tilts, and blackness surges in to blot out my vision before I can make it too far. My consciousness slips out of my grasp, and then I am free falling into oblivion, hoping this will all have been a terrible nightmare when I awake again.

43

Scarlett

I’m dimly aware of the louder than normal conversation going on around me while my body slowly comes back online. The voices are attempting to stay hushed, but the topic must be dire enough to warrant the angry growls and snarls that accompany the clipped words jumbled together.

With my eyelids still closed tight, I take stock of my body. Other than the slight ache radiating from my left arm, the only other pressure I can sense comes from my hand. My fingers twitch at the feeling of smooth skin against my own, and a gasped sound from nearby makes the argument abruptly cut off. “Her fingers moved. Scar, can you hear me?” The familiar lilt of a female’s voice penetrates through the fog lingering around my subconscious mind, and with it comes the scent of warm, fresh out of the oven peach pie. Relief mixed with joy.

Cool fingers brush against my cheek, and even though it feels like the back of my eyelids are sandpaper, I peel them open. It takes several blinks to bring several faces into focus, the first of which I immediately recognize. “Kate?” Her name is a croak, and I wince when my parched throat twinges in pain.

My omega roommate gives me a watery smile. Her icy blue eyes, normally sharp and full of humor, are misted with unshed tears. Dark tendrils of her hair have escaped the high ponytail she has it pinned back in, framing wet, paler thannormal cheeks. “You’re alright, Scar. We think you just had an adrenaline crash.”

My brow furrows at her use of the word ‘we’, but then my attention shifts to the other faces looming above me, hovering just as close as Kate is. Before I can swallow it down, a desperate whine wrenches free from me, my pure omega instincts pushing aside literally everything else. “Alpha.”

Caito is there, and at my whine and guttural word, he falls to his knees beside me. Kate immediately backs away to give us space, and when my shaky arms reach for him, he doesn’t hesitate to pluck me up into his arms. My left arm smarts in pain, but I push it aside for the feel of my alpha’s powerful arms wrapped around me.

Lark and Apollo crowd in around us when Caito settles down where I’d been laying with me curled up against his chest. I’m immediately surrounded by a combination of their heady scents, and when their chests rumble to life with their soothing purrs, the tension floods out of me like a ruptured water balloon.

“The shooter…”

“Got him, Dream girl. Don’t stress. Just relax. Wren is taking care of everything.” Lark brushes cool fingers against my temple, smoothing back some of my hair that’s escaped the low style I’d had it in before shit hit the fan. I really need to update the sky blue ends sometime soon.

My eyes find Kate sitting with her arms wrapped around her knees, curled up against the opposite side of the couch from where I am. She’s got on a huge coat that swallows her slender frame, but it doesn’t smell like her or my alphas. It smells like limes and salt. It’s hard not to wrinkle my nose. “Are you alright?” I ask her, and she swallows hard before she nods.

“I will be. I’d just like to get back to my nest and wash off the horror of tonight. Scar… if I had known that this was going to happen-”

“Stop. This isn’t your fault. I never should have come out. I should have gone straight to the penthouse. Ant’s death is my fault.” I cut her off before she can go on a tangent, and Caito’s purr quickly morphs to a rumbling growl of disapproval.

Before he can reprimand me, Wren’s office door swings inward, and the man himself sweeps into the room. Alpha dominance pheromones fill the space in a matter of seconds, and I have to bite down on my lip hard to stop another desperate whine from escaping me. I’m choking on extra zesty oranges and the sour tang of bad brandy, and if it wasn’t for the fury pulsing from my alpha, I would have been turned all the way on.

Kate makes a choked noise herself, and she folds her arm over her nose to block out the overwhelming alpha rage pheromones. Wren doesn’t even stop to take in the scene of us all clustered on or around the couch. He marches right up and scoops me up into his arms, much to Caito’s annoyance. The big, viking alpha is gentle when he crushes me against his chest, and I melt against him like ice cream on a hot summer’s day.Want him to lick me up like a puddle of ice cream, too.

“Sweetheart.” His endearment for me comes out in a ragged whisper, arms wrapping me up like bands of steel. Just when I think I can’t melt any more than I already have, he rubs his cheek against my jawline, scent marking me. I can’t help it when my tongue darts out to run along the smooth expanse of his neck, needing to taste him.

He tastes like everything I’ve ever wanted. Like he’smine.

“I’m alright, alpha.” I murmur softly, then my lips meet his. He kisses me like I’m the oxygen he’s been starving an eternity for. We take our time tasting each other until Caito makes a disgruntled noise behind us, breaking our connection.

Wren doesn’t set me down. Instead, he deposits me back on Caito with another brush of his lips against my forehead. Hestudies me for a few moments before he sighs, reaching up to scrub his hand down his face. He looks utterly exhausted.

“Ravenhas been cleared. The shooter, unfortunately, is in custody since someone called in a report of a live shooter, so the police showed up before I could smuggle him out for aproperinterrogation.”

The other three alpha’s growl at that. “That’s no problem. I have a friend at the station that’ll get me in to speak to him.” Lark stuffs his hands in his pockets in a casual gesture, but he looks beyond pissed. There’s a darkness swirling in the depths of his steel gray irises behind those quirky purple glasses that I’ve never seen before.

“Dibs on plus one.” Apollo chimed in, and Caito huffs like he’s annoyed he didn’t chime in sooner.

“I’ll get what’s left of him. He won’t be making it to trial.” Caito says this as he nuzzles against my neck, and I brush my lips against my mark on the underside of his jawline. His arms tighten around me in response, and I try really hard not to rub my ass against the obvious bulge beneath his jeans clearly begging for attention.

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