Page 64 of Packing for Vacation

“Oh it’s so nice to see those boys getting along, eh? I always thought they should be a pack again. It’s a shame what Elaine did to them.”

It takes me a second to realise she’s talking about my guys.

“Elaine?”

“Oh, yes. She was their scent match, but you already know this, I’m sure. She was a pretty little thing, and then she went and got involved with that awful cult and married an alpha within it, and we don’t know what happened next, but suddenly Matiu went from being in a pack with Scott to saying Scott hated his guts and that was that. Last I’d heard from his mother, they still weren’t on speaking terms, and that was only the other week that the topic came up! You must’ve worked a miracle, eh? It must’ve been about fifteen years that went by without them speaking. What was your name again?”

“Elizabeth,” I answer robotically.

“Matiu’s mother said he couldn’t come to Christmas this year as he had something important on… What were you all up to? We all missed seeing him, but especially our Amo, it’s not nice that her own father didn’t show up. You would’ve been welcome.”

Matiu’s aunt is a beta. In a particularly unhinged moment I tell her the truth. “He was fucking me through my heat.”

I don’t know what she was expecting me to say, from the way her eyes bug out, it certainly wasn’t that. When I smile again, I know it doesn’t look right or particularly friendly. “It was lovely to meet you,” I say.

She’s still spluttering fake pleasantries when I exit the washroom, a cold, sick feeling coiling in my stomach.

We’ve all had exes, but I’ve never had a scent match before. I would’ve mentioned it if I had. I would’ve mentioned things if I was one half of a group of two men that apparently hated each other.

I bump into a few chairs on my way back to the table, not truly seeing what’s in front of me. Instead I’m replaying moments in my mind, interactions between Scott and Matiu now taking on a new light.

Hated his guts.

Had a scent match before.

I never asked about these kinds of things. I didn’t think I had to. I sit down at the table and pretend to listen in as Matiu and Scott discuss something law-related, and all the while the sick feeling grows, filling up my belly, choking my throat from the inside out. They never said anything. I didn’t know I had to ask. They never said anything, and that deliberate omission feels like a betrayal, like a lie.

And I promised myself I would never let any alphas lie to me again.

I deserve better than to be treated like this.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Matiu

Lizzie has been off ever since the end of dinner. She gets quiet sometimes, lost in her own thoughts, but this is different. The car slowly fills with a twisted version of her scent. Sour berries, bitter berries, the kind that aren’t good to eat, and dread sits heavy in my gut.

We’re still ten minutes away from the bach, the sky finally dark, when she turns to me, her face lit by the lights on the stereo.

“Who is Elaine?”

Fuck. Her tone is flat, but I get the sense that she could explode at any moment. She’d be within her right to. I try to catch Scott's eye in my rearview mirror, but it’s too dark to see anything at all, and he remains silent.

“Who is Elaine?”

“Did Debra say something to you?”

She doesn't answer that question. Just stares at me, with all her hurt and anger as clear as day on her face.

“Who is Elaine?” she repeats.

“She's the woman that Scott mentioned the other week, the omega who joined that cult and now has thirteen kids. The one we knew when we were in uni.”

“The omega you knew,” she parrots, a quiet sort of fury creeping into her tone. “Is that it? You knew her? She was an acquaintance? Because that's the impression that you guys gave me when Scott told that little story. How did you know her?”

“Lizzie, look⁠—”

“Matiu,” she hisses back. “How did you know her?”