Page 15 of Cost of Courting (When it Raines Omegaverse #6)

Chapter thirteen

Edric

I wash my hands meticulously and watch the older beta carefully pack up all her supplies. Kingston and Mael have gone in separate directions.

Mael’s sitting with her, just in case, while Kingston has gone to find either Bailey or this mysterious soon-to-be-dead Hammer person.

Instead, I wait until Dot goes outside with two beers, follow, and sit beside her. She hands me one and grunts.

“You’re going to ask, and I’m going to tell you because this has gone on far too long.”

I don’t say a word.

“When you left, you left that poor omega bereft. She was aimless and so very angry. Her daddy didn’t get easier.

He lost a lot of free labor and fear when you lot left.

Police were called plenty of times to the house before she took care of it for good.

I’m not saying she killed him, but he disappeared one day and didn’t come back.

But you left an enormous hole in this community, and when the Crimson Cobras became aware of the hole, they muscled their way in.

Always someone stronger, someone who wants to prey on the weak. ”

She heaves a sigh. I open my beer and drink a third of it while she lights up a smoke.

“I quit these, but every time she comes in like that, I light one up and sit out here and hate the fact that the only thing I can do is clean up the mess they make of her.”

I tense but don’t move, watching the side of her face intently, waiting for her to give me the information .

“They wanted reparations. A monthly sum was decided on, and every resident needs to pay it.” Dot spits. “It was for protection because we need their protection like a hole in the head.”

I put my beer down, not liking the sound of this at all.

“We struggled, but she stepped up. After a year, we voted her our alpha, and she’s been taking care of us ever since. Doing all the things we can’t.”

They voted her alpha? What the fuck?

“That doesn’t explain the fights.”

Dot doesn’t look at me, she just makes an irritated sound. “Money doesn’t grow on trees, Edric. She’s got to give them something. The issue is that what she’s giving them isn’t what they want. What? You expected her to beat the whole damn gang on her own? She tried, she did try.”

I pick up the beer again, but I have to fight the desire to hurl the bottle as far as I can.

“What do they want? With her specifically.”

“I assume it’s her broken and doing what they want instead of fighting them at every turn.”

“So she fights to pay off the reparation debts?”

“Among other things. She beats up anyone who hurts us or bullies us as well, any dealers who come in hunting the kids. Selene keeps husbands in line when they lash out with fists. She tutors the kids, feeds anyone who doesn’t have food, helps us out with money, sews clothes, fixes roofs, she’s a chef, security, a handyman, a plumber, an electrician, a mediator, a carer, a teacher, a friend.

She became our alpha. So if you boys think you can come in and hurt her, I will tell you now, no one in this neighbourhood will stand back and let you. ”

“We don’t want to hurt her, but she can’t keep doing this.”

“Someone needs to protect her, even if it’s from herself. She’s given so much of herself, Edric. She’s carried the weight of all our troubles alone.”

I can hear the silent rebuff in her words, and while there is guilt in me, most of me is still reeling. I cannot fathom what she’s been doing. The strength it took.

My admiration grows and grows.

“We’ll take care of it.”

She looks at me sharply, a look I remember from childhood. “Don’t say things you don’t mean, Edric.”

“I’m not. We’ll take care of all of it.”

She sits back and puffs on her cigarette. “Maybe it’s just as well. Better the devil you know than the one you don’t.”

I finish my beer slowly .

“No one knows, not to the extent of what she’s doing. Luna most of all. She’s a good kid, but Selene is stuck in her head. She thinks she needs to protect Luna. Perhaps she’s done it too thoroughly. That girl’s taste in boyfriends is terrible.”

I frown and lean forward. “What do Luna’s boyfriends have to do with anything?”

“Luna brought Benson down on us. It was Luna dumping him and the fight Selene put up that had him focusing his gang on our poor neighbourhood.”

“Was it now?”

She looks at me sharply. “Things changed while you were gone. Lots of things. It’s not like it was. None of it is. You were needed, and you left.”

I stay silent, absorbing the furious and hurt words because she’s right. We did know we were needed here.

I sit with her accusations until, with a sigh, she stands up. “Let’s get her moved. She can’t stay here.”

“Why not?”

“I’m a nurse. Benson runs a gang. If he finds out about me, I won’t be around to help her anymore. Take her back to your house and send Luna to her friend Kailey’s for a week. She’s been dying to go.”

“Who is Kailey?”

“Girl from school, they are friends. Luna will love it. But, more importantly, she will be safe while Selene heals up.”

She walks into the room and turns on the light, checking Selene over.

“Stupid girl. This is the worst. You’re going to have to take these painkillers with you. Don’t give her too many. Come on, Mael, lift her up.”

Mael lifts Selene up, and we walk into the garage where our car is now parked and waiting. Kingston sits tapping his fingers on the steering wheel.

Mael slides into the back with Selene while I take the bag that Dot gives me.

“Good luck. Keep her hidden. Protected. I wouldn’t put it past him to try something now while she’s vulnerable. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

I get in the car without another word, and Dot, never one for ceremony, walks back into her house.

We detour, just in case, but don’t leave it long before Kingston gets impatient with her soft moans and takes us home.

I have to grit my teeth to stop from suggesting he take us anywhere else. A hotel. An armoured bunker.

Mael is careful when he carries her into our home. I attack first, slamming the body up against the wall and pinning him there.

“Did you think we couldn’t smell your stink? ”

Bailey groans, but his eyes are caught on Mael and the precious bundle in his arms.

“What happened?”

He shoves me off him and follows on Mael’s heels.

“What happened to her?” Bailey snaps.

“She fought again and lost,” Mael murmurs.

Bailey waits while he puts her in the bed and then sits on the edge and reaches out and strokes her forehead. It’s one of the few places she’s not bruised.

“I’m coming with you to take care of this,” Bailey pauses, his eyes hard as flint. “Who was it?” Bailey says in a low growl.

“A guy named Hammer.”

Bailey’s low growl sends a thrill through me. I like this. Our omegas are so fierce.

Kingston’s ass of a cat jumps up between us, hissing, and curls up on the pillow beside Selene.

I glare at it, it just glares back, unblinking, knowing it’s got the upper hand and no one will touch it.

We settle in for the long haul, watch the omega sleep and heal.

“I’m going home.”

“Not happening.”

The argument between Selene and Kingston has been going on for days. She wants to go home. He is refusing to let her unless we all go with her, which she flat out refuses.

But Kingston and Selene always went toe-to-toe like this. They rev each other up to these impossibly angry levels. Both are as stubborn as each other. Kingston looks lighthearted and fun, but he’s more emotional and far more likely to react in a way that gets everyone furious with him.

Mael simply watches the outcome while he doctors her injuries. I’m not sure how he’s ignoring all the awful things she’s saying, but Mael has suddenly decided to join the running for Sainthood.

I’ve been observing her behaviour. She’s nervous, and she’s running. Which is very unlike Selene. It took me a full day to realise it's us that is making her nervous.

I walk over now and lean over her, fluffing her pillow. She falls silent and shrinks back in the bed, her eyes averted, but I can smell the telltale spike of her perfume and see the way her pulse flutters in her neck.

She is nervous of us because she is attracted to us .

That makes it easier to watch her argument with Kingston. It’s some strange kind of foreplay.

Bailey, on the other hand, is something different. She is angry with him, possibly even as angry with him as she is with us. Bailey ignores her anger, instead teasing and speaking nicely to her consistently despite all the horrible things she says.

Two weeks pass, and we have achieved exactly nothing. She is short or sharp; she spends most of her time in bed or in a chair or trying to leave.

I had hoped that things would change, but she refuses flat out to engage with us.

On the day when we decide we can no longer keep her here, I watch her bickering with Kingston. She brushes her hair behind her ears and lets out a snarl.

“I just don’t understand why you are back here. Did you abandon your other omega, too?”

I slam the spoon I was using to stir dinner down on the island. “That’s enough.”

“What’s enough?” she snarls. “This? Oh, so I’m not allowed to ask about the other one?”

I storm over and grab her upper arm, dragging her out of the house and into the backyard.

“You know what your problem is, Selene. You are so crazy jealous because we left with another woman. It is killing you and turning you into this bitter shrew of an omega.”

She glares at me so hard I think she might actually knife me if she had a chance.

“The fact is that we realised right away that she wasn’t for us, and we left her. Now we’re here, and you have a decision to make and facts to face. We’re here for you. No one else.”

She takes a step towards me, not at all scared of me. She’s never been scared of me, not even when I was dripping with someone else’s blood.

“If you realised right away that she wasn’t yours, then you deliberately didn’t come back.”

I pause, frustrated. She goes to walk past me, but I hook her waist and pull her back, pressing her against the wall of the house.

“Jealous, bitter, and angry.”

“Annoyed I can't go home,” she mimics me with a mocking smile.

I reach down and cup her pussy, pulling up so she has no choice but to rise on her tiptoes.

“What are you doing?” she rasps out.

“Proving a damn point.” I inhale deeply.

“Smell that in the air? That scent of blueberry cobbler? That’s how much you want my knot.

You can pretend you hate us. And you can scream and be this bitter bitch of an omega, but the fact is that your body can’t lie.

You want us,” I lean in close, pressing my lips to her cheek as I pull hard.

She lets out a delicious moan that I want to eat.

“You dream of us, calling our names in your sleep. Your eyes follow every move we make, and I would bet anything that your underwear is now soaked with slick, your cunt aching for my cock. Am I wrong?”

She peels open her eyes and grips my wrist. “You’re not wrong.

I want you. I always have. But dreams and reality are not the same thing, and I’m not going to spend even one more second walking around thinking that you’ve changed.

You want to fuck me, knot me? Fine. But it’s going to cost you much more than you can afford to give. ”

With that, she rubs against my fingers as she gets free, slipping past me without a backwards glance. I stay where I am, staring at the trace of liquid on my fingertips.

I hunger for it; I need it.

The need to chase her down and pin her to the ground and take her until she’s writhing with desire beats against my skull, but I ignore it, watching as she trots across the road and enters her house without looking back.