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I wince, taking a shaky breath.

“Worse. I—It’s a long fucking story, but I’ve pissed off an entire crime family, Dad. There was this fighter at The Warehouse and then this client who saw me, and it turns out they’re both undercover Northsiders and I’m basically a traitor to the crime family I was working with because when they found out the fighter was an undercover Northside cop, they were going to kill him and I just gave his pack the location to go rescuehim and now they’re going to want to kill me—” I bury my head in my hands. “Fuck, I’m just rambling.”

I hear Dad get up off the creaky couch and kneel down in front of me. His strong hands rest on my shoulders and god, I haven’t felt this small in years.

“Look at me, Rey-Rey,” he murmurs.

I look up into his fiery eyes. They’re normally the same stone-cold gray as mine. But now, they’re buzzing with anger.

”Fuck that crime family,” he growls. “They’re not getting their hands on anyone in our family. Including you. If we have to escape this God-forsaken city and go on the run, so fucking be it.”

I blink rapidly, trying to keep the tears I feel stinging at the backs of my eyes at bay.

“I—I haven’t finished,” I whisper. “That—that Northsider undercover cop has a pack and they’re—they’re offering us some sort of witness protection.”

“A Northside pack?” My mom asks, her brows drawn down in concern as she comes and sits beside me on the couch I’m on. She rests a hand on my knee that I can see is shaking a bit.

Fuck. My mom is normally a fearless, take-no-shit kind of woman, but I can see that this whole conversation is weighing heavy on her.

“Can—can we trust them? Considering you’re an unregistered omega?” My mom asks. “What’ll happen to you?”

My shoulders deflate and I stare down at the floor. That’s a question I don’t think they’ll like the answer to.

“They—they agreed to buy you guys a house in your name, and get Sav, Eli, and Daisy all into Northside schools. They even agreed to get you guys good protection in case people come after you?—”

“Reyna,” my dad interrupts.

Shit. He’s using my full name. I keep my eyes glued to the floor. I can’t look at him right now.

“That’s a lot about what you’ve arranged for us,” he growls. “What’s going to happen toyou.”

I wince. “They—they want to court me, whatever the fuck that means,” I mutter under my breath.

My dad stands to his full height, his dominance swirling so thick around us it’s hard to breathe. He turns, heading straight to the door.

“Babe, where’re you going?” Mom asks, standing suddenly from the couch, worry obvious in every line in her body.

“Outside. To talk to the alpha pack that thinks they have a claim to our daughter,” He hisses.

“What? How did you know it was them?” I scramble to my feet.

“I saw their stupid expensive as fuck van from the window,” he huffs. “Now, the both of you, stay inside where it’s safe.”

He slams the door shut behind him.

CHAPTER 13

Reyna

Idon’t listen to him. Neither does mom. We both scramble out of the house fast enough to see Killian and Theo stepping out from the van to face my father.

My dad is a couple of inches shorter than them, but he’s wider. Theo and Killian seem to have the lean, aesthetic muscles that come from the gym. My dad has the kind of bulk that comes from working a manual labor job.

“Dad! Stop!” I call out, tripping over a crack in the path through our lawn.

I don’t miss the way Theo and Killian’s gazes hone in on me and my panicked cry. Their shoulders tense at the same time, like if there weren’t an angry alpha that happened to be my dad between me and them, they’d come rushing over here.

“Stay back, Rey-Rey,” Dad calls back. “Let me deal with these fuckers.”