Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10

DAMON

M y stomach is in knots as I hold Adira in my arms for the car ride to our safe house just inside of Minnesota. After two weeks of refusing to be in the same room with her, while she’s awake, I can give in to my need to touch her. Burying my nose in her throat, I breathe in her scent.

There’s a slightly metallic note to her usual snickerdoodle cookie scent, due to all the medication Morris has her on. The tea he gave her every night was laced with something that made her pass out after eating, throwing me into a rage.

I noticed Kane also making himself scarce, and Jed disappeared more and more often to walk the property and get some air.

It seems I’m not the only one uncomfortable with this plan, but they’re still insistent on delivering the omega to the auction house. They promise there’s a plan, but my stomach is churning, and I can tell my brother is discomforted by my mood.

As my alpha, my older brother is probably feeling the full range of my emotions. This is just a small sliver of what it’s like to be bonded to the woman in my arms.

“I fucking hate this,” Kane grunts, glaring out the window as Morris drives through the quiet streets. He’s taking the less traveled routes, so I don’t have to worry about a police officer pulling us over.

Jed wants me to lay her in the trunk and cover her with a blanket, but I can’t. I tried and it physically made me ill. It’s too cold, the floor is hard. Even though she’s unconscious, I want to drown in her scent, memorize everything about her, to hold onto, before I have to let her go.

“Same,” I grunt, my voice sounding as if I’ve been eating nails.

“We can’t change this, so it's time to get over it,” Jed says.

Forcing myself to stay where I am instead of wrapping my hands around his throat, I sit back and gaze at my omega’s face. She’s sleeping soundly, and I can barely feel her inside of me. Adira is a cool light, surrounded by cotton.

Morris did this on purpose. In many ways it’s easier to transport her this way. Having her awake means she’ll fight, bite, and scream. It’ll sour her scent, which could affect how buyers respond to her.

Blah, blah, I’ve heard it all.

As my oldest brother says, it changes nothing. While his context is different, I’m going to ignore him in favor of memorizing the way her long, dark lashes brush her skin. My little omega’s hair is tangled around her, due to long hours of sleeping. Adira is also impossibly pale from the last couple weeks, appearing even smaller than normal as well.

Maybe it’s because I want so badly to protect her from forces outside of our control, I just can’t stand to let her go.

“Getting over something like this is as likely as hell freezing over,” I respond, my thumb ghosting over Adira’s skin. I wrapped a blanket around her body to snuggle her in, and there are several more next to me if needed.

I know next to nothing about omegas, but I am craving any crumbs I can learn about Adira. The blanket I have around her is very soft, and she keeps rubbing her cheek with it in her sleep.

I wish I had clothes for her, or at least that she was in my oversized shirt instead of Jed’s.

“Maybe so, but you need to keep your head on straight,” Jed grunts. “It’s eight more hours of driving to the safe house, and then we are going to the auction house after I meet with Dad in a couple of days.”

“I didn’t know you needed to see him,” I grunt. They’ve kept me largely out of the loop, insisting that it’s better if Adira doesn’t have an idea either.

I think it’s bullshit. I don’t believe there’s a plan in place to help her but instead, useless platitudes to keep me docile. I feel more like Kane than the dead, empty person that I’ve been since I was eighteen.

I had just come into my designation, so in my father’s eyes, I needed to understand what it meant to be an alpha.

I think he would have shot me in the head and left me for dead if I’d presented as anything else.

“There’s a lot you don’t know,” Jed mutters under his breath. “Everything is a need to know only at this point. If you insist on sitting with the little omega, work on your attitude.”

Curbing my tongue, I glance at Kane who is flipping a knife in the air over and over again. There’s no reason for him to be trying to burn off the wild energy surrounding him. If I didn’t know any better, I would say he actually gives a shit about Adira.

Yet, as his eyes pull toward her over the next eight hours, my mind starts to change. Adira has a way of making even the hardest alpha soften.

I don’t know yet if that’s a good or bad thing.