23. Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Two

Owen

E ver since I left Cressidan City, ten years ago, I’ve made a point to live a life without regrets.

That’s what led me to Ezra, and it’s what eventually brought us to Platinum Valley.

For three years, we’ve been calling that house our home.

I was so fucking proud when we bought it.

With Ezra travelling so much for work we were used to renting apartments in different places, and I was used to selling security systems that took a single day to install.

The transitory lifestyle was fun for a while, but it was never meant to be forever.

The house was supposed to make everything better.

Shadow would have a real nest, and a real home.

Pete would have a permanent address.

Ezra and I would stop arguing about where we should live.

We all agreed on the place, and we picked the house together.

It felt like a fresh start.

Moving in was easy. Everyone seemed happy.

But Ezra still had to go to different places for work. He had to go where he was needed most, and that was never Platinum Valley.

The house wasn’t the perfect home we’d hoped for.

It didn’t solve all our problems.

It only created new ones.

And now, here I am, doing the one thing I said I would never do.

Sitting in gridlocked Cressidan City traffic, travelling to the fucking Omega academy that my parents would have forced me to choose a bride from if I hadn’t walked away from them and their narcissistic bullshit when I turned eighteen.

I’m waiting for regret to kick in, because I can’t believe I agreed to come out here.

It hasn’t happened yet, but I’ve still got about an hour’s worth of crawling along the packed roads until Goldcrest gets close enough for the woods surrounding the building and their gold painted front access gates to be seen.

If I’m honest, I’m afraid of what I’m going to find when I get there.

Ezra is smart and kind, but he can be oblivious to manipulative people.

I seriously doubt the academy has changed so much that it could be doing any real good for anyone involved or homed within its walls.

There’s got to be a catch.

It’s a publicity stunt, or some shit like that.

The Alpha Alliance started out as a group for Frank Palmer’s many bastard Alphas to meet each other, for fuck’s sake. Who the hell even knows what their original plan was? Considering they were all fathered by the most prolific serial killer in our nation’s history, I’m not buying that all they want to do is help people.

There’s got to be something else to all of this, and if I need to go to the academy just to drag my pack out of that fucking nightmare of a place, I’ll do it without thinking twice about it.

They’re my fated mates.

I would never regret a damn thing I’ve done to help any one of them.

I’d walk through hell for them.

This rescue mission is about as close as I’m going to get to doing that.

Goldcrest is a representation of my own personal hell, and it has my mates in its clutches.

So, I let my car crawl along in the traffic, getting an inch closer to that final destination with every minute that passes.