by Paige Tyler
Selena wondered if Becca would say that if she’d seen her earlier. “When Jayden first told me I was turning into a werewolf, I got mad. I thought he was trying to be funny about something that wasn’t funny at all, like you did with me a minute ago. But then he showed me his claws, and I lost it. That’s when my claws and fangs came out, which only freaked me out even more.”
“That’s understandable.” Becca gave her a small smile. “It’s sort of a lot to take in.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Understatement there. “Jayden tried to get me to calm down, but when I saw how much I’d clawed him up while we’d made love, it scared me so badly that I was convinced I was a monster. The look on Jayden’s face when I flipped out only made it worse. It was like he was seeing a monster, too.”
“Honey, Jayden does not think you’re a monster.” Becca took Selena’s hand, not caring that her claws were still out. “He thinks you’re a werewolf like him.”
“I know what you’re saying, but you didn’t see the look in his eyes when it happened.”
Becca squeezed her hand. “No, I didn’t. But I saw the way he looked at you in the club last night. The man is in love with you. A few days after meeting you, and he’s crazy about you. I’d bet my life on it.”
A part of Selena desperately wanted to believe that, because she felt the same way about him. Running away from him had been the hardest thing she’d ever done, and if she hadn’t been so damn scared, she probably wouldn’t have been able to do it. But the longer she sat here now staring at her claws and remembering how badly she’d hurt the man she was already in love with, the harder it was for her to believe Jayden could ever forgive her. He might be a werewolf, but she was a monster.
“Even if you’re right about Jayden being in love with me last night, he’s not now,” she said miserably. “Not after what I did to him this morning.”
Becca frowned. “You keep saying you attacked him. What exactly did you do?”
“I shoved him—hard,” Selena said. “I didn’t even realize what I was doing. One second, I’m standing there freaking out, and the next, Jayden is flying ten feet through the air and bouncing across the floor.”
Her friend’s eyes went wide. “Wow. I guess this werewolf thing comes with more than claws.”
Selena nodded. “Then after I threw him across the room, I stole his truck and left him standing naked in the driveway of his house.”
Becca didn’t say anything. Selena wondered whether it was because her friend was trying to come up with something or she was simply picturing Jayden naked in his driveway.
“No matter how bad it was this morning, you know you’re going to have to talk to Jayden again, right?” Becca finally said. “I don’t think this is a problem you can deal with on your own, so unless you know another werewolf you can talk to about it, Jayden’s the only one who can help you with this.”
Selena sighed. “I know you’re right, but I don’t know how I can face him again after what I did to him. It feels like I’m going to lose control just thinking about it.”
Becca leaned over and hugged her. Selena felt tears burn her eyes as she returned the gesture. Knowing her friend was still able to touch her like this after realizing what Selena was meant a lot.
“There’s no reason to rush out and see him right now, you know.” Becca pulled back to look at her. “You’re more than welcome to stay here with me as long as you want. We can run by your place and pick up some of your clothes, then we can crash here together until you’re ready to talk to him. I’ll even be right there with you when you do, if that makes you feel more comfortable.”
“Thanks. You’re the best friend a girl could ever ask for,” Selena said. “Which is why I hate asking, but could you do me another big favor?”
“You know there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you. No matter what you need, I’m there for you. I mean, if you need five pounds of raw steak or a gallon of pig’s blood, all you have to do is ask.”
Selena laughed, unable to help it. “Thanks, but fortunately, it’s nothing that drastic. I was wondering if you’d be willing to text him and let him know where his truck is? I feel horrible for stealing it.”
Becca looked almost disappointed. “Oh, okay. I can do that.”
Chapter 15
Brooks smelled the blood and gunpowder long before he, Carter, and Diego reached the back door of the East Side Collision Damage Repair Shop. He hesitated, not sure if he could trust his nose. His head was kind of spinning from all the crap Carter had told him about omegas on the drive over and what it all meant for Selena. To say he was distracted was an understatement.
But after taking another deep breath, he no longer doubted he was picking up the scent of fresh blood from inside the building they were about to raid. A lot of it, too. Combine that with the fact that he didn’t hear a single sound coming from a shop that should have been full of noise at this time of day, and Brooks was pretty sure he already knew what they’d find once they went through the door.
“No sign of movement from the back side,” Brooks whispered into his radio, pushing aside any thoughts but those related to the raid. He couldn’t think about Selena being an omega right now, as difficult as that was to do. “Ready when you are.”
He would have liked to pass along the info on the blood and gunpowder, but with Ray, José, and half a dozen other officers from the task force sitting in the ops van with Zane, he simply couldn’t. It would lead to questions he didn’t want to answer.
“We’re in position,” Trey announced from the front of the building. “Thirty seconds to entry. Still seeing no movement from this side, either.”
“Roger that,” Brooks said. “Count it down.”
Ray and his gang unit had put in a long night trying to get fingerprints off the confiscated cans of spiked energy drink. When that hadn’t panned out, they’d shown mug shots of the gang members Ray thought might be involved to every employee from the clubs where the cans had been distributed. One of those club employees had identified the man who’d sold him the cases as Aaron Perez. He was a member of the Terrace Grove Locos and had a long history of assault, burglary, and drug distribution. An hour later, Ray had a location and a warrant for the place where Aaron liked to hang out—this collision shop on south Ferguson. The place looked legit from the outside, but according to Ray, it had a reputation for being a gang hangout and the kind of place cars went to get chopped down for parts.
Hopefully, it was also a storage and distribution location for the fentanyl-laced energy drink. Hell, if they were lucky, Aaron might even be the new gang leader they’d heard about. Assuming Ray was right and this new gang boss was the one behind Buzz.
Due to the limited amount of time they’d had to come up with it, the plan for raiding the shop was a basic one. The back of the building had no windows and was shielded from the street out front, so Brooks and his team would make a direct entry from that direction—nothing sneaky or covert about it. At the same time, Trey, Connor, and Remy would go in the front. But since that side of the shop had a wall full of windows that would put Trey’s team at risk, they were making their approach in the back of an unmarked moving van. That way, they could pull right up to the door without anyone seeing them.
“Five seconds,” Trey said.
Brooks grabbed the doorknob to check it, expecting it to be locked, but it wasn’t. He yanked it open, making way for Diego and Carter as Trey called out his own team’s entry.
They all stayed tight and alert as they moved into the back of the shop, covering each other and checking every corner and blind spot, even though Brooks could already tell they were the only ones in the place.
“They’re up here,” Trey said from the front of the shop, his tone confirming what Brooks had feared.
Brooks moved past a half dozen metal racks full of car parts, a heavily customized Monte Carlo in need of a paint job, and more tool boxes than he could count to find Trey and the other guys on the team standing aroun
d three bodies. There was a partially crushed case of Buzz energy drink off to the side.
He recognized Aaron, but just barely. The gangbanger and the other two men had been shot in the head but only after they’d been beaten to hell with the assortment of wrenches, hammers, and other bloody tools on the floor nearby. For whatever reason, they’d been tortured before being executed.
“We’re all clear, Ray,” Brooks said into his radio. “But we’re too late.”
* * *
“That from Selena?” Carter asked, gesturing with his chin at the cell phone in Brooks’s hand.
Brooks didn’t answer. This was the first chance he’d had to check his phone since the raid, and he just about freaked when he’d seen the text from Becca. Outside the operations truck he and Carter were in, cops and crime scene techs were digging for clues. He ignored them, focusing his attention on the text and trying to read between the lines for any hidden messages.
After determining there was no ongoing threat at the auto shop, Brooks had sent everyone except Carter back to the SWAT compound. They probably didn’t need to be there, but Brooks didn’t feel right leaving. He owed it to Ray to hang around in case the techs turned up something that might be helpful. Besides, staying there gave him a chance to talk to Carter in private about Selena.
“No, it’s not from Selena,” he finally said, slipping his phone in a side cargo pocket on his uniform pants. “It was from her friend, Becca. She said I could pick up my truck in front of her apartment building. Becca wanted me to know Selena is okay and that she’s staying with her. She thinks Selena needs a little space, though.”
Carter lifted a brow. Two years older than Brooks, his blond-haired packmate had been a U.S. Marine before joining SWAT. “You think she knows Selena is a werewolf?”
Brooks shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. Either way, Becca seems focused on protecting Selena. That’s the important thing.”
“What are you going to do?” Carter asked after a long silence. There’d been a lot of those lately. “This thing Selena is going through isn’t something she should handle on her own. Trust me. I tried to do it on my own for a long time, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”
Brooks’s chest tightened. From the moment he’d realized Selena’s glowing blue eyes meant she was an omega, he’d feared the worst. All he knew about omegas was that they were unpredictable and on the verge of going psychotic at the best of times. The idea that Selena—and Carter—were omegas was hard to wrap his head around.
“How come you never told any of us you were an omega?” he asked, ignoring the question his packmate had asked about Selena for the moment, since he had no clue how to answer it. “Up until the Pack mixed it up with the omegas who worked for Frasheri, most of us didn’t even know they existed. You could have let us know what we were going up against. Hell, you could have at least clued us in that when an omega’s eyes glow blue, it means they’re on the edge. That info sure as hell would have helped this morning.”
Carter stared at the TV mounted to the wall of the ops truck, watching the news conference Chief Curtis was holding at that very moment. Curtis was talking about the current murders and the recent rise in gang-on-gang violence in the city. No doubt, the moron was making sure everyone knew it wasn’t his fault.
“And how would that conversation have gone, Brooks?” Carter said, abruptly turning to lock eyes with him, his jaw tight. “What would you and the others have said if I casually dropped the fact that I know all about how out of control omegas get because I’ve been there myself. That I spend a good portion of my waking hours worrying about keeping it together? That if I lose it the least little bit, I can go from growling to completely mental in ten seconds flat? Would you and the others have been comfortable having me cover your backs during a high-threat entry? Would you have wanted me on the team? Would you have wanted me in the Pack?”
Brooks opened his mouth to say of course they would, but Carter cut him off.
“Before you answer, seriously ask yourself whether you’d consider letting one of the omegas who worked for Frasheri in the Pack after seeing what they were like. By the way, you don’t have to answer. We both already know what the answer would be.”
“That’s a stupid question,” Brooks insisted. “Those omegas we fought were crazy, like they were on some kind of drug.”
Carter regarded him thoughtfully. “Crazy. Drugged. Yeah, that’s pretty much what it’s like to be an omega. And none of those omegas we fought that night were actually out of control, which is why you never saw their eyes glow blue. Still want to ask why I never told the Pack?”
Brooks thought about that for a few moments, then shook his head. “Has Gage known all along?”
Carter nodded. “Yeah. When Mike and Xander became squad leaders, we had to tell them, too, so they’d know how to calm me down if I start to lose it.”
Brooks frowned. “That’s still something you have to deal with? Losing it, I mean.”
Carter’s gaze went to the TV again. “The urge to give in and let the omega wolf inside me come out is always there. I’ve been working on control for a long time, so as far as completely losing it, that hasn’t happened in a while. But I’m like a heroin addict. I’m one slipup from starting all over.”
Damn. Brooks couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to have a constant battle going on with his inner wolf. Knowing Selena might be going through that while he sat there in the ops truck made his own wolf want to howl.
“Is that why I’ve never seen your eyes flash blue?” Well, bluer than Carter’s eyes naturally were, Brooks silently amended. “Because you’ve never completely lost it around me?”
Carter nodded. “Pretty much. Most of the time, a male omega’s eyes glow gold like any other male werewolf’s. When they slip over the edge because they’re angry, afraid, or even extremely sexually excited, they glow blue instead. The bluer they glow, the further gone they are.”
Brooks remembered how scared Selena had been that morning and how her eyes had glowed bright blue. It only made him feel worse about letting her run away. She must have been so damn terrified.
“Do you think it’s possible for an omega to become an alpha the same way Jayna went from being a beta to an alpha when her pack needed her to be one?” Brooks asked.
Carter shrugged. “I’ve never seen it, but I guess it’s possible. Lots of weird crap has been happening lately, so who’s to say what we see next? It’s not like this werewolf thing comes with a user’s manual, you know?”
For some reason, the possibility that Selena might get better gave Brooks a feeling of hope. But then he immediately felt like shit for letting his mind even go in that direction. Selena didn’t need to get better . She was perfect and amazing just the way she was.
But as perfect and amazing as she was, there was no escaping the fact that Selena was facing the same constant uphill battle Carter did. She’d have to fight to stay in control, always terrified she’d lose it and hurt someone. While she seemed so gentle and angelic, the claw marks on Brooks’s back were evidence of how dangerous she could be when her omega side took over.
Brooks bit back a growl. Selena had already dealt with so much crap in her life. On top of her parents taking off when she was a kid, her brother had been murdered. Throw in the day-to-day burden of watching one kid in her class after another lose their futures to the gangs, and it was more than any person should ever have to face. Now, in addition to dealing with claws and fangs, Selena had to deal with uncontrolled rage, all because she was an omega werewolf. It all seemed so unfair.
“I still don’t get why Selena became an omega,” Brooks mused. “She risked her life to save a whole classroom full of students. Why isn’t she an alpha? For that matter, why aren’t you? You turned because you saved people from a burning vehicle.”
Carter didn’t say anything for a long time. Instead, he gazed off into the distance like he was reliving something from his past. After a moment, he looked a
t Brooks. “Was Selena angry when she stood up to that gangbanger in the classroom?”
Brooks didn’t even have to think about it. “I know she was. She hates the gangs and anything to do with them. After what they did to her family and the kids in her class, can you blame her?” That’s when it hit him. “Shit. That’s it, isn’t it? She’s an omega because she was so filled with hate and anger when she turned.”
His packmate nodded.
“Is that why you’re an omega?” Brooks asked.
“Yeah,” Carter said.
There was a story there, Brooks was sure about that, but now wasn’t the time or place to get into it.
He sat back in the swivel chair, rubbing his hand along the neat beard edged along his jawline and trying to get his head around what all of this meant.
“Selena’s going to lose control more often and with less provocation,” Carter continued. “This morning, it was because she thought she’d hurt you. In a week, it might be someone cutting her off in traffic or bumping her in a crowd. In a month, it could be someone looking at her the wrong way. If she’s lucky, the claws and fangs you saw this morning are as far as she’ll be able to shift. I don’t know about that for sure, since I’ve never seen a female omega. But still, the chances of her exposing what she is to someone—or killing them—is high, and it’ll get worse the longer she’s on her own.”
Brooks let out a low growl, refusing to even think about any of those possibilities. “Selena won’t be on her own. She’ll have me.”
His packmate studied him, a look of sadness in his eyes Brooks had never seen before. It made him wonder when Carter had become so solemn. Oh yeah, maybe a couple of hours ago, when Gage had decided it was time for his big secret to come out.
“Do you love Selena?” Carter asked.
“Yes. More than I ever thought possible.”
