5. Hunter

I've been following my omega in my old pickup for the last fifteen minutes. She's huffing down the street, more than halfway to town, and madder than the hens my granddaddy used to keep in the yard.

I pull up beside her. "Dammit, you beautiful, infuriating woman. Get in the truck."

She ignores me. Again.

I bite my knuckle, tell my alpha to calm the fuck down. As far as instincts go, she's lucky I haven't picked up her pretty little ass like a barbarian. Oh, I want to. Only I know that's alpha bullshit. I'm not above it, but I'm trying diplomacy first.

"I need a minute to myself," she hollers, arms thrown out as she glares.

I seriously suck at diplomacy.

Walking again, she mutters to herself, but her words pointed at me. "You think I'm infuriating? You're infuriating."

I creep along beside her, watching as the minutes tick by on the dash.

"I'm trying to be an adult. Do the right thing! Even though you hurt my feelings… and… gah."She keeps walking, pulling the sweater tighter around herself.

I keep driving, hoping she'll eventually be all blustered out because my words only seem to fuel her fire. Maybe Elliot is onto something, and I should take up yoga.

After a while, her steps slow. Her cursing my name fizzles out, and she's quiet. She walks, and I drive.

Eventually, she stops and turns on me. "I asked for space. It doesn't count if you're following me and they're following me." She points at the security SUV following us, the guys inside probably laughing their asses off.

I idle with her, equally exasperated.She's all fire right now, but it's a thin match, and underneath all this, she's hurting.

I brace myself on the steering wheel. "Once you took me to church. You remember?"

She looks at me, hugging herself tight. "Yeah! Because you were acting like a jerk. Kinda like right now."

I smile at her, watching how little strips of fiery red hair keep dancing across her face, only for her to tug it back. Sadie is thinner now than she was a few months ago and covered in black from head to toe. But even with her heartache, her smaller curves, and her bare face, she is flawlessly beautiful.

And right now she is spitting mad.

"Yeah, I was. And you told me that we had to do this together. That in order for us to work, we had to trust each other. It's my turn to call you on your shit, princess. Get in."

She narrows her eyes into little slits. "My father tried to kill me. Then he was murdered. After it turns out he didn't only not love me but hated all omegas. So, forgive me if I need a freaking minute to myself?—"

I park and get out right there in the middle of the road, only a block from the town square, and go to her. "We're your family. The kind we want it to be, not the kind you're born into. And it doesn't have to be like this." I hold out my hand. "Let us take care of you."

She looks at my hand, then at me. "There are all these problems, and people are looking to me?—"

"I know, baby. And I'm not saying I don't support you trying to make it right. You know I do. We all do. But you need a break." She takes my hand, and I pull her to me, tucking her against my chest. "You need to take a step back from all these commitments and come home. Let us process all this with you. Rest. Don't shut out me or the pack. I miss you, and pretending everything is okay isn't helping you get better."

"I miss you too. And I want to come home for good so badly, but with everything, that feels impossible." She rubs her cheek against me, and there's a burst of her happy meadow scent.

"We'll make the impossible happen then." I kiss the top of her head and help her in the passenger side."Now, let's go for a ride. I've got something I want to show you."

I turn on the truck and head out of town toward the old county road.

My cousin Kailing,one of fifteen cousins I've got living around the area, is a barrel-chested beta who knows more town gossip than omegas at a potluck. He pulls out a container of worms and rings those up along with my crickets. Since I only managed to grab the fishing poles, tackle box, and an empty cooler from the garage before chasing after Sadie with a half-cocked plan, we had to make a detour to my cousin's bait shop before I can take her out to the river.

"Princess, grab a snack."

"There's too much to choose from. You pick one," she calls from the other side of the far aisle, bending down to look at the jaws of a gator on a shelf.

Sadie's eyes have widened since we pulled off the county road and into the dirt lot of Kailing's Bait Shop and Fine Home Furnishings. It's the unincorporated part of Knotty Pines, so the fine furnishings in here are mounted bass, but out back, Kailing does have beautiful hand-crafted pieces. If they happen to be life-size gators carved from wood, well, there's no accounting for taste.

"You got an empty one of those?" I point at the Styrofoam container of worms.

"Yeah. You need an extra?"

I nod and return to the snacks, grabbing a few I think she might like. "And add a bag of ice."

Kailing rings me up, shooting the shit about fishing hot spots, the family gathering that's been planned for my aunt's birthday, and general Knotty Pines news until Sadie returns from looking around. I get us out the door, but not until he's talked both our ears off.

"You planning to tell me where we're headed?" Sadie asks. She watches me fiddle in the truck bed until I've got our gear sorted.

"I'm giving you space."

"Yeah, looks like it," she says with a soft laugh.

She can laugh, but I'm gonna give her space. I'm giving her a whole wide-open river.

The remainder of the short drive out to the boat launch and fishing pier is quiet. With the windows rolled down, the evening air creates a humming chorus, matched only by the emerging sound of the night insects. The lot is empty when we pull in, except for the security team that follows us.

"Have you ever been fishing, princess?"

She turns from where she was looking at the water. "What do you think?" Her brow shoots up.

"If you have, it was probably off the back of a yacht," I tease her.

She gives me a sad smile. "Nope." She looks back out the truck window. "I never traveled when my parents went on vacations. They left me at home with tutors and the housekeeper."

The moon is already out, and the sky is dusted with stars. The little lights from the launch parking lot illuminate her face clearly. But tidbits like that remind me I must look beneath the surface to truly see her.

I take a moment to get my words right. I have a lot of things I could say, several I probably shouldn't, but maybe that's not what she needs to hear. "I'm sorry they didn't see you, baby. But they missed out."

She nods, a sharp dip of her head in acknowledgment, but doesn't turn around.

"You wanna learn to fish or sit with me on the dock? Or if you hate it out here, I can take you home."

"Can you even fish at night? I thought you could only fish in the daytime."

I shake my head, my lips curling up. "Sweet summer child, yes, night fishing is a thing. Do you want to try?"

"It's beautiful out here. I don't know about fishing, but can I sit and watch?"

"Sounds good to me." Maybe I didn't go about it right. But I do know she needs space and time to grieve.I unbuckle my seat belt and scoot closer to her, tugging on her chin until she looks at me. "We don't have to say one word out here. This can be whatever you need. I wanted to bring you out here, keep you company while you have a minute to breathe. I'll even tell security to head back to town. We're safe out here."

She worries at that bottom lip of hers. "You hurt my feelings before. It felt like an ambush, and I thought maybe you were done with all this mess I'd been causing."

"Sweet girl, I'm never going to be done with you. I did ambush you, and for that I'm sorry. I'm not trying to make you feel bad for needing to help. I'm only saying that this can't go on. You need your home, your pack, and time to process."

Her lip trembles, but she shakes it off. "I know. I'm sorry too."

"You got nothing to be sorry about."

"Even though I was mad, I appreciate you coming after me and bringing me here. I'll think about what you said."

I stroke her cheek and trace the freckles near her ear. "All I'm saying is that you got people now who love you, and we want you to let us in."

She takes a shaky breath and leans in. I brush my lips against hers, soft and teasing, until she opens for me on a sigh. My fingers thread into her silky hair, pulling her closer. It's a kiss of apology, of tenderness for my girl who's battling so much. She softens against me, and I use the connection to reassure her that she is safe and loved.

I pull away from the kiss before I get carried away, and I wrap her in a hug. "Let's go teach a city girl how to bait a hook."

She shivers in my arms and climbs from the truck. "Yeah, that's never happening," she calls over her shoulder.

"We'll see about that. I'll make a country girl outta you yet."

"You can try."

An hour later, we've got a nice setup at the end of the dock. Sadie is laid out on the blanket I keep in the back of the truck, singing to a song that plays from my phone. I hum along, letting the river and the evening settle around us as I jig my line.

When the next song comes on, Sadie gets up. "I wanna try."

"Then come on, princess."

I hand her the rod, going over the setup as I reel in the line. We're probably not going to catch shit—we need to be out on the river—but that's not why we're here. My arms circle her from behind. I move her about, having her mirror my positions to teach her how to cast and tug the line to mimic bait in the water. We do it several times, casting and reeling it in, until I think she's got it down.

When she tries on her own the first time, she snags a patch of brush not far from the dock. She giggles softly while she watches me fight the bush, cheering for me when I finally snap it off. I get her fixed up, and before too long, she's got the hang of it enough that I can put in my own line.

"Will you tell me about what I've been missing at home? How's the shop? Your cousin said they're getting together soon for your aunt's sixtieth birthday. Can we go?"

"Sure, if you want. I know they'd love to see you again." Sadie's been to two Jackson family get-togethers with the pack and charmed everyone both times.

"I'd like that. Now tell me all the Jackson news."

I oblige her, telling her how Chad, a long-time mechanic at the shop, found a bird's nest in one of our storage tire piles. The gruff alpha has been in a fit, caring for it like his firstborn, and the crew has been giving him hell about it all week.

That earns me a smile, so I keep going. She relaxes a little more with each stupid story I tell until she laughs along with me. I chatter on until I run out of shop news. Next, I tell her about our mini-pack trip to the grocery store the day before.

She listens, amused by Graham's antics and my over-the-top solution, but then she bursts into tears.

There it is.

I set down my pole and take hers. Next, I pick up my girl and bring her back to the blanket, sitting with her in my lap. She turns into my chest and sobs, big heaving things that shake her whole body.

"Let it out. That's it." I hold her, my purr rumbling between us. I'm not impatient, not afraid of her tears. She can do this all night. Maybe she needs to. I only want to hold her through it, make sure she's not alone.

She cries into my chest, "I hate it there, Hunter. I want my nest and my men. But I'm afraid if I stop for one minute, I'll come apart at the seams, and it will take me a long time to become whole again."

I run my palm up and down her back, taking that in. "Baby, you have to let the break come. You need to feel whatever you gotta feel. You're only delaying the inevitable. But if you ask me, this isn't your debt to pay."

She pulls back to look at me, her face swollen and her cheeks wet. "Isn't it?"

"No. It isn't," I promise her. "Whatever you think you owe, you've paid already. Besides, you've got as many reasons as anyone else to be pissed at your father. Figure out how to tie off loose ends, stay aware, and check in sometimes; otherwise, live your life. You aren't responsible for his."

"Hunter—"

"Sadie—" Her eyes water again, and this time, it breaks my heart. "Oh, baby, I'm so sorry. I know it hurts."

Those tears spill, and I crush her back against me, rock her on that dock until all the tears have dried up.

For now.

And then I take my omega home to our pack, where she belongs.