Omega's Run (22 page)

We followed them up the stairs, Chloe leading the way with William behind her, his hands on her trim waist as he murmured something quietly into her ear.

The stairs opened up next to a small, but ample kitchen. It looked like some modifications had been made to the living quarters from the last time I was here. The left hand wall appeared to have been knocked down, and the room behind it, a guest bathroom, appeared to have been redone to expand the kitchen and to allow for more space. A
much
larger table occupied the area than the one William had near the kitchen before, back when he was still single. It had a distinctly feminine touch to it too; a crystal vase sat in the center with fresh cut flowers resting in it. The scent of the flowers, roses and lavender, were all but overpowered by the intoxicating aromas coming from the oven and from several pots that simmered quietly on the stove.

Ava sidled up beside me and reached up to hook a finger in my collar. Obligingly, I bent down to bring my ear closer to her lips and she muttered so quietly only I would have been able to hear, “Are all you wolf-kind males so homey and domesticated?”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it, thinking of the omelets I had made just a day or so before. It was a deep laugh, one that I couldn’t have stopped even if I’d wanted to, but it felt good to do it. It felt amazing, really, to find something amusing in the storm that surrounded us. The rest of the pack gave me a strange look, probably wondering if I was losing my mind but I just shook my head and waved them off.

Craig, the lunk, walked toward the hall and leaned against the wall directly across from the open kitchen, his arms crossed comically across his chest. I say comically because his arms and chest were so heavily muscled that he physically couldn’t cross his arms completely, giving him an awkward look to what he must have thought was an intimidating pose.

I couldn’t really say much, I was similarly unable to really cross my arms that way, my own muscles got in the way of it, but I had lost some weight in the last few months, not keeping up with my workouts while on the move as I would have liked. With wolf-kind strength it was difficult to really find some place to work out that didn’t have specially crafted equipment. I couldn’t walk into any public gym and hit the machines since the highest weight they could reach would barely serve as a warm-up for someone with my strength.

While William busied himself around the kitchen, Chloe led Ava to the table and offered her a seat. My girl gave a wary look at the layout of the room and chose the chair at the end of the table, closest to the hall. Grabbing the high backed wooden chair, she turned it so the back was to the wall and sat, still eyeing each person in the room with the wariness of a cat in a room full of starved, wild dogs. Can’t say I could blame her, but her paranoia might just be perceived as insulting. Luckily William and Chloe had better sense than that and took it in stride. Markus frowned at her and Craig actually growled until Chloe shot him a sharp look and the sound died in his throat, choked off as suddenly as it had started.

“Sorry,” he muttered and ducked his head a little.

Ava gave Chloe an appraising look, and I could see her opinion of the small woman had just gone up a bit. Even
I
was shocked. Chloe really had grown considerably, and I felt a little bit of pride in that. My brother had chosen exceptionally well in going with it when his wolf had told him that Chloe should be his mate.

“Alright, that’s enough out of all of you,” William said. “Everyone sit down and we’re going to eat and talk this out. Remus you had better have some good information to part out here or I’ll have an easy decision to make, which will make it twice as hard to carry out. You realize the position you’ve put me in by coming back here, right?”

I nodded. At least I’d be getting a last meal.

“I have one condition, if I may,” I said after we had all sat down and William and Markus had covered the table with dishes piled with food. Chloe and William both gave me a look and even Ava shot a glance my way. I had taken the chair on the corner, what would have been to her right if she didn’t still have her chair turned with the back to the wall. William sat at the opposite end with Chloe on his left, Markus between Chloe and I; Craig had taken the spot in the middle between Ava and William.

“You’re in no place to be demanding any further conditions, Pup,” Markus snapped. A vein was pulsing in the old man’s forehead and I wasn’t sure what would happen for a moment before William reached out and set a calming hand on the Arbiter’s arm.

“I can’t make any promises, Remus. You know that,” William said, slowly. “What’s the condition?”

I sighed and closed my eyes, taking a deep breath before I opened them and met William’s gaze. “Whatever you decide to do with me, I don’t care. Follow pack law and order my execution if you need to, I accepted that possibility before we started on our way here. But whatever you decide; Ava leaves here in one piece.”

I should have seen it coming, honestly, I really should have, and part of me probably did. Maybe I had decided I deserved it, somehow. Maybe as another piece to add to my punishment?

There was a loud sound, an echoing noise that faded into insignificance over the ringing in my ear. I’ll give one thing to the girl, for a straight up human, she had a wicked left. The slap that Ava threw was so hard that it literally tossed me sideways out of my chair; no mean feat when you’re talking about a dude my size. I pitched to the ground, glad that I had seated myself so close to the hall so instead of landing on the hardwood flooring in the kitchen, I landed on the plush carpet of the hall.

“...you, Remus!” she was screaming when I could hear again. “Seriously,
fuck you
! You don’t get to pretend to protect me, you arrogant piece of shit! Who was it that dragged your naked ass out of that fucking freak show lab? Who carted your heavy carcass out to the middle of nowhere just to save your sorry goddamn life? Get the fuck off! Let go of me!”

It descended into a chaos of voices after that. I heard a pained grunt from Craig and Markus’ deep growl rolled together with Chloe and William both trying to calm everything down.

“
Stop!”
I bellowed. Silence fell, like I’d found the mute button on the universe, and I slowly pushed myself to my feet. Craig was standing behind Ava, his arms wrapped around her and a nice shiner was already blooming on his face where she’d most likely caught him with an elbow. Markus had somehow moved around me, more likely over, and had her by the wrists, his hips turned so she couldn’t easily kick or knee him in the balls. Chloe and William were both standing but hadn’t moved from their spots at the table otherwise.

“She’s entitled to be pissed at me, don’t hold any of that against her. Markus, Craig, please let her go.” I worked my jaw up and down for a moment, pretty sure she’d loosened a tooth with that hit but I was already healing, still slower than I’d like, but healing. My leg gave a twinge of pain and I sighed at the reminder that I still wasn’t at a hundred percent.

Reluctantly, after a glance at William for permission, they let her go and returned to their seats. Markus even clapped a hand on my shoulder as he passed. A gesture of support? Maybe. An acknowledgement of my actions? Who knew? Who even gave a fuck anymore? I was reasonably certain I was going to end up dead after all of this, but I couldn’t worry about it at that precise moment.

I looked to Ava and she just stood there, eyes practically blazing with rage, face flushed; chest heaving up and down with every breath. Her fingers flexed and relaxed rhythmically, as if she wanted to wrap her hands around my throat or one of her guns, and she couldn’t decide which.

“I never would have agreed to come here if you were so certain it was a suicide mission. I didn’t go to all the fucking trouble of saving your ass just to see you throw it all the fuck away.”

“Thanks for just clocking me and not shooting me this time.”

I sighed, when my attempt at humor got me nothing but a raised eyebrow like I should seriously not test her right that moment. I pressed on… “And I’m not throwing anything away, Ava,” I said that last bit quietly; resigned. I felt like I was facing a wild animal, staying still and speaking in calm tones as much as possible seemed to be the way to go, and wasn’t
that
ironic? I’m sure she would have hated the comparison but at the moment that’s what it felt like.

“I’m not,” I insisted when she gave me a disbelieving look. “My life doesn’t matter; it’s not worth shit in comparison to the hundreds of wolf-kind that make up this pack. In comparison to who knows how many that Mathias has already taken,” She flinched at that, but I kept going, “If this information helps save them at the cost of my life, it’ll be worth it.”

“Nobody likes a fucking martyr, Remus,” she snapped but she didn’t say anything else and dropped back into her seat, arms crossed sullenly across her chest as she glared daggers at me. I rubbed my jaw for a moment and noticed William giving me a wry smile as I picked up my chair from where it had fallen and sat back down.

“Without causing any more outbursts,” he started, “You have my word, Remus, that Ava will leave here unharmed, as long as she doesn’t try to shoot or otherwise harm any of us then we have no reason to harm
her
.” Chloe nodded and, with that settled, started dishing out the food that William had prepared. Ava looked over each person at the table, her brow crushing into a frown and her jade green eyes calculating but no less tempestuous.

For a few minutes the only sounds were of cutlery scrapping on plates and of people chewing. William had created four large casseroles. A dish containing pasta sauce, ground beef, peppers, and wide noodles all covered in about a pound of shredded cheese. It was a specialty of his that he was constantly tweaking and adjusting every time he made it. It was relatively simple to make and filling so it worked for a table full of wolf-kind.

Ava poked at hers, barely eating. I wanted to remind her that she should eat something, but under the circumstances I figured it was the last thing I should probably do, not if I didn’t want to get the shit slapped out of me again. So I left her alone and turned my attention back to my brother as I loaded a second helping onto my plate.

“Time to talk?” I asked and he nodded, swallowing the food still in his mouth.

“As good a time as any. Let’s start with salt-the-earth. Why should we abandon the territory all of a sudden? Mathias has obviously known where we are for some time. That was clear when he approached you and Romulus about Father.”

I blinked. “I wasn’t aware that you knew it was Mathias that’d approached us, not the other way around.”

He shrugged. “I didn’t, at least not really, not until right now at least. It just seemed logical. We’ve never been able to figure out how to find Mathias. I mean we knew where his house was, obviously enough,” he glanced at Chloe and she gathered his hand in hers atop the table smiling at him with such love and devotion it was sort of breathtaking... and heartbreaking at the same time.
You nearly fucked that up so hard,
I thought to myself, but it still didn’t cause me to miss what my little brother was saying… “But it was always considered too dangerous to do anything to him directly.”

“Until you kidnapped Chloe,” I reminded him and he winced. Chloe’s smile grew more, not less, and she squeezed his hand in a show of support. “Probably not my best move, but at the same time, the best I’ve ever made. We’ve been wondering about that for a while now. Why hasn’t Mathias made any kind of move after losing his daughter?”

“He can’t admit to the rest of the hunters that he knew where the pack was, or how long he’s known.” I glanced at Chloe and apologized silently for the next bit. “Mathias let me piece it together when he interrogated me after Ava’s team caught me in Chicago. He planned the whole thing.”

“How do you mean, Pup?”

“When Mathias approached Romulus, it had more than one purpose behind it. He wanted to galvanize the Hunters into an all-out war against us. The idea was; when a wolf-kind stole his daughter and then killed her, he could use that loss to his advantage. That he could play the sympathy card to his superiors and get them to sanction the experiments he’s been secretly conducting on captured wolf-kind.”

“Experiments?” Chloe was looking a little grim but her jaw was set, lips pressed into a firm line. That stubborn will of hers was showing through again. “What kind of experiments? To what end?”

I explained everything I could, leaving little out but what that bitch Helen was doing to me when Ava came to my rescue. Nobody pressed for details either. Ava remained stonily silent through it all.

“Mathias and Declan had an agreement. The Hunters were protecting our territory for us. They have been for a while now. Ever hear of the Nevada pack trying to push into our territory a few years ago?” I asked and Markus and William both shook their heads.

“Guy in Chicago told me about it. Apparently they tried, and were wiped out. The community at large believes the pack was responsible, and our reputation has preceded us. Fewer and fewer wolf-kind try to come anywhere near Washington these days, and that became a problem for Mathias.

“The arrangement that he’d had with Declan was that he would protect our borders for us, and Declan would turn a blind eye to the wolf-kind being taken from our area, maybe he even gave Mathias a few of our own now and then as payment. But with how the others in the country view us as unbeatable, they’ve stopped trying to come up this way. Mathias’ need for subjects was outweighing the number he could get his hands on without tipping people off anymore.

“That’s why he wanted Romulus in charge. He knew Rom wouldn’t care and would just give our people over to him. Mathias is gearing up to attack the pack in its entirety. You need to get the email blasts and the phone tree going to the rest of our people out of state. We have no idea how much Mathias knows. If Declan told him where the other members were, they could be in danger. We definitely are.”

Williams face was grave, his third helping lying forgotten on his plate as he listened to me. Even Markus was starting to look a little gobsmacked and Craig’s mouth was hanging open, a forkful of food forgotten half way between his mouth and his plate.