Page 23 of Cost of Courting (When it Raines Omegaverse #6)

Chapter twenty-one

Mael

The confession rings in my ears, repeating over and over. I know I promised Shale I would chase after Eben if I saw him, but I can’t leave Selene. Nothing could pull me away from her right now.

“We’re not going to hurt you again, Selene.” I’m earnest, my soft words trying to soothe her fear.

She bares her teeth and steps back. She’s like a wild cat, all bristled fur and sharp claws.

I step again, and she walks straight back into Edric, who lifts her off her feet. She kicks back, but though she hits his thigh really hard, he doesn’t let go.

“Omega.”

She freezes, her nostril flaring, pupils growing huge and black, almost absorbing all the colour.

Despite everything she’s doing here, despite how strong she is, she is an omega underneath, and she’s our omega. She can’t help but to respond to us.

It is both an honour and a thrill.

Bailey saunters over and grips her chin, turning her face to his.

“Why didn’t you invite us to come with you?”

Her wits return, along with her snappy attitude. “Because I didn’t want your company.”

Bailey leans down, resting his chin on her shoulder. Her reaction is painfully obvious. She holds perfectly still, her whole body tight, but the sweetest smell of blueberry cobbler slams into the air around us, thick and tempting.

Her eyes dart up and lock with mine. I can see how badly she wants to run, how afraid she is of being weak. Part of me sympathises with her, but a bigger part of me can’t let her go.

Maybe it’s cruel. I know what it’s like to be captured, to be desperate for escape. Trying, striving desperately to stay strong. Hiding the hurt inside.

I won’t let her go.

No matter how much she needs it.

Even if it destroys us both.

“Let me go,” she almost whispers, the deep trembling anger in her voice tells me one thing. She’s not ready.

I step back; the others imitate me, giving her space, a small circle of it so she can pretend she’s still alone and doesn’t have a pack.

This isn’t the end of the chase, this is simply the cost of courting Selene. It’s a dance, a give and take. One step forward, and maybe we lose a step today, but we might gain one tomorrow.

She watches us cautiously as she steps around us. She’s a half a dozen steps away when her head swivels, and she instantly forgets about us. Her body goes bow tight, and she almost vibrates. I hear the faint sound of someone crying out. Selene spits out a curse and starts running.

Bailey follows immediately, but we’re hot on his heels. Fuck, she can move fast.

I spot a kid shouting and running towards us in the distance. He’s being followed by another group of people who do not look like teens.

I put on a burst of speed, but I’m not going to reach them in time. Selene ignores the kid and jumps straight into the fray. She hits three and kicks two before I can even reach them, but they are already backing off. The violence of her attack is freaking them out.

“Get out of here!” she snarls.

One of them attempts to throw a punch, but Kingston grabs the fist as it swings at her face and squeezes.

The guy drops to his knees, howling in pain.

“You don’t touch my omega,” Kingston hisses.

“Fuck this. He’s not worth it,” one of them shouts, shoving the other.

Selene lets out a growl, but Edric picks her up and passes her to Bailey, who is almost vibrating with rage.

“You held me back!” Bailey snarls at Kingston and Edric.

“You’re our omega, we were-”

Bailey sets Selene down and throws a punch right into Kingston’s gut.

“Do it again, I fucking dare you,” he growls, enraged .

Kingston wheezes and starts to laugh because he’s a dumbass. Selene shakes her head at us and simply walks off.

I follow her as she approaches the kid and puts an arm over his shoulders.

Part of me doesn’t like her touching him. I don’t see him as a threat, but she won’t let us touch her, and she will let him? Not fair.

I realise that I’m behaving like a child and refuse to follow any impulse that goes through my head, still, I do kill him viciously a time or two in my mind.

“What happened?”

The kid scowls. “Same as usual.”

Selene sighs.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

I half expect her to tell us to go away, but she just removes her arm and scowls.

“Henry won a scholarship to a school out of this area.”

Ah, that explains it. Nothing's changed, has it?

Bailey shouts out. I don’t even hesitate. I sweep them both down to the ground just as something explodes behind us.

The kid lets out a terrified scream, but Selene holds him tight, refusing to let go.

“Don’t move, don’t run!” she says. “The Pack has this.”

And just like that, I’m reminded vividly that this is our Selene, the one we grew up with. Of course, she knows who we are. Deep down, where it counts, she trusts us.

I hear Kingston laugh and lift my head, looking back. Bailey is standing on the bonnet of a car, swinging a chain in the air around him. Where did he get the chain from?

I don’t know this omega well.

I really don’t, but I want to. I push up so I’m standing, watching as he puts the chain through the front window.

Kingston yanks open the driver’s door and pulls a terrified man who could be about twenty-five out. He’s got long brown hair, and his fear has leached him of colour.

Edric pulls a knife out of his pocket and walks up to the guy, grabbing his throat and stabbing the knife towards him.

“No! Please, don’t!” he shouts.

Selene stands up and spits in disgust. “Let him go, he’s just a lowlife piece of shit who turns on people who help him for coin.”

The man blinks at Selene. “Help me, Selene, help me, please.”

Bailey lands down hard and kicks out, snapping the man’s knee cap backwards.

The scream is loud.

I put my hands in my pocket and watch as Bailey systematically rips into the guy until he’s just a bleeding floppy body that has no willpower or fight left in him .

Edric and Kingston watch with the same hunger that I feel in me. He is a thing of beauty.

I risk a glance at Selene and find her almost quivering. Her lips are parted, her fingers clench the edges of her blue leather jacket with a death grip.

I look away before she can see me watching.

Bailey lets the guy crash to the ground and stalks past all of us and up to Selene.

She tilts her head back, but I can see she’s lost for words.

“Are you okay?”

I see the moment she melts. She tries not to, she fights to hold onto her anger, but it’s gone. Selene has always been like this. Show her a little bit of attention, and she is devoted to you.

I cock my head, considering the situation. Is that what we need to do? Helping her with the neighbourhood hasn’t worked. Helping Luna out hasn’t worked. Perhaps we need to reach her by showing her we see her.

I glance at Edric and back at her. Kingston moves in closer to our omegas, his eyes flaring as Bailey’s scent switches to a familiar and rich, sweet vanilla and apple.

It’s a lightning strike of a moment where I can see our future in ten, twenty, thirty years. I can see our lives unfold, the highs and lows. I’ve never wanted anything more.

Edric shackles her wrist. “Time to go home.”

Selene resists looking at the kid, but Bailey sweeps Henry up in his wake, removing any inclination for her to protest. Without a reason to stay, she grudgingly stops fighting his pull and falls into step with us.

“Where are we dropping you, kid?”

He looks up at Bailey, and I see the beginnings of hero worship.

Selene glances at Edric. I don’t think she would want anyone to see the way she’s looking at him. How many times did I see that look but fail to discern what it meant?

We need to win them both over. Bailey would be gone, bonds or not, if Selene wasn’t holding him here. I don’t know what the attraction is between the two of them, but I approve. Instead of feeling jealous, it makes me feel deeply satisfied.

We drop Henry at his house and continue to Selene’s place, where she does her absolute best to ignore us as she starts cooking.

I lean against the cheap cupboards with their plastic handles and peeling paint. The laminate is peeling on the counters. The inside hasn’t seen a lick of paint since the house was built.

It doesn’t matter how cheap the house is or what setting she’s in, she never looks anything less than a queen. Even now, with an apron tied around her waist and flour on her cheek, she still looks beautiful .

“We need to talk.”

She flicks me a glance and returns her unconcerned gaze to the bowl of batter she’s stirring. Anyone else would think she’s unconcerned, but I can tell that she’s struggling.

“About what?”

“About us.”

She forces a laugh. “There is no us.”

“I’m hurt, love,” Kingston purrs, which is accompanied by a meow from Shade, who is sitting on his shoulders.

She keeps stirring and then sets it aside and pulls out oven trays and sets them on the table. With amusement, I watch as she starts rolling out balls of cookie dough.

“Yes, there is an ‘us’. As much as you and Bailey would wish there wasn’t.”

“Bonds mean nothing,” Bailey grumbles.

“What he said.”

I shake my head, amused by the pair of them. “My therapist would have a field day with you two.”

Selene whips her head towards me so fast it briefly worries me that she might have hurt herself.

“You have a therapist?”

“I do.”

“For the thing that happened that you won’t tell me?”

I push off the counter and move towards her so that I can feel her warmth. “Yes.”

She opens her mouth, but I put a finger to her lips.

“I will tell you but not right now.”

She frowns. “Fine. But just because you bit us, doesn’t make us a pack.”

“What’s going to make us a pack?” Edric asks.

She glances at him and down at the tray. “Commitment, seeing it through, being reliable, present, truthful, choosing to stay. You know, all the things you threw away last time.”

“When are you going to stop going on about this?”

“When are you going to prove you aren’t going to cut and run the minute another fancy ass omega walks by?”

“You have bonds,” I start to explain, but she cuts me off.

“Yeah, doesn’t mean shit.”

“It means something to me,” Kingston says. “It means I choose you. Forever. I’m not going anywhere. That is my ring, my house, my bank account. It’s my soul and my heart, my friendship and dreams. And they are all riding on you now. So don’t say my bond means nothing. My bond means everything. ”

Kingston storms out of the house, his pain making the air in the room thick.

“We’ve said we are sorry, Selene,” Edric says quietly. “We’ve explained that there were mitigating circumstances. We’re the same people you always knew. We’re back home, and we’re not leaving you. You need to trust us.”

Selene stops moving and tenses her shoulders.

“You think it’s that easy? You didn’t just leave, you broke me.

I am in love with you, and you left. You just walked away.

When you left, everything changed. Within a couple of years, the Crimson Cobras were pushing into the neighbourhood.

Dad had no one to stop him from his mean ways.

Life got harder for everyone here when you left.

But you, you took my reason for living away.

You made this place unbearable, and then I had to live in it.

I had to keep breathing. I had to find something that would get me up and keep me fighting. ”

She looks at me.

“I don’t know if you mean it this time. If you’ll stay. But-”

I step into her space, reaching to cup her cheek. She thrashes her head and ducks away from me.

“Do you know that it’s not just people that can break your heart?

” she snarls. “Every single day since you left, I have to be reminded of the million memories we have together. Kingston’s house is just there, and my bedroom still mourns the presence of you.

Edric bled on this very floor! I didn’t get to live here.

I got to learn how to exist through the agony of you being gone and being hers! ”

“Except we were never hers!” Edric shouts.

It’s the first time I’ve seen him lose his temper in a very long time. The echoes of his rage hangs in the air, and I am given no choice but to prepare to step into the space and reveal the truth I’ve been containing, to face the shame and pain and broken parts of me again.

“We weren’t hers,” Edric continues, looking at me long and hard.

I open my mouth, finding the words that have been gone for so long. “She sold us out, Selene. She gave me to the Crimson Tiger cunt. He had me for weeks. It was too dangerous to bring a feral alpha back to you. If we could have, we would have been back here the day I got out.”

She stands there rigid, refusing to look at me. What is she thinking? Does she hate me?

I flick a glance at Bailey and find his eyes shadowed.

“We had to learn how to become different people. Controlled, calmer, less volatile. Alpha’s who took care of their own.”

“You should have come to me!” she howls. “If you were hurt, you should have come to me! ”

“I would never, ever risk hurting you,” I whisper. “I’d rather your heart break and you hate me forever than give you even a single bruise meant for someone else, Selene.”

She turns away, washing her hands, but I get behind her and stop her movements, wrapping myself around her like I dreamed so fucking often.

“It was you I cried for. It was your name I called. All I dreamed about was coming home, but you have to understand, I could barely recall my own name.”

She shudders and leans back into me. I tighten my arms around her.

“I never wanted to hurt you, Selene. You are everything to us.”

“Who did you say had you?” Selene asks quietly. “Tell me everything.”