Chapter 28 Say something

Haven has been bordering on catatonic for an hour. Maybe longer. We have no clue how long she spent in the yard, in the rain. No clue what sent her into this state. She won’t talk to us, won’t open her eyes. It’s too similar to how she was after we brought her back from her father’s, when he commanded her to not speak to us.

If I missed her voice then, this is a thousand times worse. At least then she could still communicate with us through writing. But this is… nothing. She’s giving us nothing, and I can’t bury the fear that her father did something to her. Took her from us so completely mentally, while leaving her here with us physically.

We only know she’s aware of us because of that one whine that pulled from her chest and made all of us nearly feral. We’ve watched the security feed multiple times, see that she goes to the basement with a tray of snacks. She sits on the couch, flicks on the TV, and then eventually reaches for her laptop. Whatever she saw on the screen… that’s what set her off.

In the security feed we can’t see what it was, can’t make it out on the screen. The angle is bad, but she clicks around, her face turning more and more devastated as she does.

And then twenty minutes later, she stumbles up the stairs and out the door to the yard. Where she just… lays down and stays.

Jude broke into her computer, but we didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Nothing that would spark this much of a negative reaction.

I shift her little body on my lap, cradling her closer. She’s warm now, her skin back to its normal rosy hue, flushed from the heat of the sauna. But she still hasn’t said a fucking word to us. My purr has been a constant rumble in my chest, trying like hell to soothe her, to bring her back to us. It’s the same for my packmates. If they’re near her, they’re purring.

“Baby girl,” I murmur into her still damp hair. “Please, say something. Anything. Tell us what happened so we can fix it.”

She shifts against me. I feel her lips part against my skin, feel her breath puff over my neck. “Can’t fix it if you broke it,” she whispers. My body tenses at her words. The first ones she’s uttered in hours. But her next words break my heart. “What’s wrong with me, Creed?”

I get the impression that she means more than just at this moment. But I don’t know what she’s talking about. “Nothing, baby girl.” I press my lips into her hair. “You’re perfect.”

A humorless laugh falls from her lips, harsh and bordering on tears. “Sure I am.”

I slide my hand up to cup the back of her head, tangling my fingers in the damp strands and pulling her head back to look at her. Her stormy grey eyes are red rimmed and bloodshot, the lids swollen, but they’re open and they’re looking at me. “What happened, Haven?”

She shakes her head. “Nothing.”

“Baby, something happened. I need you to tell me. Please.”

She blows out her breath and shakes her head, eyes falling to my shirt rather than meeting my eyes. “It’s stupid. I shouldn’t have let it bother me so much.”

My thumb nudges her chin, tilting her face back up to mine so I can kiss her lips. First the top one, then the bottom. I don’t miss that she tenses slightly at the contact, but then she relaxes into me. “Nothing you do is stupid, Haven. If something bothers you, we need to know about it.”

Her little hand sweeps over my shirt, fussing over the damp fabric. She’s dressed in soft, dry clothes, but I didn’t bother to change. How could I worry about myself when my omega was so clearly distressed? “My dad emailed.” I tense at her soft voice, at the tremble in it. “He said some awful things to me… and I know I shouldn’t let it get to me, but I did.”

“What did he say?” I try to keep my voice steady and calm, while inside I’m a raging inferno and my alpha is demanding that I hunt down her asshole of a father and end him for hurting her.

She shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Haven, baby girl, it matters if you reacted to it like this.”

“It was the same bullshit he’s been spouting for years, just… more pointed.” She’s not looking at me again. Her brow furrowed as she stares at the wall.

“More pointed how?”

“That a pack like you would never actually want me. That whatever this is, it isn’t going to last and then I’ll just be soiled, used goods. He said-” She bites her lower lip when it trembles and cuts off, blinking against a fresh wave of tears. “He said it’s all a game to you and once you’re done with me, I won’t ever be able to be placed with a pack, let alone a beta or a lone alpha. That my chances were slim before and now they’re nonexistent.”

“Utter bullshit,” I growl at her, even though… even though what he said hits way too close to home. It’s what we were aiming for at the beginning of this. “Haven, you’re perfect. Used goods or not, any pack would be lucky to have you for any amount of time.” It just probably won’t be us. Not once she realizes we’ve been out to destroy her father from the beginning. That we used her.

A flicker of sadness and hurt passes over her face and I have to take a deep breath to keep from storming to the other side of town and shooting Fredrick Bell in the head. Hale has a plan, one that will end with his death eventually, but in the meantime, he’s going to hurt emotionally for what he’s done to his daughter.

Haven looks up at me with those big watery gray eyes of hers, her hand sliding up my chest to cup my cheek. “Is this real, Creed?” She whispers. “Do you want to keep me?”

I swallow down the words that want to bubble up my throat, the ones that claim she’s mine and will always be fucking mine. I don’t deserve to claim her, don’t deserve to keep her. Not after the shit we’ve pulled, the things we’ve made her do. She won’t want us when she finds out.

I pull her closer, press my lips to her forehead. “We want you for now, baby girl. Isn’t that enough?”

Her chest shudders, and a choked sound pulls from her. Then she’s pushing me back, scrambling off my lap. I try to hold on to her, but she’s fast, backing away from me, feet between us before I’m even standing. “Haven, baby girl.”

She smiles sweetly, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “I’m gonna go take a shower. I still feel cold.”

I frown, watching her move away from me. There’s something else, something she’s not telling us, something important. My alpha tells me to bark at her, to demand that she tell me what’s really going on, but I made a promise to never use my bark on her. And I refuse to break that promise.

So instead a trail after her as she leaves the sauna, the gym.

She disappears upstairs, heading to her room. The guest room. We haven’t shown her the nest yet. I want to. Fuck, do I want to, but I’m not sure she’s ready for that. I’m not sure we’re ready for that yet. We shouldn’t give her that kind of hope until she knows everything.

We’d planned to do it soon, to give her our truth, the real reason we approached her, while also reassuring her that while it started out as a way to hurt her father, now we care only about her. About her happiness and safety.

If she can overlook the truth of who we are, can forgive us, then we can start building a life with her, move her into the nest, talk about bonding her.

But this, coming home and finding her pale and shivering in the yard because of something her father said to her? The man who has abused her her entire life?

We’re going to have to wait now. She’s not emotionally stable enough to handle knowing what we did. Right now she’ll undoubtedly react first, scream and rage and cry. Leave us. Or worse, she could go back to not speaking, staring sightlessly ahead, ignoring our pleas to just say anything.

An hour of that was bad. I’m not sure I could take the same from her for longer. Days, weeks, months.

I shake my head and push to my feet, going in search of my pack members. We need to talk about what happened, come up with ways to protect Haven from this bullshit in the future. My alpha is clawing at me, enraged that we let her get hurt, that we weren’t there to keep her from hurting herself. From giving up.

It’s a wonder that she hasn’t gotten sick or caught a fever. By the time she left me to go upstairs, she her temperature felt normal. And she was sniffling yes, her nose stuffed, but that was likely from the tears she cried.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt to have a doctor come and check her out.

As I move through the house, I hear the shower running upstairs, letting me know Haven is where she said she’d be. Jude is in the basement, I think, likely trying to find a scrap of information about what set Haven off. I have no clue where Tic is, probably anxiety cleaning his bedroom or something. It’s the way he handles stress, and finding Haven like that was fucking stressful.

I pause in the living room. A waft of smoke floats by the double doors that lead to the back porch. I follow it to find Hale, slumped in a chair, staring at the spot where Jude found Haven, so still and quiet and pale. For a moment, I thought she was dead.

I slouch into the chair next to him, reaching for the pack of cigarettes on the table between us. He doesn’t glance at me, doesn’t look away from the patch of grass, like he can still see her there.

“That was… That was fucked up,” he mutters after a moment. “What if we didn’t come home when we did? What if we stayed at the club like Bell wanted us to? She could have been out there all fucking night, Creed.” He sounds wrecked by that idea. “She could have frozen to death. Caught hypothermia. Pneumonia.”

I nod. “I know. But we did come home, and she’s warm and… she talked to me. Moved. Carried herself upstairs to take a shower.”

“Good. That’s good.” He blows out a relieved breath before swiping his hand over his face, taking an extra moment at his eyes. My prime hasn’t cried since Janie. Hasn’t let himself care enough about anything to cry over it.

He glances over at me. “You saw it.”

My brows jump. “Saw what?”

“How special she is, how fucking perfect. You saw what she would become to us and I didn’t. I couldn’t.”

“Refused, more like.”

“I’m sorry, Creed. I should have listened to you. I was just so focused on protecting my pack. Protecting Janie, even if it’s too late. I need to do right by her.”

“We will,” I reassure her. “We will. But you know Janie would want us to be happy, too.”

He swallows thickly and nods, his gaze going back to the spot where Haven collapsed, unable to keep his attention away. “I called in Dr. Hynes. She’ll be here soon to check Haven over, make sure everything is actually okay with her. That she didn’t make herself sick.”

“Good. Thanks, brother. We’ll all rest better knowing she’s healthy.”

We’re quiet for a while, both staring at the yard. “What’d she say?” Hale asks, taking a drag of his cig.

I shake my head. “Said her dad sent her an email, spouted more of his poison about how she’s a shit omega. No one wants her. How we’re going to ruin her.” The irony isn’t lost on me. If Haven isn’t the typical omega, it’s because he molded her not to be. Shaped her into a beta, suppressed her instincts, turned her into an automaton.

He blows out a breath of smoke and shakes his head, offering me a drag. “We need to kill that fucker.”

I tip my head back and blow out a ring. “Its gonna happen.”

The door opens again, and Tic comes out, his eyes wide. “Where is she?” I straighten as he barrels toward me, fisting my shirt, tugging me out of my chair and into him. “Where the fuck is she?”

I shove him back. No fucking clue why he’s coming after me like this. Hale shifts, moving closer, but he doesn’t intervene. “She’s taking a fucking shower, dude. Take a breath.”

Tic gives a sharp jerk of his head. “She’s not in her room. She’s not in her shower. Where is she?”

Hale grips Tic’s shoulder just as Jude comes barreling out of the house, too. “Jesus. What the fuck is happening?” I snarl, my alpha on edge from their pheromones, anxiety ratcheting higher. “What happened?”

“She saw the fucking spreadsheet!” Jude shouts, hands gripping his hair. Then repeats quieter, “she saw the spreadsheet and the videos, the pictures, the points.”

All the blood drains from my head and I sway on my feet. “No. No, she didn’t because you wouldn’t have been stupid enough to leave your computer unlocked, right, Jude? You wouldn’t have fucking left it open for her to see, right?”

He shakes his head. “I thought I did. I thought I locked it. But I just checked, and it was open, and the pictures, the videos… She saw them. It wasn’t her computer she picked up.. it was mine. They look the fucking same. She didn’t know.”

“Fuck!” Hale shouts, his rage a boiling, bubbling thing, poisoning our pack bond. “You had one fucking job, Jude. Make sure she didn’t see that shit.”

“I told you to delete it,” Tic says, folding his arms over his chest. “I told you to get rid of it.”

The bond between us strains under the weight of the accusations being flung around. I should warn them it’s close to snapping. But at this point, I don’t fucking care. I only care about Haven.

“It never should have existed,” I say quietly. My rage is ice cold. The opposite of Hale’s. The argument around me stutters out in the face of it. They know what this means. “I told you as soon as we met her that it was a bad fucking idea, that I didn’t want any part of it. But you assholes pushed and pushed, saying it was the only way to get revenge. You know, it was bullshit. We have plenty of other pokers in the fire to take down Bell. But you just couldn’t fucking let it go.”

The three of them stare at me with various looks of regret and pain on their faces. Fuck them . Haven is the one we need to worry about.

It’s the middle of the night. She’s an omega alone. Her father is hunting her. Hell, any alpha who comes across her could bark her into submission. Take what they want from her. Anything could be happening to her.

“How long ago did she leave?” I ask Jude.

He shakes his head. “I didn’t check. I didn’t check the cameras. I thought she was still here. I just… I needed to find her. T-to tell her-”

“Check the security feed,” Hale demands, cutting him off. “Find out when she left, and what direction she went in. Tic, call Florence. See if she’s heard from her. Creed and I will hit the streets, see if we can find her.”

I’m already moving toward the door, hooking my coat from where I tossed it when we realized we couldn’t find our girl. Those moments were torturous, running through the house, heart thundering, panic trying to take over.

Bell had asked us to stay at the club, had tried to wheedle us into fucking some poor omega… with him. Sick fuck. We met him to convince him we don’t have Haven with us, that when she left his house she went far, far away from here. The other side of the country.

The more time he spends looking for her, the less he’ll pay attention to other aspects of his life. But… when we’d come back to a silent house, most of the lights turned off, and no fucking Haven, I’d feared his attempts to get us to stay longer had meant he sent someone into our pack house to take her back.

After we’d promised her he’d never get his hands on her again, the thought was too much, the panic very real. But this is even fucking worse.

Because now we’re the villains just like her father. We’re the ones who used her, and she knows it. She won’t come to us willingly. Will probably run if she spots us. She’ll do everything she can to avoid us.

Hale’s on my heels as we head to the garage. Without talking, we know we’ll take different cars, cover more ground that way. Tic and Jude will do the same. “Why didn’t she say anything?” Hale mutters, snatching his keys off the hook.

I pin him with a glare. “She realized we thought of her as a tool, as something to be used. Just like her father.”

His face pales. “She thought we’d bark at her to keep her compliant.”

“Got it in fucking one.”

“We promised her we wouldn’t do that, wouldn’t use our barks to harm her.”

I yank open my car door. “Why would she trust anything we said to her, Hale?” Not waiting for an answer—it’s a rhetorical question after all, and I don’t want to sit around and have a lengthy chat—I climb into my car and back out of the garage.

Tension radiates through my body. Rage is heavy in my chest. I’ve never hated my pack mates before. They’ve annoyed me, enraged me, made me want to rip my goddamn hair out with some of their antics, but there was always the underlying feeling of love. This… This makes me hate them, makes me want to cut ties with them. Find Haven and bundle her up, away from all of this, from all of them.

They can stay and handle Frederick Bell. They can get revenge for Janie and what her loss did to us. I’ll keep Haven safe, even if it means keeping her from my pack.