Chapter Eleven

Erik would have preferred to go alone.

That was how he worked, how he’d always worked. Sure, when doing basic jobs, he’d have Liam along. Many times, his twin was helpful, given how good Liam was at dealing with people. However, when handling these shadier aspects, Erik preferred privacy.

Maybe it was because a part of him hated to be seen in that light.

It was easy to play the bad guy part, to be used to people fearing him, but having others actually witness the atrocities he committed for the greater good—well, those he preferred to do without others.

However, given Erik’s shoulder, there was no chance of that happening. He needed backup because he didn’t have a death wish.

While he still had no idea who exactly Gregory was, he did know where the man was staying. Sometimes it wasn’t about looking for what was there but for what wasn’t.

Hotels were a no-go, because few had security a man like Gregory would trust. It meant he had to be renting something, especially because he’d claimed that he would remain in town if Ashley wanted to.

That had led to far too many hours on the phone with contacts until Erik had found the right one, the one who went silent when he would normally have talked.

Gregory had holed up in a large three-story house, the sort people normally rented when celebrities came into town.

It sat with neighbors on both sides, but with a small amount of space either way to give privacy. All the buildings around it had been split up into apartments already, and it stood like the last of an old dynasty.

Erik had his eyes closed as he sat in the living room, relaxing before he had to go, taking a moment to collect himself. He’d have preferred to be out on the balcony, but again, no death wish. One bullet was more than enough for him.

“Is your shoulder hurting?” Ashley’s soft voice still held guilt, which gnawed at Erik.

He’d taken a bullet for her happily, and he’d rather shoulder the guilt, as well. Unfortunately, there was no strike to jump in front of for that.

“No,” he said as he opened his eyes. How did she manage to surprise him each time he saw her? It was as though he picked up some new facet of her, a new thing he liked. This time it was that her hair had a curl in the front, amidst the slight waves, that brushed her eyebrow. Perhaps he hadn’t noticed before because she often tucked it behind her ear.

He patted the couch when she seemed unsure of her welcome.

She took the seat he offered, tucking her legs beneath her, a long skirt billowing around her.

And she was soaked in Liam’s scent. It sprang up more than a few filthy thoughts, made him want to add his own scent to her, especially before he left.

Instead, she turned toward him, her hands folded in her lap. “How long have you been with Liam and Torrin?”

He sighed, because talking wasn’t his strong suit and talking about ugly subjects was the last thing he wanted to do right then.

Somehow, though, he found himself unwilling to deny her anything. “A long time. We grew up together.”

“I didn’t have cousins or siblings.” Such loss in those words.

“Torrin’s mother was Liam and my mother’s sister. Torrin’s father was never in the picture, so our father took him and his mother in. We’ve lived together all our lives.”

At times, it took saying it for Erik to grasp how much his brother and his cousin meant to him. He knew it, of course, but given that they’d never known any other life than as a trio, it was his normal.

At rare moments, he’d think about losing them. His chest would go tight and he couldn’t even consider it, as though his brain lacked the ability. They were more than family. They were like organs he relied on, that he needed to live.

“That must have been nice,” she said, pulling him from his musing. “I had my fathers, which meant our house was full, but I didn’t have any other family, anyone my age. Would have been nice to grow up with other kids.”

‘Nice’ was not a word he would have used to describe his childhood. He tapped his foot, a nervous habit he’d never managed to break.

He’d learned to curtail it when it mattered, like when on jobs where it could be a tell.

Somehow, he couldn’t seem to stop it when his least favorite topic of conversation came up.

“Erik?” Her voice was soft, a question there.

He rose, trying to play off the conversation. “Sorry. My mind wanders. You should sleep soon. Will you take Torrin’s room again?”

Her cheeks flushed, that lovely show of unease. “Shouldn’t that bother you?”

“You grew up with five fathers. You already know alphas are more than capable of sharing mates without fighting.” Besides, it wasn’t as though Erik could offer his bed up for the night.

He wouldn’t be in it, and even if he were, a part of him wasn’t sure if he wanted her there.

He disliked letting his guard down, and he’d never been a sound sleeper.

As petty as it might be, he suspected he wanted her to want to sleep in his bed. He didn’t want to allow it, but just the desire from her would go a long way toward soothing him.

Which was ridiculous.

He went to take a step toward her, but stilled.

He’d been careful, more so after she’d backed away from him in the alleyway. It made him risk a question he hated to ask. “Are you afraid of me?”

“What? Why would you ask that?”

“Because you’ve backed away from me. You wouldn’t be the first to be afraid.” Bitterness nipped at his words.

She came forward, and though her steps were slow, she did it of her own free will. No coaxing, no demands. “What do you mean, I wouldn’t be the first?”

He sighed, allowing her to near. “The last female I was close with never trusted me. She looked at me like you have, as though I could never fully prove that she was safe around me. She ended up walking away over it. I don’t care for people to be afraid of me, to not trust me, but I have grown used to it.”

He left out the rest, that she’d seen him kill, that when, during a walk, two men had leapt from the shadows, Erik had ended them without thought. He’d never shaken the way she’d stared at him, as if he were a worse monster than them.

“You make me nervous,” she admitted. “Then again, you all make me a little nervous.”

“But you don’t retreat from Liam or Torrin.”

She set her hands on his chest, careful to avoid his shoulder. “You’re…”

Erik didn’t pull her closer, didn’t move at all. He let her go at her own pace, as much as he hated the slowness of it.

Finally, she sighed and moved to her toes, brushing her lips to his. She whispered against the kiss. “You’re quiet, and sometimes I see this other thing inside you, like you’re capable of things that would make me shiver. It isn’t fair to blame you for it, but I can’t help it. It just makes me nervous. I know it isn’t you, though. It’s just my own fears, my own past.”

But it is me. She isn’t seeing her own ghosts. She isn’t running from her own past. She’s seeing what I really am.

Erik gave up fighting it, even as memories swamped him of the last time a woman had feared him, when she’d run from him, when she’d seen the truth of him.

It had nearly destroyed him.

He just had to hide it from Ashley, had to keep it locked away so deeply that it didn’t even peek from behind his eyes.

Because if she ever caught a real glimpse, if she ever saw what he was capable of, what he’d done, she would run so far, he’d never catch her.

* * * *

Liam smiled at the way Ashley had plastered herself against Torrin despite the man’s obvious discomfort.

She reminded him of a cat who didn’t much care if people liked her or not.

Of course, Torrin liked her. It showed in how his hand curled around her, in the rare softness in his dark, stern eyes.

Physical affection wasn’t something Torrin had much experience with, however.

Liam remembered back to Gilly. Even with her, Torrin had been stiff, uneasy. He’d cared for her, of course. In fact, Liam had no doubt the two had bonded, that they’d been mates, even if it had been a short relationship. She’d had no desire for additional mates, though, so Liam and Erik had pursued their own relationships.

Well, Erik had.

Liam, despite being the best with women, was also their eternal bachelor.

It was harder to miss something he’d never tasted.

Still, Ashley’s hair falling in sweet waves over Torrin’s chest, her body curled around his on the couch, was endearing. She gave everything, which was something none of them had ever really experienced.

Their lives consisted of people who took, who stole, who would sell a person out at the first chance if there was something in it for them. Ashley wasn’t like that, and while it was exciting, it scared him.

She didn’t fit into their world.

Too soft. Too sweet. Too unaware of the real dangers out there.

She shifted, and a familiar tension in Torrin said she’d moved in a way that aggravated his hip.

Not that the stubborn man would say a word about it. He never complained, never bemoaned the injury. In fact, even when Liam thought back to the start, back to when Torrin had taken care of them when he’d returned, when that hip had to have been agonizing, he’d said nothing.

Just as Liam was about to say something—not to bring it up directly, it would only annoy him and upset Ashley—she seemed to realize it as well.

Observant girl.

Ashley shifted away. “Oh, sorry,” she said quickly.

Torrin waved off the concern, though that same gentleness in his face said her worry had chipped away at his walls.

Still, Ashley remained sitting up instead of retaking her spot against his side.

“What are you thinking?” Liam smiled at her sharp look—or the sharpest the sweet girl could manage. “I know that face. You want to ask something.”

“Erik said you three lived together all your lives.”

An arctic chill took the room, the same temperature drop that happened each time the topic was broached.

She sighed, setting her hands in her lap. “Never mind.”

Liam swallowed down his discomfort. “Sorry. It’s just not a topic we much care for.”

“Neither was Gregory for me, but I still told you.”

“We needed to know about him. There’s something that can be done. Our past has no resolution, so no point in discussion,” Torrin said.

She deflated, shoulders lowering, body hunching.

How did she managed to tug at Liam that way? He’d always been the one to manipulate others, yet he continuously did what she wanted despite his best intentions. “It was an ugly time, sweet. Let’s just say that our parents cared more about getting high than they did about raising children. We got out as quickly as we could. Can we change subjects?”

Her face said she didn’t care for the avoidance, that she wanted to understand more, but she only nodded. “Then I want to know about the omega whose room I’m staying in.”

Well, fuck. Liam wasn’t sure that was any better a topic.

Torrin looked at her. “Is that why you didn’t want to sleep there?”

She nodded. “The room’s set up and taken care of like you expect her back. Am I just taking someone’s place while you all wait for her?”

Torrin cast his gaze to Liam, but Liam only offered a short jerk of his head.

Of all the conversations he could have, he did not want to do this one. If he did, he’d have to decide whether to tell the truth or lie, and he didn’t know which was worse.

“The omega’s name is Kara. We met her when she was a teenager and took her in,” Torrin said.

“Where is she now?”

“She has mates she lives with. We kept her room out of a silly nostalgia. She’s grown now, hasn’t lived here in a long time.”

“So she wasn’t your mate?”

Liam stared at the floor, not at her. If he looked at her, she might read the guilt.

Which was stupid, because he shouldn’t feel guilty. He’d slept with plenty of females and had no problem with it. Just because she was a virgin didn’t mean he was expected to be one as well. He didn’t regret the sex he’d had, the women he’d enjoyed.

But Kara had been different, and he damned well knew it.

While neither of them had enjoyed the sex, there was still a connection between them, and keeping it from Ashley, especially since she was staying in the same room Kara had, felt wrong.

Not that Liam would change it.

Secrets were part of life, and he couldn’t imagine that one was any worse than any of the others they were keeping from her.

You can lie to others, but don’t lie to yourself.

“Sorry, I was being jealous,” she said.

Her apology burned Liam, because she had no reason to apologize, unlike him.

Instead of dealing with that, he turned on the charm he used like a weapon and hid his real feelings away until they collapsed beneath the weight of his false mask. “Jealous, huh? Well, sweet, I actually sort of like jealousy on you.”

She gave him a glare.

He only turned his look to Torrin. “Did you know she was a cheerleader?”

Torrin groaned, a break from his stoic act. “Dear god, I feel like a pervert thinking about that. I am fairly sure I am too old to like the idea of you in a cheerleading costume.”

She flushed, the praise doing what it always did, as though it watered parts of her that had withered over time, like it soaked into her soul. “You can’t keep a secret,” she said to Liam.

“No, I really can’t. To be fair, omega, I think the three of us have to work together just to deal with you. You seem to wrap us around your finger if we don’t.”

She stuttered for a moment. “I do not! As I recall, I said no to the furniture, to moving into the apartment, to the job and even tried to run away. You keep getting your way, not me.”

He huffed a soft laugh at her sullen tone. “And good thing we do, because you don’t look so bad off. You can’t say this isn’t better than being alone in some roach-infested apartment somewhere.”

She took her lip between her teeth, but her expressive eyes said it all. This was far better.

“You’re impossible,” she said instead of fighting any further.

Liam moved from his spot to the couch beside her. He grasped her shoulders to rearrange her—despite her hands that swatted at him—so her head was in his lap and her legs rested over Torrin’s lap.

It wouldn’t aggravate the other alpha’s hip, and Liam rather liked her belonging to them both like this.

Liam stroked his fingers through her hair until her breathing evened out, until she drifted off to sleep.

He liked that, liked the trust she must have in them if she could let down her guard enough to be so vulnerable with them.

Torrin stroked his fingers over the knee-high socks she wore—this pair without characters, just stripes of bright colors—his gaze curious.

“So, are you giving in, yet?”

“She slept in my bed last night, did she not?”

Liam shrugged. “Sure, but she still doesn’t carry your scent, so you clearly kept enough distance to stop that from happening. How long do you really think you can walk this line?”

“As long as I need to.”

The stubborn alpha was often too difficult for his own good—or anyone else’s.

“Don’t bullshit me. I know you too well. You’re going to give in, because you can’t help it. None of us can.”

Torrin’s long fingers traced the stripes on the socks in slow, gentle caresses. “I feel like this is temporary. We’re balancing things that won’t stay, and we are doing so at her risk.”

“She needed help. Were we supposed to turn our backs on her?”

“No, but we also didn’t need to get involved. Do you really think she has a place in our world? Be honest, Liam, not about what you want, what you wish, but about reality. Do you truly think that this could last?”

Liam twisted one of her soft tresses around his finger, marveling at how every part of her gave so easily. She was like water, able to meld to anything. She was the thing missing in their lives, the thing they didn’t deserve but wanted so badly.

She was the softness to all the hardness their lives had been.

But Torrin’s question refused to be ignored, knocking at Liam’s skull as it had since he’d met her, since he’d first set eyes on the beautiful, gentle omega who was so much more than they’d ever expected to find.

He forced himself to answer, no matter how painful the words were, as though ripped from his throat and jagged. “No. I don’t see how it could last.”

“Then how can we put her through this? How can we do it to ourselves?”

Liam sighed, letting go of that mask he wore, letting Torrin see how tired he was from it. “Do you remember that treehouse we built? The one that was mostly just random pieces of found wood leaning in that huge old pine tree?”

“As I recall, I told you two it would never stand.”

“And Erik and I still built it and sat up there. The first good windstorm that happened, the pieces went flying. Erik and I ended up cut up—”

“And I got a black eye from a piece that fell down,” Torrin reminded him. “It seems I was right.”

“You were right that it would fall, but you know what? When we were up there, even if it was a short time, even if we paid for it, we were free. It was a break, a moment of something good in the middle of all that shit. Ask Erik and I bet he’d say the same. It was worth the pain, even if it didn’t last.”

Torrin didn’t acknowledge the lesson, his gaze dropping to the sleeping omega stretched out between them.

He could see the question in Torrin’s eyes.

Will the pain be worth it?

Was it ever?