Page 72 of The Runaway
“You touch each other,” Adalene said, looking slightly confused at Connor’s vehement denial. “Gabriel’s always putting his hand on your shoulder. You stand just a little bit too close to him. He watches you almost constantly. That’s what Antoine does to Dante, so I just thought…”
For his part, Gabriel was unsurprised by Connor’s denouncement of the possibility of bonding. He’d never said anything to Gabriel about it, nor had Gabriel raised the topic with him. It was too big a step, and one neither of them were ready for.
But he felt a trickle of unease over Adalene’s description of how often he touched Connor. In hindsight, it was true – he’d put a hand on Connor’s shoulder while he was packing this morning. He’d held his hand for a moment when Connor had handed his bag to Gabriel to stow in the carriage. He’d gently held Connor out of the way while Cirroc was leading the horses out of the stable.
“And you sat next to each other when we got in the carriage,” Adalene went on, apparently not having made her point clear enough. Sure enough, Gabriel and Connor were seated next to each other, facing backwards, while Adalene and Niles shared the opposite seat. “Customarily, the two alphas would sit facing forward, and the two omegas would sit together, facing backwards. Traveling backwards is less comfortable, after all. That’s the way most people would have done it.”
“Sorry, am I making you uncomfortable?” Niles blurted out, easing a fraction further away from Adalene. “Do you want me to move?”
“Oh, stop it,” she said, bluntly but not unkindly. “We’ve been through far too much together to start tripping over social conventions now. And I was talking about Gabriel, not you.”
“I know, but… It’s just… after what I said this morning…”
“Am I still your personal omega?” Adalene asked, and Gabriel’s eyebrows rose. So Niles had told her he was breaking off the attempt at bonding then, but clearly there were still some details left unresolved.
“Yes,” Niles said, sounding just a little bit broken. “If you want to be.”
Adalene reached out and cupped Niles’s jaw in her hand. “I still love you,” she said softly. “I think you’re right; I don’t think we’re actually going to bond. But you’re still a wonderful man. And I would very happily be your personal omega for the rest of my life, even if we never bond.”
“Really?” Niles asked, his voice cracking a fraction.
“Absolutely.”
He smiled, though it came out a little watery. “Okay. Yeah. That’s good. Then yes, you’re absolutely still my personal omega.”
“As charming as all of this is,” Gabriel said, torn between feeling amused and exasperated with the pair, “we’re going to be walking into a literal warzone. So the pair of you need to put the fairy tales aside and focus on teamwork, and on staying alive. You got that?”
“Yes, sir,” both of them replied, smiles and starry eyes dutifully banished for the time being.
The rest of the trip into town passed quickly, the miles eaten up by the horses’ fast trot, until the carriage was pulling up outside the post office that sat on the southern side of the town.
Gabriel stood up and opened the door, not waiting for anyone else to do it for him, and the four of them stepped outside, stretching cramped muscles and blinking in the bright sunlight.
The beta who’d driven them into town was a man named Elroy, and he went around the back of the carriage to start unloading their luggage. But he’d only just disappeared from view when Gabriel heard a sharp, “Fuck me! What the bollocks?”
“What’s happened?” Gabriel asked, quickly heading in Elroy’s direction. But the instant he stepped around the back of the carriage, the answer was obvious; Lucas stood meekly in the middle of the road, hands shoved in his pockets… and a full rucksack strapped to his back.
“What the devil are you doing here?” Gabriel asked. A moment later, Niles came to see what the fuss was about, and then Connor and Adalene joined them.
Lucas kicked at a rock, looking sheepish. Then, apparently making a decision, he straightened and did his best to appear confident. “I want to come to Paris with you,” he announced.
Suddenly, the jolt of the carriage at the end of the lane made sense. “You were hiding in the bushes at the corner, weren’t you?” Gabriel asked. “Did you ride the whole way to town clinging to the back of the carriage?”
“It’s not that hard,” Lucas said. “I just had to make sure I got a decent foothold in the first place.”
“I think we both know that’s not the point I’m making,” Gabriel growled at him. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Coming to Paris with you,” Lucas replied, either bluntly ignoring the outlandishness of what he was saying or blithely unaware of it. “To defend the omegas. Because it’s the right thing to do.”
“That’s a very rehearsed answer,” Gabriel said, managing not to roll his eyes. “But what I think you’re doing is running off on what you think is going to be a grand adventure without any concept of what it’s actually going to be like, and without sparing the slightest thought to how your absence is going to affect anyone else. Did you tell Antoine you were coming? How do you think he’s going to feel when it comes time for dinner and no one can find you anywhere?
“Where we’re going is a dangerous city. If something happens to both you and Niles, what’s going to happen to the estate? Who’s going to help Antoine run the place?”
Lucas swallowed and glanced around nervously, but he didn’t back down. “There’s lots of children on the estate. Dante’s had three boys and he’s pregnant now, so then there’ll be another one, and the chances of at least one of those ending up an alpha are pretty high. And if that really doesn’t work, then Antoine can adopt a new alpha son. That’s what Christophe did when he didn’t have an alpha to inherit the estate from him. And then Niles turned out to be an alpha anyway… but that’s not my point,” he interrupted himself, perhaps realising he was getting off track. “There are plenty of options for new alphas on the estate without me being there.”
“Do you know what it looks like when someone gets their arm cut off?” Gabriel asked him, not letting up in the slightest. “Have you ever heard a person scream so long and so loud that you felt like your soul was being ripped apart from the inside out? What if it’s your arm that gets cut off, and you have to live the rest of your life without it? Have you thought about that?”
Lucas’s eyes had grown wide, his face turning a shade or two paler. “Um… I… But…”