Conner

I watched Antonio walk away and stopped myself from going after him. I know it hurt him to keep Skye secret, but I wasn’t sure how else to keep him safe while we were away from him.

“You okay there, Alpha?” Frankie waved his hand in front of my face.

I glanced down at the omega and rolled my eyes. “I am, now would you step back a little?” 

He laughed, but did as I asked. “So, can I have the bite?”

I saw something akin to fear flash through his eyes as he asked. “I guess that depends on you. It’s your decision. Do you want your former alpha to be able to find you? Your family?” I asked.

He shook his head. “My family are the ones that sold me to the brothel. I don’t need them to find me.”

“I would be honored to have you as part of the pack. Would you be willing to wait until we return to my pack lands, so that we can hold a proper ceremony?” I asked, thinking that Skye would like to be part of planning it.

Frankie’s eyes shown bright with tears as he nodded. “Thank you Alpha.”

“Don’t thank me until we’ve completed the ceremony.” I held out my hand and he shook it enthusiastically before he ran back to the middle of the group.

With that resolved, I turned and raced after Antonio.

It didn’t take long to find him and I approached cautiously. “Tonio? Love, would you please come back to the campground?”

He shook his head and moved farther away from me. 

“Why are we pretending that he doesn’t exist? It hurts my heart and I feel like we’ve messed up with him. What if he doesn’t want us when we get back?” He punched the tree nearest him.

“He will.” I stated. “We won’t let him do anything else. He is ours and always will be.”

Antonio turned on me. “It will be your fault if he doesn’t!” He exclaimed. “He hung up on me because you are so set on not telling him what is going on! If we had just told him the first time he asked, we wouldn’t even be needing to consider this being a possibility!”

I growled, “You were the one that didn’t want to tell him or bring him with us! Don’t put this all on me.”

He glared. “I wanted to send for him when you asked Ryan to come, but you vetoed that so fast. It’s not like we don’t have enough men to keep him safe. Instead, you decided to leave him with Jefferson, who we both know is the absolute wrong choice, but I guess it makes it so you don’t have to bring him here.”

I stumbled back a step at his brutal tone and tried to compose myself. “You know why I don’t want to bring him here! We were in agreement when we left; why is it so different now?” I asked. I could feel my wolf at the surface and was struggling to hold him at bay.

Antonio scoffed in disgust. “The difference is that you have decided for the three of us what is best and our omega is suffering for it! At least we discussed it with him before we left. He has no idea what to think now.” His eyes flashed red. “Do you even want him? Or did you go along with finding him just so you didn’t lose me? If that’s the case, by the time we get back you won’t have to worry about either of us.”

I growled and launched myself at him. It took him by surprise and I had him pinned to the tree at his back. “You will not threaten me!” I roared. He didn’t even flinch, just stared into my eyes. “You are my mate. You will not leave me!” My voice broke on the last word and I dropped my head to his shoulder. “You can’t leave me.” 

I breathed a sigh of relief when his arms finally came around me. “I just want to keep him safe.” I said softly into his neck. 

“I know, love, but we could keep him safe here too.” I felt his whisper against my hair. “We could send for him and he could be safe. Here, with us.”

I nodded against him. “We’ll tell him and I’ll try to be better. I’ll call first thing in the morning. If I can catch Ryan before he leaves, I’ll have him bring Skye with him. We’ll have our omega here soon.” I crushed him to my chest and urged his head to my shoulder. “I am so sorry for what I said and did. Please, forgive me. I swear, I will do whatever I need to do to make this up to both of you.”

Antonio’s shoulders shook with silent sobs as we stood there holding each other, lost in our own thoughts.