6. Blaine

Chapter 6

Blaine

M y doctor likes to remind me that my physical pain is in my head. A product of trauma leaving an indelible mark on my mind, not just my body.

The grafts took. My scars have healed as well as they ever will. I'm healed. The only pain I feel is psychological. The type a therapist could delve into and help me overcome, if I let them. And that's the thing. I would have to let them.

I never will, so the pain that is as real to me as the burns covering the right side of my body will linger forever.

But coming face to face to my scent match and watching her take one look at me and turn around to walk away? That's a new kind of anguish that completely blindsides me.

Vaughn had shot off a quick text on his way home.

Vaughn

OMW with a pretty guest.

That's all he'd said.

A pretty guest.

Instead, he brings home mine and Garrison's scent match.

Her back is stiff, radiating tension as she hobbles away. Leaving . And I'm too busy yanking my turtleneck up to cover the burn on my cheek to stop her.

"Hey! You're safe here." Vaughn reaches out to stop her as Garrison calls out a warning to give her space.

She nearly falls, scrambling away from Vaughn. Back against the wall just inside the kitchen, she glares at Vaughn. "Don't touch me."

He backs up, palms up in the universal sign of peace. "No touching. I got it."

She stares at him a beat longer, chin raised, large brown eyes narrowed with suspicion. "I'm leaving. I have no interest in alphas, scent matches, or staying here a minute longer."

"Of course," Garrison says calmly. "We have no interest in scent matches either."

A muscle pulls in my neck as I jerk my head toward Garrison. " What !"

He continues in the same calm tone as if I haven't spoken. "You've had a shock. We've also had a shock. There's no reason we can't just set the whole idea of scent matches aside and pretend it's not there."

I forget about hiding my burn before she notices how ugly it is. "What are you talking about?"

Garrison motions to the long dark wood dining table that takes up the left side of our kitchen, where we eat all our meals. "Perhaps we could sit and discuss how we can help you."

This is our scent match. The beautiful woman with lush curves, long dark hair, rosebud lips, and a sweet peach scent so alluring and so perfect that she stunned him as much as she did me. And he's talking to her like she's a client ?

But our scent match, at least for the present, is no longer hobbling out of the kitchen. Her expression is as disbelieving as mine must be.

"I'm Garrison," he continues when she doesn't respond. He nods at me. "And that's Blaine. Can I have a name?"

In the two drawn out seconds before she speaks, she's thinking of giving him a fake name. We've been in the security business for years. Long enough to have dealt with people who, for various reasons, don't trust us when we suddenly intrude into their lives.

"Resa," she eventually says.

Maybe if Garrison hadn't blindsided her with his talk of scent matches being an inconsequential thing you set aside like an umbrella you no longer need, she'd have given us a fake name. But her words carry a ring of truth.

The name, like her sudden appearance, is another shock to the system.

We've all spent the last two weeks in a frustrating search for Resa, Everleigh's pregnant omega friend. Yet here she is, the pretty guest Vaughn walked in the front door like he just bumped into her on the street and invited her home for dinner.

Resa. And she is our scent match.

A slight flutter of Garrison's dark lashes is the only indication he gives that he's as shocked as I am by the identity of our pretty guest.

I cross over to the head of the dining table, my usual seat, and sit down before I fall down.

" Resa ?" Garrison repeats.

As she rests more of her weight on the wall, I notice the bloody footsteps in the white entryway floor. She's hurt, barefoot, and bleeding.

"Yeah," she says warily.

Between the dark bruise forming on her left shoulder, the scratches on her face, torn dress sleeve, and a wariness she's doing nothing to hide, Resa is giving all the hallmarks of being a victim of abuse.

Those signs mean we give her space and we get Sadie on the phone as soon as possible to get her any medical attention she needs.

Vaughn has retreated to the other side of the doorway. He crosses his arms, rests his shoulder on the wall and looks down, though he has his head angled her way.

I breathe through my mouth. The scent of her is filling the room, making it hard to focus. She smells like heaven and I want to see if she smells even more incredible up close, but I plant my feet and order myself not to move.

"Someone asked us to find you," Garrison says with his back to the kitchen island. He has his hands stuffed in his pockets.

It's not how he usually stands. If someone has their hands in their pocket, they can't grab you.

The reddish-purple bruise blooming on Resa's shoulder looks like it came from a punch, and there are fainter, older bruises on her throat. If I could rip apart whoever put those bruises on her with my bare hands, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

"An alpha?" She angles her body to the open doorway, poised to run.

Garrison shakes his head. "No. You have a friend who was worried about you. She asks about you often."

" She ?" Resa's brow furrows. "I don't have?—"

"Everleigh," Garrison softly interrupts. "She said she saw you in a cell where the Asylum held her. When she and Pack Ashe went to free you, you were gone."

Relief, surprise, excitement swim across beautiful, large brown eyes. All fade as suspicion takes its place. "I don't believe you."

Garrison pulls his hands from his pockets. Her gaze bounces from him to the open doorway as Garrison walks over to join me at the dining table, taking the seat furthest from her.

The second he pulls his chair under the table, her tension levels visibly drop.

"That's your prerogative. But we can help you," Garrison says.

She snorts. "Help me. Right."

Garrison nods. "We are not?—"

" All alphas are the same." Her voice is cold and hard as she glares at him. "Scent matches mean nothing to me. You mean nothing to me. I have a life and a fiancé I intend to get back to. You can keep your help. I don't want it."

Air catches in my throat.

A fiancé?

I'm not sure I ever want her to see the worst of the scars I'm hiding under this turtleneck. But the most intense and burning jealousy sweeps me from head to toe. It's like I'm back in the car all over again.

She is ours .

Garrison nods as if we're discussing the weather, not the fact our scent mate is telling us she wants to leave us for another man. "We can help return you to that life. Perhaps once we've seen to your bloodied feet?"

Return her to her life? Did he miss the fact that she's our scent match?

I hadn't realized Garrison had even noticed her hobbling or the bloody footprints leading into the kitchen doorway.

Resa stares at him, then glances at me. I tilt my head to the side so my right cheek is facing away from her.

"I'm okay," she says, sounding a bit less hostile than before.

"I'd rather be sure of that. We can arrange for you to see one of the doctors we work with and ensure both you and the baby are okay?" Garrison offers.

Our scent match is pregnant, and I'm still so shocked she's even here that I've barely begun to process how I feel about it. A long time ago, I liked the idea of having kids. Now I'm not sure that's even an option. The doctors said it was still possible, but what woman would want to sleep with a man half covered in burns?

Her fingers flutter up to her gently rounded belly. She's not far along, since Everleigh said Resa was between two to four months pregnant. "Why would you work with a doctor?"

"Like I said, we work in security." Vaughn lifts his gaze from the floor to look at her, sweeping his shoulder-length blond hair back when it falls in his face. "That means we have someone who can help."

Her gaze bounces between the hand he uses to brush his hair back and his face. "I thought private security. You have a gun."

The only way she would know that is if Vaughn had to use it.

"Trouble?" Garrison asks Vaughn.

He doesn't say what he must be thinking: is there something we have to prepare for?

Vaughn shakes his head. "Not anymore."

So he left a body or bodies behind. Vaughn seems relaxed about it, but he is about most things. That doesn't mean whatever mess he left doesn't have a high probability of coming back to bite us on our ass.

"We can have a female doctor come and see you?" Garrison suggests.

Resa doesn't respond.

"Or Vaughn can show you up to one of our spare rooms where you can rest?" Garrison says in the same patient tone.

Vaughn suddenly straightens, dipping his right hand in his back pocket, and comes up with a knife. Resa inches back, eyeing it warily as he flips it and offers it to her, hilt first. "Here."

She stares at him like he's lost his mind.

His grin is boyish. "No need to look at me like that. It took long enough to break Garrison out of the habit. Take it."

She makes no move to reach for it. "Why?"

"It's my emergency knife, and it's something everyone could do with," Vaughn says.

Garrison's eyebrow rises, though he doesn't say a word.

We've had years to get used to Vaughn's quirks. Resa, who must have had a tough few days, weeks, or months, is getting a rapid dose all at once. I almost feel sorry for her.

"I'm not sure I understand," she says slowly, eyes flicking to the outstretched knife Vaughn is offering her.

"Sure you do. One emergency knife free for the taking." Vaughn swivels his head to Garrison. "Is the big first aid kit still in the second spare room or did we still need to re-fill it after that last job?"

People need different things in order to feel safe.

Most people lock the front door or have an alarm system they turn on at night. Vaughn needs to have something to protect himself close at hand. Sometimes that thing takes the form of a gun or his throwing stars. Mostly, it's a knife.

I guess not everyone can understand that, especially coming from a blond, easygoing guy more often smiling than not. But Vaughn has his reasons, and we all understand them. It looks like he's worked out that Resa might need something to feel safe in a place where she feels threatened.

Vaughn looks at Garrison as I subtly observe Resa.

I'm almost positive she won't take the knife.

Then she snatches it from him and backs up. Fast . Vaughn never looks away from Garrison as he waits for a response to his question.

"Lex refilled the kit. It's in the closet," Garrison says.

Vaughn looks at Resa. "If you don't like the idea of seeing a doctor, I can check out your feet in a spare room upstairs. I can carry you if you want." He points at his throat. "The jugular is there if you want to put someone down and have them stay down."

Her hand tightens around the knife hilt, but fear is slowly giving way to surprise.

Vaughn is like that. Looks like a Californian surfer because he was one. The sort of person who can talk to anyone and get anyone to talk to him.

"I can walk," she eventually says, lines of strain around her mouth.

Vaughn nods. "Sure you can, but we have some pretty nice carpet up there."

As if anyone in this house gives a shit about carpet.

Garrison's face remains expressionless at Vaughn's little white lie. He's silent, though, letting Vaughn take the lead. From the moment Resa took one step into this kitchen, she's viewed us as more of a threat than Vaughn. There's no way she'd have agreed to come here at all if she hadn't trusted Vaughn a little.

"I'm walking." She hobbles out of the room, leaning heavily on the doorframe as she leaves. "You can send me the bill for cleaning the carpet."

I watch her go and I don't know what I want to do more, scoop her up and carry her up the stairs myself, or immediately go out and kill whoever hurt her.

Vaughn follows her out. "I might've been lying about the carpet. You know, to save you from the stairs."

"Send me the bill anyway," I hear her say tightly. "Unless there is no carpet."

I wait until I no longer hear his steps on the stairs. Only then do I turn to Garrison. "Why did you say you didn't want her?"

Resa is our mate. I might not want her to look closely at my scars, but she's ours . I'm not sure any part of me is happy at the thought of letting her return to a fiancé.

"I lied," he says simply. "She doesn't want us, but that doesn't mean I don't want her."

He stands and pulls his cell phone from his pocket.

"Who are you calling?"

He pauses mid-dial. "Sadie. It's late, but we might need her to stop by."

"And Resa?"

He gives me a look loaded with determination. "What do you think? I intend to convince her she wants us. I'm sure as hell not about to let our scent match go without a fight."