Page 40 of Indigo

“The pack was here. Everyone and their mother were talking about the stupid cowboy and their horses. I can smell them,” the other says.

“If they left, they got their Omega.”

“If the rumors are true,” the last one says, “the escaped Omegas are somewhere here. We can have our fucking pick and bring the rest back so boss will be happy with us.”

I don’t need to hear any more. I run, and I run fast.

twenty-four

Cassidy

I’m behaving.

I only sigh in frustration every two minutes or so, and I am on this damn horse going back to the motel. Without my woman.

Why? That’s something I’m not sure about. Nash says if it were up to me, I’d be dragging her caveman style. I don’t know why that is a bad thing. Wanting someone so bad you can’t imagine living your life without them is a good thing.

Every step away from Indigo is like a knife to the heart. I grit my teeth, forcing the hat to sink into my head. I’m not going to ask again why we are moving away from our Omega. I’m not going to point out the obvious because come on, they feel it too.

“This is fucking insane,” I grumble.

See? I’m not asking anything. I’m just pointing out the obvious.

“Cassidy…” Nash sighs.

“You know this ‘free them and they will come to you’ bullshit is not right, man.”

“Except that’s what she needs,” he says again. “She needs to be free to know she can do whatever she wants and still choose us.”

That was what he said back in the hotel when Indigo was clearly freaking out, and she locked herself in the bathroom. He told us to back off, and because he’s my packmate and I trust him, I accepted. But I wanted to knock open that door and hold her to my chest.

Fuck, I wanted to hold her so bad I had to ball my hands into a fist not to give in to the urge when she stepped through that door. So here I am, on a horse, galloping away from her and hoping at some point she chooses us.

We leave the horses back with Emilio, and the older man doesn’t even bat an eye that we took all this time to bring them back. His smile is easy, and he refuses the payment Nash tries to push at him. Not wanting to offend the person who helped us when we needed it the most, we leave him and make our way to the motel.

“What…?”

Something is wrong. I frown as we approach the motel. Goose bumps break all over my skin. My eyes zigzag between the back windows, the pool, and the yard.

No one is here.

None of the exits have ever been unguarded, yet they are today. With curses slipping through our lips, we jog all the way down, yanking the back door open. What I find inside takes years off my life.

I can’t scent them. Not one fucking Omega.

Everything is a mess—old magazines from the front desk scattered on the floor, a fucking shoe abandoned in the middle of the hall. My terror is mirrored in the faces of my packmates. In five minutes, we searched the whole place. When it’s this empty, it’s easy to run from one room to the next.

No one is in the office, the cafeteria, or other common areas. No one is in the bedroom, and no truck is in the parking lot.

Panic settles in my gut, and for the first time since we left our post to look for Indigo, I feel guilty. I thought everything was okay. I really didn’t think they were in danger, but what if they took them back? What if…

“Pick up, pick up, pick,” Nash chants with the phone glued to his ear.

“Who is he calling?” I ask Hank as I jog back from one end of the hotel to the front desk.

“Beau.”

“Fuck!”