They'd been in the shithole prison for five years, seven months, and fourteen days. In those years, they had found a routine. It wasn't good, or happy. But they'd had each other, and that had been enough.
And then Eden stumbled into their lives like a ray of sunshine in a traffic cone orange jumpsuit, and suddenly the best parts of his life were contained in a 5'2 blonde little omega who bruised like a peach and constantly found herself at risk of violence inside this hellhole of a concrete box.
And he should be really happy that she wasn't here anymore, that she was safe and being watched over by that female alpha lawyer with a cool toned voice that set his spine straight.
She had said she would keep an eye on their mate and keep her safe. That was good.
But holy fuck he missed her. He couldn't just go back to doing routine maintenance on the hundred year old boiler system that was never going to fucking work. He couldn't go back to eating unidentifiable slop in the caf.
Welding fittings together wasn't the same anymore without Eden snuggled up into her nest in the corner anymore. The food wasn't the same without them feeding her and while she watched them eat with that adorable little wrinkle of disgust on her nose. It wasn't the same without herapologizingfor taking a goddamn dump in the toilet, her face beet red as if they expected her to reprimand her for having bodily functions.
His life was the exact same as it was before she came into it, and it was all the lesser for it now. Somehow, when she left, she didn't just take herself, she took half of his soul with her... or some shit like that. Flowery words were Tenor's deal. All he knew was fuck his hottie omega, black ops, eat hot chip, and lie.
And they didn't even do black ops anymore, not since they'd taken that stupid fucking mercenary gig while they were on shore leave.
"It'll make us enough cash to take a year off," Julius had said. "We could buy a house," he had said.
What they hadn't fucking known was that the piece of shit they were supposed to be a protection detail for had been trafficking omegas, the same fucking way Eden had been trafficked.
He was funnelling them out of developing countries under the guise ofmatchmaking. And when those hopeful omegas arrived there expecting to be matched with wealthy American packs, they instead found themselves forced into sex work in brothels that sat in plain sight in fancy neighbourhoods with big ol' new build McMansions.
When they'd stumbled upon one randomly one evening when they'd intended to be checking in on their target's whereabouts, they'd promptly put a bullet in his head, along with the other thugs guarding the girls, as well as one of the patrons for good measure, since the sick fuck had been raping an underage girl.
They'd done their best to get the girls to safety. They'd given them as much money as they could, had tried to help those of them that wanted to get to shelters. But they had no idea what happened to the rest of them. He and Julius and Tenor been scooped up in the night by an unmarked van and multiple darts of trazodone straight to the neck.
Their trial had been the same bullshit as Eden's. The judge was probably in the pocket of whoever else was in on the trafficking ring. They hadn't gotten a real trial, no paper trail, just a midnight bus trip to this shit place. "Private prisons" were no better than a fucking slave market. It was a goddamn black hole where they could drop anyone they wanted and do whatever the fuck they wanted.
Eden might've been the first omega they knew about in here, but neither of them were the first inmates with a story about being thrown in here without any real trial. Eden was just the first one that got out.
The corruption ran bone deep everywhere he looked. But somehow they had gotten her out. They had gotten her somewhere safe. And that would just have to be enough.
"Hey," Julius grunts, pulling him out of his brooding. "It's my turn to sleep with her pillow tonight."
Her pillow was the only thing that still held her scent and they'd been passing it between them each night with an unspoken rule that if anyone got jizz on it and ruined it for the others, they'd get their ass beat.
He doesn't know when they last said anything more than a few words to each other. Life without Eden was fucking bleak.
He'd only just handed over the pillow when what looked like the entirety of the guards' night shift show up at their cell.
"You pieces of shit got some damn good friends in high places," one of them says.
Chapter Seventeen
Eden
???
Stupid heavy five lb. bag of potatoes. Stupid broken elevator. Stupid weak omega arms unable to hold six bags of groceries at once up four flights of stairs. But taking two trips would be admitting defeat.
It's been a few days since she went to the military base and she still hasn't heard anything. She didn't want to say anything to her mates over the phone, not sure if they'd be upset with her and not wanting to get their hopes up if it was yet another dead end.
She'd never felt as stupid or ineffectual in her life as she had the past few weeks. She'd been trying to keep herself busy, and restocking her kitchen was one of the things that needed doing that could offer a distraction.
When she finally makes it to her floor, Eden's arms are shaking and her breathing is more than a little laboured.
The first thing that notifies her to a problem is when her lock clicks open without a fight and she easily swings her apartment door open. The next moment she knows there's a problem is when she catches the undeniable scent of alpha on the air in thedark room. The third is when she sees the bulky figure of a male sitting in her nest illuminated by the glow of the hallway.
If she still had any breath in her lungs, she would've screamed. The only thing that pauses the scream building in her throat is the heaving breaths she can only just catch as she prepares to drop her groceries, about to bolt back down the stairs she'd just climbed.
