Chapter Four — Interview

Joseph let out a heavy sigh when he dropped down on the couch. He felt her eyes on him the entire time he needed to gather his thoughts. It wasn’t easy when all he could think of was the piercing pain in his stiff knee. This cold and wet weather was poison for it, and it was becoming more and more sensitive to changes in the weather since… the call.

“Let’s start off easy,” he began and rubbed his knee unconsciously. “I’m Joseph Holt. What’s your name?”

The Omega continued to stare at him like a deer in the headlights for the first few seconds. It was hard to recognize her underneath all the bruises on her pale skin. He was dying to know the name of the dickless monster who needed to hit a woman as small and intimidated as her. Just growling at some Omegas was enough to make them comply with an Alpha’s will. There was no need for physical violence.

“Maria.” Her voice was almost inaudible.

At least she talked, Joseph thought, but wanted her full name. This way he could call his old friends and maybe find out who she was and where she came from. “Maria?”

“Smith.”

The little change of pitch in her voice and the way she couldn’t keep eye contact were dead giveaways she was lying, but he let it slide. For now. He had seen enough victims of abuse to know where her hesitation was coming from.

Joseph nodded toward her head. “Who did this to you?”

She sank deeper into herself and still refused to look at him. “I don’t remember.”

Another lie, again one he understood. Why trust a total stranger? “Why were you out in the middle of a snowstorm?”

The crackling of the fire warming the living room was the only sound for a few moments. Joseph watched her like a hawk, filtering the air in his lungs to pick up on the first signs of anything alarming in her scent. Yes, she was much smaller than him, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t grab a knife from the kitchen and attack him.

After another minute of complete silence, Maria finally took in a deeper breath and asked, “Where are my clothes?”

“They were wet. I hung them up to dry. You almost froze to death out there.” He breathed in to ask her again why she had been out, but she interrupted him with a deep frown pulling on her brows.

“Where is my bag?”

Now it was his turn to frown. “You didn’t have a bag.”

Maria stared at him wide-eyed, her lips opening and closing a few times as she searched for the right words to use.

“Where is it?” she finally asked again, an edge to her voice that made him narrow his eyes at her in suspicion. Was she implying that he lied to her now?

He clenched his jaw, breathing steadily through his flared nostrils. He was no liar.

“You didn’t have one on you when I found you unconscious in the snow. Who beat you up like this?”

Before Joseph knew it, Maria was up on her feet and looking around the living room. She ran a hand through her knotted hair and shook her head violently. Anger and confusion gave her scent a new sharper aftertaste.

“No! I had one. I had it when I fell–” She stopped midway through the sentence and touched her shoulder, stilling all other movements as she remembered and stared out of the window into the snowstorm. “It must have slipped from my shoulder.”

She moved much quicker than he had thought she could with her injuries. Within a second, she had rushed out of the living room. Joseph bolted after her. No matter what she had in mind, it couldn’t be good.

“Stop! Where do you think you are going?”

Joseph caught up to her by the door to the mudroom. He had locked it to help keep the cold out a little better, now also realizing the other benefit as well. Maria reached for the key in the lock, deaf to his question.

When he grabbed her by the arm to try and stop her, she let out the most distressed, piercing scream he had ever heard. Immediately, he pulled his hand off her arm and took a step back, showing he didn’t mean any harm while she clutched her arm close to her chest and drew in panicked breaths. If he hadn’t known already, this reaction was enough to tell anyone that she had been abused badly in the past.

“It’s below ten degrees out there. You don’t even have shoes on. You will die out there. The road I found you on is miles from here, Maria.”

He did his best to remain calm. Then, after a few moments, the thought of purring for her entered his mind, but he quickly dismissed it again. He didn’t want her to get the wrong idea. Chasing her down the hallway was bad enough but manipulating her with that primal sound was out of the question.

Maria looked out through the glass panes in the mudroom door and the entrance door to watch the snow fall heavily. In the cold blue light shining in from outside Joseph could make out the wetness in her eyes that soon resulted in a single tear running down her bruised cheek. A shiver, either from the cold in the hallway or from fear, shook her body.

Joseph took another step back and kept his voice low. “Let’s go back to the couch. It’s warmer there.”

She gave a small nod before they moved to go back into the living room, her keeping a couple of feet away. But after only two steps, Joseph heard a low groan and a thud. When he turned to look over his shoulder, Maria’s face was a pained grimace, her legs were unnaturally far apart, and one hand on the wall kept her from falling to the hardwood floor. After another assessing glance, he knew what the problem was. It was impressive that the overly long pant legs hadn’t stopped her earlier on her bolt to the door. He arched an eyebrow and bit the bullet. Bending over for her was probably as painful as kneeling down was for him, but he wouldn’t risk her slipping and hitting her head when there was no way for an ambulance to reach them right now.

“Wait, I’ll help you with that,” he grumbled and closed the distance between them. The closer he came, the more she tensed up.

Maria quickly pulled her hand from the wall when he placed his right next to hers, needing the wall to steady himself.

“I will only roll up the legs so you don’t slip again. Is that okay?”

She nodded, still watching his every move like a hawk. One wrong slip of his hands and she would probably make a run for the door again and this time he wouldn’t catch her, not when he would have to get back up on his feet again first. He couldn’t help the deep groan when his stiff muscles stretched uncomfortably around his knee joint. Something that didn’t go unnoticed.

“What happened to your leg?” she asked while lifting one, and then the other foot, for him to roll the excess fabric above her ankle.

“What happened to your face?” Joseph replied with snark. If she didn’t answer his questions, he would do her the same courtesy.

When Joseph was done, he knew he wouldn’t be able to get up gracefully—not that he was very graceful to begin with—but the risk of accidentally brushing against her injuries was too great.

“Go ahead and wait for me on the couch,” he ordered through clenched teeth, the feeling of knives in his knees wearing his good manners thin. She squeezed tightly against the wall as she made her way past him, leaving behind the unmistakable scent of discomfort and fear. She had nothing to fear from him, but she couldn’t know that and he wasn’t going to tell her in his current mood. While grabbing onto the wall to pull himself up he wondered how many times she had already heard “I won’t hurt you” only to be slapped or beaten a few moments later. He had seen women, Omegas, like her enough in his life. Joseph had hoped living out here in the middle of nowhere, he would never have to smell the scent of distress on a woman again simply because the only woman who entered his house every once in a while was his sister, and Alma would show every Alpha where he could shove his orders when he thought he could boss her around. Growing up with a moody Alpha as her big brother had definitely benefited her even if she didn’t want to acknowledge that.

Maybe once the storm was over and the streets were cleared, he could ask Alma to come and pick her up. Then she would not be his problem anymore and everything could go back to normal.

Joseph limped back into the living room, dropping down on the couch as quickly as he could to ease the pain in his leg. It helped a little, but he would rather take a hot bath and enjoy three fingers of rye to help his mind come to rest. Having her scent in his nose wasn’t helping his endeavor to forget she was here, as well as the fact that he needed to camp on the couch tonight as well.

When he looked up at her, she was still staring at his stiff leg stretched out in front of him. Not wanting to talk to her about that, he picked up where they had left before her attempt to kill herself through hypothermia.

“What’s so important in your bag that you tried to challenge mother nature over it?”

She dropped her gaze back to her hands clutched in tight fists in her lap before movement from the fireplace caught both their eyes. Moose had turned onto his side, letting the heat from the fire toast his belly while still keeping a keen eye on Maria. He was dying to say hello to her.

“He would never harm you. If you are afraid of dogs, I will make sure he won’t come anywhere near you,” Joseph said, a promise swinging in his words. If she had to stay here, he would try and make it as comfortable for her as possible. She had been through enough.

“I like dogs. He just startled me before,” Maria replied and as if Moose understood, he heaved himself up and trotted over to her, carefully nudging her leg before resting his heavy head on her knee.

There was silence in the room for a few more seconds before a heavy gust of wind pressed against the window, causing some of the heavy snowflakes to stick to the glass.

“How long will the storm last?” Maria’s voice was barely above a whisper, her delicate hand petting Moose whose eyes slowly fell shut. He acted as if Joseph never petted him. The Alpha couldn’t help but shake his head as he replied, “A couple of days. It’ll be at least two weeks until the streets are plowed.” He narrowed his eyes, not missing the fact that she still hadn’t answered his last question. “What was inside your bag?”

She kept staring out of the window. “How long have I been here already?”

“Do you ever just answer a question?” It came out much more irritated than he had intended, and the effect on her was immediate. Maria’s head snapped around to him. She pulled her hands away from Moose and put them back on her lap in tight, white-knuckled fists. She dropped her gaze down to them and pulled her shoulders up as if to protect her head from a blow she expected, her breath so shallow that he couldn’t even hear it anymore.

“I’m sorry,” she whimpered.

Fuck. Joseph ran a hand over his face and leaned back. He would never hurt her and her reaction pissed him off, not at her but at the person who had made this reaction necessary.

“No, I am. It’s been a day since I found you.” He regarded her for a moment, letting his eyes follow the landscape of deep purples, angry blues, silvery greens and fading yellows. “Do you want to press charges against whoever did this to you?”

Her wide, blue eyes flew up to his, then dropped back down to the bruises creeping out from under her sleeve. She shook her head and caught her lower lip between her teeth. Now he became angry at her. Joseph glared her way, remembering all the times he had seen women like her in a safe environment but still defending their abusers or unwilling to stop them. Lying for them in court even!

His heart pounded, pumping his anger through his entire body until it was completely filled with the white hotness of rage. It entered his scent like tar, slow and dripping, quickly filling the room. She picked up on it almost immediately, sinking even deeper into herself and glancing at his hands as he clenched and unclenched them on his thigh.

Through gritted teeth, he pressed out, “Are you hungry?”

No, she was scared and he knew it, but he needed to distract himself and where he would usually take a short walk around the house, he was now stuck inside... with her.

Maria shook her head, cowering in the corner of the couch as if to make herself disappear in the furniture. She was betrayed though by the tiny growl of her stomach.

That’s what he’d thought. After almost sleeping for a whole day and only eating some broth and bread, nobody could not be hungry.

Still stuck in his irritation, he stood up. “Don’t lie to me when I only want to help you. It will make the time we have to spend together easier. Believe me.”

It sounded like a threat even to his own ears.

With paling cheeks, she swallowed thickly before gathering the courage to talk again. “I would like to go back to my room now.”

Joseph quirked an eyebrow. “Is it your room? Do you pay rent?”

Maria’s brows dipped down in confusion so he explained what he meant.

“It’s ‘the’ bedroom, not ‘a’ bedroom, Omega.”

She needed a moment to understand the notion. It was a small log house, enough for him or even a couple, but not for two strangers who wanted to keep their distance from one another. As it was now, they didn’t need to share a bed, but as soon as his leg became really irritating, he would have to kick her out and claim his bed back.

At least that was the plan. Maria seemed to come to another, much worse conclusion judging by the way the gasoline stench of panic weaved through her scent stronger than ever.

“Don’t worry, I will stay on the couch like last night,” he grumbled in the hopes of calming her down a little. Opening a window to let the smell of pain and fear out was not an option right now and it set him on edge. He didn’t want to snap at her, but if she was afraid of him the entire time they shared his home, it would definitely happen more than once.

Joseph let out a small sigh through his nose and headed for the kitchen to throw together a small dinner. He wasn’t the best chef in the world, but it tasted… well, it tasted, that was all he could really say about it. Since he was usually the only one forced to eat his cooking, he didn’t get any complaints.

He heard the soft pads of her steps as she sneaked past behind his back. As long as she didn’t try to escape again, she might as well crawl back into her nest and feel better there. Everything that dampened the burning stench of fear was welcome to him. The stew he made was far from perfect, but it was warm and filling. Especially since it used little of the resources he had initially calculated would last him at least a month but would now have to feed two people.

He put another two slices of bread into the bowl and limped down the hallway to the bedroom door. Taking a deep breath to calm himself, he knocked. She didn’t answer, but he still entered. The bed was still empty but a tiny corner of the comforter peeked out from underneath the bed frame. Joseph rounded the foot of the bed and saw Moose lying on his side next to it. A tiny pale hand from under the bed was buried in his thick fur and small, even puffs of breath filled the silence. She was asleep again. Good, sleeping meant she felt safe. He placed the bowl on the bedside table and checked the fire, adding two new logs to keep the bedroom toasty. When he was by the door again, he called out her name. A little gasp and a new wave of her anxious scent filled the room.

He told her to eat while the stew was still hot and closed the door behind himself, returning to the living room and getting a bowl himself. Joseph set it down on the coffee table and drew the curtains underneath the loft space closed to keep the warmth of the fireplace in a little longer.

Joseph finished his food in silence before he glanced at the space where Maria had cowered before. She was an abuse victim and he couldn’t force her to tell him who did this to her, only hope she might trust him enough at some point to give up her secrets. Who had turned her into this scared little thing that hid under beds and didn’t even dare look at him? Joseph found himself clenching his fists in anger again. If he ever found this fucking coward, he would—

Do nothing, he reminded himself. She wasn’t his problem or his Omega to protect. Letting her stay here, feeding her and offering shelter, was already more than he needed to do. She was nothing to him and thus he was under no obligation to help her in the first place. As soon as the streets were cleared, he would either get Alma to pick her up or bring her to the nearest town so she could go back to that asshole or grow a backbone and continue her escape. But none of that would be his business anymore. Nothing!