5

“How does it feel when you put any weight on it?”

As I lie stretched out on a cozy couch in the lounge, I stare at Adela’s full head of gray hair bent over my leg. Although I’m still close to panic about the possibility of her discovering I’m an omega at any moment, I steady my breath as she runs a hand down my leg.

“It hurts too much. Every time I try it just feels like I’m going to fall.”

When she probes at a tender spot near my ankle, I suck in a sharp breath. To my relief, she doesn’t do it again.

Adela snags a fresh bandage from beside her before she gets to work re-bandaging my leg. “Well, it’s still a little swollen around the ankle, but I’m not feeling a fresh break.”

“And the others, Adela?” Mack speaks up from where he’s crouched on the floor beside her.

While I’d have liked nothing more than to have Mack carry me upstairs after breakfast, the need for information trumped the need to hide.

I need to know how bad the breaks in my leg are, and how long it’s going to take me to recover, so there was no way I could afford to turn down Adela’s offer to look at my leg.

After a tense breakfast where I spent most of it with my gaze fixed on my scrambled eggs and bacon that I barely remember eating, Mack carried me into the lounge and Adela followed.

To learn that I broke my leg in four places and had several other smaller fractures around my ankle wasn’t easy to hear. When Mack said my leg looked worse than it was after I first woke, I can only imagine he was trying to be kind. That or it was a lot worse after my accident. He tried to apologize for knocking me out of the way, and I told him my life was worth more to me than a few broken bones. Still, my words did nothing to smooth away the guilt I saw stirring in his eyes.

“They’re healing well enough. The bigger ones, at least. Still, I’d give it a couple of days of healing before you put any pressure on it. You’re lucky you didn’t do more damage taking a spill like that in the bathroom.”

I sigh in relief.

The sooner I get better, the sooner I can leave. I imagine I’ll be back on my feet even sooner than that since pack healers are always fond of overestimating injuries, at least all the healers I’ve ever met.

With the number of fights, both big and small, that happened in both my father and Shane’s pack, there’s always been a need for a healer and they’re always kept busy.

The healer, Lucy, who was mated to the beta in my father’s pack, would always joke that the best way to stop more injuries was to convince everyone they were too badly hurt to fight. Mostly, it didn’t work because we shifters are too aggressive to stay sitting for long, but Lucy never stopped trying.

“I’ve got some crutches at home. I’ll bring them when I come back to check how you’re healing again in a couple of days,” Adela says.

My heart sinks. So much for a quick exit.

Adela lifts her head to flash me a quick grin as her nimble fingers continue to wind the bandage around my leg. “I don’t bring the crutches sooner because you’ll be walking sooner than you should be. Everyone always does. Now’s the time for resting.”

“But I—” When she raises an eyebrow, I stop talking because it’s clear she doesn’t believe me, so there’s no point in my trying to convince her. She’s wearing a familiar expression on her face that I recognize from Lucy. It’s the, I’ve heard everything you’re about to tell me a million times before, look.

Instead, I lay back on the pillow as she finishes wrapping my leg.

If I weren’t trying to hold on to my cash for as long as possible, I’d find some other way of leaving, maybe getting a cab if they even have a service in this small town. But it seems wasteful to throw away what would be a lot of money on an expensive cab ride when I don’t have a job and have no idea when I’ll get one.

Now my decision to find some out-of-the-way hiding place is proving not to be such a good idea after all.

If being trapped here with a badly broken leg wasn’t bad enough, I’m having to rely on an omega who could turn my temporary entrapment into a permanent one at any moment.

Just because I haven’t felt her reach out with her gift yet doesn’t mean she can’t or won’t. This need to heal is instinctive, something I know all too well. Just as I couldn’t stop myself from reaching out to Mack, at some point she’s going to pick up on my many hurts and traumas and feel compelled to do the same. This time to me.

There’s no way I can keep my emotions buried so deep for long. As it is, I’m surprised it’s working. But it takes too much concentration, and sooner rather than later Adela is going to wonder why I’m so closed off from her, and she’s going to want to investigate why that is.

“Aerin?”

Mack’s hand on my arm startles me, drawing me back to the present.

I turn to find him studying me with his eyes creased with concern. “Yeah?”

“You okay?”

I force a smile I don’t feel on my face. “Sure, fine.”

Although Adela stops wrapping to glance up at me, she doesn’t call me a liar, and neither does Mack, though they must be able to tell I’m not being entirely truthful.

Mack’s eyes dip to my stomach. “Did you want to talk to Adela about the baby while she’s here? I can wait outside if you want?”

You mean why I’ve run away from my mate? Uh, no thanks.

They, Adela at least, think I’ve been abused. I caught her glances as if she were searching out bruises or cuts, but it’s pointless. Not just because we shifters heal too fast to leave lasting bruises. There are some wounds, some hurts that aren’t on the outside. They cut too deep for that.

The worst was the indifference, I think. The way Shane would turn away when I was speaking as if what I had to say wasn’t important, or the way he wouldn’t care if I saw him disappearing with Bree. He’d return still doing up his pants as if he wanted me to know what they’d been doing. And if I somehow missed it, he’d stand next to where I was sitting in the den, so I couldn’t fail to notice their shared scents.

Remembering all the ways Shane hurt me, I feel my eyes filling with tears and I turn my face toward the couch. “No.”

Mack doesn’t push for answers, which is something I’m coming to expect from him, and neither does Adela.

They stay silent as I keep my eyes shut, facing away from them, waiting for Adela to finish tightly bandaging my leg and slipping the leg brace back on.

After resting her hand on my leg for a few seconds, as if in comfort, Adela rises. “All done now. You rest up, Aerin. You couldn’t be in better hands than in Mack’s.”

I listen to the low hum of their conversation as they leave the room and step out of the front door. They’re talking about things that mean nothing to me, events in town, people I don’t know, that kind of thing. Again, it’s soothing in a way that only someone who has been an outsider practically all their lives would understand. For just a second, I feel like I belong… somewhere.

When I feel a heavy gaze on the side of my face, I turn to find Bennett standing in the doorway with crossed arms.

Since the pack left shortly after breakfast, I thought it was just me, Mack, and Adela in the house. But then I remember that everyone else stuck their head around the lounge door to say goodbye. Everyone except Bennett.

Now I understand why he didn’t say goodbye. It wasn’t because he was trying to avoid me because he hates me and wants me gone, it was because he wasn’t leaving at all. He must’ve been outside in his car or something, waiting for Adela and Mack to leave so he could get me on my own.

A spike of fear shoots through me, and I fight to sit up without jarring my leg.

“There’s no need to be afraid,” he says in his gruff voice. “I won’t hurt you.”

My voice is filled with bitterness. “No. What you’d do is a thousand times worse.”

The confusion settling on his face seems real, doesn’t seem feigned. But Shane was like that too, an actor so good that the only one who saw his ugliness was me.

Before he can speak, Mack appears in the doorway, his eyes going from me to Bennett, as if he senses the tension between us. “Is everything okay?”

“I’d like to go back upstairs. I’m tired,” I blurt out, desperate to get away from Bennett.

Other than a brief frown in Bennett’s direction, Mack says nothing else. Though, what I expected him to do, I have no idea. Even if Mack walked into Bennett beating the shit out of me, as his beta, any step he made to stop his alpha would be viewed as a challenge to his position. And challenges, I’ve seen over and over, lead to nothing but a dead challenger, at least in my father and Shane’s packs.

After carefully lifting me from the couch, he carries me back upstairs. As we pass Bennett, I turn my face away from him, not wanting him to see how much he’s scared me. Not wanting him to see the ghosts that live in my eyes.

When I’m back in Mack’s bed, I think about my current situation and how desperate it is. I can’t afford to stay here anymore, not with an omega who could discover my secret any moment, and not with an alpha who could trap me here. Briefly, I think of Mack’s smile and his kindness toward me.

Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to stay here.

But then I remember the way Bennett looks at me, and his determination to send me away. He sees me as trouble, and he isn’t wrong.

I left the Dacre pack because I wanted—needed to be free, needed to be away from a place where I would never rise above anything more than an unwanted duty.

If Bennett learned what I was, he would keep me here because there’s value in having an omega, or he would sell me to another pack since they already have their own. I can’t afford to let that happen, not while I’m pregnant, and not when I don’t know where I’d likely end up.

I could end up in a pack with an alpha that’s a million times worse than Shane. One who wouldn’t think twice about beating me morning, noon, and night, regardless of who my father is.

Which means I have to find another way to leave. With a broken leg.

Going on two feet is impossible, it hurts too much to put pressure on my leg, but if I were to shift and see if it’s bearable on four legs, I might be able to get far enough away that they won’t come after me.

“You want me to stay, Aerin?”

I stare at the wall and think about the best way I can leave. Although Mack is nice, his loyalty is to his pack, and to his alpha. Not to me.

“No. I want to be alone.”

There’s a pause before I hear him cross back to the door.

“If you need anything, just shout and I’ll be right here.”

But I don’t respond. I’m too busy thinking through all the ways I can leave without getting caught.