Chapter 14

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Artemis

T here was no cell service whatsoever at the cliffside house. Part of me liked that. Fletcher had found a place so off the grid that I was confident Goode wouldn’t be able to find us. At least not for a while.

The other part of me didn’t like it at all. If the worst happened, we wouldn’t be able to call for help. My phone couldn’t connect to the internet, so I wouldn’t be able to keep my eyes peeled for news about Goode, or anything else. The only hint of a signal I got was when I walked all the way out to the edge of the cliff. Even then, it was only one bar.

More immediately, the lack of service meant I couldn’t research the nearest place to find fuel for the generator and food to keep us safe and fed for what I hoped would be a few weeks at least. Fletcher vaguely remembered a few places and knew of a nearby town, but in the end, we had to pile into my car, since it was an SUV and had more space for our shopping than the dinky car Fletcher had bought the day before, and just start driving.

“Swapping out cars was a brilliant idea,” I said as we pulled onto the main road, if any road that far out from the city could be called main, and headed west.

“I’ve had a lot of time to think about this and a little experience from the last time we ran,” Fletcher said as he stared out the windshield to the road ahead of us.

“It wasn’t just the car he swapped,” Gideon said from the back seat, leaning forward as much as his seatbelt would let him. “He has half a dozen license plates, too.”

That was a good idea, which I let Fletcher know through the bond. Maybe I should have swapped my own license plate for one of the spares before we headed out on this errand.

I felt a sense of reassurance from Fletcher, like I’d spoken my thoughts aloud and he was telling me it was okay. That made me smile.

It was so easy to communicate through the bond. I’d never given bonds much thought before. I’d assumed that maybe one day I’d find an omega to settle down with, but I was in my mid-thirties now, and that possibility had been getting less likely. Not every couple bonded either. Gideon had been right when he’d said bonding was a sign that an alpha and omega were soulmates.

I definitely felt like Fletcher was my soulmate. But I was falling fast and hard for Gideon, too. Maybe it was because the two of them were definitely a package deal. I had no idea how it would work, but I had hope.

We chatted easily about random things as we drove off in search of the right place to shop. At one point, we drove through a small town that had a giant supercenter, but it gave off the wrong vibe to me. Fletcher agreed, silently, so we drove on.

We were a good hour away from the cliff house before we stumbled across a massive truck stop and travel center. I could have shouted in relief. As we veered off the highway and pulled into the sparsely filled parking lot, I knew it was exactly the sort of place we needed.

“This looks promising,” Gideon reflected my thoughts, peering out the window once I cut the car’s engine. “That sign says they have showers.”

I grinned at Fletcher. I could hear the question in Gideon’s statement. The water at the cliff house had still been running a tiny bit dirty when we’d all gotten up this morning. It was passably clean now, but the well it was drawn from obviously needed attention. We’d all taken sponge baths with cold water before getting dressed.

“I suppose we could take the risk of showering here,” Fletcher said, calculation ringing through our bond. “Maybe one at a time, though.”

Yeah, I would definitely stand guard outside the shower room door while Gideon cleaned up. Goode wasn’t the only alpha Fletcher and I needed to worry about. Even as we got out and walked to the travel center, I spotted several rough-looking alphas eyeing Gideon up while licking their lips.

Some ogled Fletcher as well, but unlike Gideon, Fletcher was fully aware of it. He even gave one alpha the finger and glared at the man so hard he held up his hands and walked away.

I loved it. I loved Fletcher. He was so fierce. Nothing was ever going to stand in his way, with or without an alpha in his life. He didn’t need me to protect and defend him, at least not the way Gideon did, but I sure was happy I would get to stand by and watch him live and grow .

The travel center had everything we needed, which was a huge relief. The first thing we purchased was the fuel tank for the generator. That went straight into the back of the SUV before we headed back into the center for our showers.

There were enough shower rooms that we all could have taken a shower at the same time, but I insisted Fletcher go first so that he would be done before Gideon took a turn. I stood guard like the brute alpha that I really wasn’t for both of them so that by the time it was my turn, both of my omegas could wander off and look at everything the travel center had to offer.

As I waited for them, I pulled out my phone, grateful for a few minutes of internet. I texted Victor first, giving him the shortened version of what was going on and where we were. I knew Fletcher didn’t want people knowing about the cliff house, but I trusted Victor with my life, and I felt miles more comfortable with him knowing exactly where I would be until I could contact him again.

Once that was done and Victor and I had a short conversation through texts, I checked my work email. There was an email from Goode offering me the job that had been sent less than half an hour after I’d left the interview. He’d asked me to respond by the end of the day, but clearly I hadn’t.

I answered now, thanking him for the opportunity but letting him know I didn’t think we were a good fit. It was more than the bastard deserved, but the professional in me wouldn’t let me respond rudely after an interview.

I was one tap away from closing my phone and putting it away when a response came to that email. My heart rate kicked up, and I immediately tapped the email to open it.

It was an out-of-office message, which relieved me a little. I would have ignored it, but it was one of the strangest out-of-office messages I’d ever seen.

“ I will be out of the office for the next few days or weeks as I have received a divine calling to restore my family and make it right with God. Just like the story of the Prodigal Omega, my place as head of my household will be restored. As soon as it is, I will be back in the office to carry God’s message to all who Arise Financial touches and to bring us all toward the light. ”

The message was chilling, and I sent it straight to my trash folder. Once we got through this and my omegas were safe, I hoped to never have anything to do with Justice Goode or The People of God on Earth ever again.

My omegas. It defied logic, but that’s how I felt about them. The bond was an obvious connection between me and Fletcher, but once it was my turn in the showers, as I scrubbed the day’s dirt off my skin in the musty-smelling shower stall, a part of me actually worried about washing too hard and removing Gideon’s scent from my skin.

I shook my head and sighed before leaning back to rinse my hair. I barely knew what was going on. I needed to know more about bonds. I really needed to know more about love, too.

“So what kind of supplies do you think we’ll need to get us through for a while?” Fletcher asked once I was done with my shower and dressed again.

He’d already filled up the collapsable wagon he’d found for sale somewhere in the store with new clothing, like t-shirts, sweatpants, and underwear, for all of us. There were full-size toiletries in his wagon, too, so he was definitely thinking long-term.

I drew in a breath, rubbed my clean but still unshaven face, and looked around at the several small stores contained within the umbrella of the center. Gideon was off to one side, looking at books in the surprisingly large bookshop section of the center’s convenience store. As long as I knew where he was, I was only tense instead of all-out panicked about him.

“Assuming we can get that generator running as soon as we get home and fire up the fridge, we should get things like milk, eggs, meat.”

“Cheese,” Fletcher added. When I grinned at him, he shrugged and said, “What? I love cheese. Is that a crime?”

I laughed outright. “Nope. I love cheese, too. But not all of it has to be refrigerated constantly.”

“Non-refrigerated cheese it is, then,” Fletcher said, smiling.

It was the first easy smile I’d seen from him since meeting him, and it transformed him. Yes, Fletcher was strong and determined, but that smile gave me a hint of his vulnerable side. I wanted to get to know that side of him more. I wanted to learn what would make him laugh and smile like that more often. I wanted him to feel safe enough with me that he could breathe into his omega side, whether it was weak or not.

More than all of that, I wanted to kiss the living daylights out of him. His smile turned heated as our eyes met and the bond between us throbbed. Fletcher was as attracted to me as I was to him. I could already envision smoking-hot nights between the two of us, in heat or out, where we would be able to give each other everything and more.

But then there was Gideon. Every time I started to get all worked up about Fletcher, thoughts of Gideon slipped in. I knew he was watching us, though when I glanced over at the bookshop, he had his nose in a book. He could pretend all he wanted, but he couldn’t pretend away the giant question mark hanging over all of us.

“I’ll do some grocery shopping while you…check out some books,” Fletcher said with a sigh, thinking the same thing I was.

“Perfect,” I said. Then, because it felt right, I stepped closer to him and gave him a quick kiss on the lips.

Fletcher and I went our separate ways. I trusted him to both get what we would need and to protect himself if it came down to it. Gideon was the center of my focus now.

“I’ve been meaning to start reading again,” I said as I approached him, mostly to let him know I was coming, since he seemed really absorbed in his book. “Since we don’t have electricity or internet, books sound like a great form of entertainment.”

To my surprise, Gideon jumped and slammed the book he’d been reading closed. He whisked it behind his back so I couldn’t see the title.

“Yeah, more people need to read books,” he said in a rush. “It shouldn’t become a lost art form.”

“You’re only saying that because you’re an author,” I teased him, winking.

He relaxed a little and blushed.

God above, Gideon was beautiful when he blushed. He was something of a golden boy anyhow, with his blond-haired, blue-eyed look and aura of innocence. There was something about him that went beyond that now, though. It was like he was alive and thriving. Well, of course he was alive, but there was more to it than that. He glowed.

I wondered if it had anything to do with his heat just ending. He certainly still smelled delicious.

That had me wondering if other alphas could smell him. I glanced around, and yep, a couple guys scattered throughout the travel center were watching us. That was my cue to pull myself to my full height, cross my arms, and ward everyone off with a ferocious look.

Within minutes, every alpha in the travel center had gotten the message. That freed me up to do what I’d told Gideon I wanted to do and find some books to read. We were in what looked like maybe a self-help or possibly medical section, so after telling Gideon I was only going a few feet away, I walked over to the bestseller wall.

It took me thirty seconds of scanning titles before something pinged in my brain. Slowly, I turned back to Gideon. He had returned to looking at the shelves he’d quickly moved away from when I was watching him and was scanning the titles again with a worried look. The book he’d been reading before was still in his hand, and I saw that it had an adorable photo of a baby on the cover.

I froze. My inner alpha froze. Instinct rumbled deep within me, and I suddenly felt hyper-attuned to Gideon. Gid took another book from the shelf, another baby book, and started thumbing through that one.

It couldn’t be…could it?

Gideon glanced in my direction, and instead of putting him on the spot and making him nervous, I jerked back to the bestseller shelf, pretending I was interested in the titles. My heart was racing, though, and my alpha was…preening with pride.

Had I gotten Gideon pregnant during that one, massive wave where he’d mounted me? We’d had a breeding orgasm, that much was certain. Just thinking about it had my cock twitching. What had happened after that, though? Gideon had had more heat waves, hadn’t he?

That whole day was a blur, even though it had been less than forty-eight hours before. Fletcher had been in heat, too, and we’d started to bond. I remembered a lot of sex, a lot of knotting and orgasms, and…not a lot of details.

I might have gotten Gideon pregnant. But surely he would have said something. He definitely would have told Fletcher.

Unless he’d figured out Fletcher and I had bonded right away and was too scared to say something. Gideon and Fletcher had had to run from Goode only a few hours after their heats ended. He might not have had time to say anything. Maybe now he thought I would reject him and that Fletcher would reject him, too, because of the bond.

I couldn’t let things go unsaid for a second longer. If we were about to become a family, then we needed to face that together.

I put the book I’d been looking at back on the shelf and marched toward Gideon. Almost like he could feel me coming, Gideon turned toward me and sucked in a breath.

“Hey, Gid! Look at this!”

Fletcher’s excited call from the other end of the bookshop startled both of us. I hadn’t realized Fletcher had made his way back into the book section already.

Gideon rushed away from me, his face pink and his expression wary. I almost thought I’d frightened him again, but I got an entirely different sort of emotion from him.

“Look,” Fletcher said, beaming, as we walked into the young adult’s section.

I wasn’t sure what I was seeing at first, even though Gideon broke into a happy shout and covered the lower half of his face with his hands. There was a display of books about some sort of magical academy right in the center of that section, The Inner Light Academy , by Tristan Freehold.

Then it dawned on me .

“Are these yours?” I asked quietly, beaming with pride in my omega.

I mean, Gideon.

Gideon nodded slowly. His eyes danced as he glanced up at me. “It’s an entire display and everything.”

“It is,” I said, slipping an arm around his shoulders and pulling him close. I kissed the top of his head, and it felt like the most right and natural thing in the world.

“Are you a fan of Tristan Freehold?” the young woman who seemed to be in charge of the bookshop section of the store asked, approaching us with a smile.

“We’re his biggest fans,” I smiled in return.

Fletcher smirked at me.

“You know he’s gone missing, right?” the woman said.

All three of us tensed.

“What do you mean, missing?” Fletcher asked.

“He’s usually really active on social media, even though he doesn’t do appearances or book signings,” the woman rushed to spill everything, “but he hasn’t been online for almost five days now. He’s never been offline for more than three days at a time.”

“Maybe he had personal business to take care of?” I suggested as casually as I could.

“That’s what I thought at first,” the woman said, her eyes going large, like she was indulging in her favorite conspiracy theory. “I’m on Team Omega.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Those are the people who think Tristan Freehold is an omega,” Gideon answered in a breathless voice. He glanced up at me with a cautious look.

“A lot of people think he’s a beta,” the woman went on, “and a tiny handful think he’s an alpha, but I seriously doubt that. ”

“And you say he’s missing?” Fletcher asked seriously.

“Yeah,” the woman said. “Someone from the chat server I’m part of says they contacted his agent, and the agent doesn’t know where he is either.”

“Five days isn’t long enough for someone who people only see online to be considered missing,” I argued. “He’s probably just busy with life stuff.”

“Maybe,” the woman said. “But the entire fanbase is in a tizzy at the moment. There’s even some guy offering a ten thousand dollar cash prize to anyone who can give him information about where Tristan has gone.”

“Ten thousand dollars?” Gideon squeaked, backing slightly into me.

“Yep,” the woman said. “Because of that, everyone and their brother is out looking for Tristan now.”

I got a distinct feeling of “Oh, shit” from Fletcher. I felt exactly the same way. It was horribly brilliant, really. If Goode wasn’t able to find us on his own, he could mobilize a million or so people to be on the lookout for anything that would even hint about Gideon’s whereabouts.