Not just the Beta (Oriana and Slade) novel Chapter 64

Slade

He mind-linked to Hayden ‘I’ve not forgotten what you said about Oriana in the school cafeteria.’

His voice was full of anger over those words, and then he just severed that link without waiting to hear his response. It was just a reminder to him that he’d not forgotten was all.

He wanted to see just what kind of boy he was. Would he come and find Slade, apologise and take the licks he knew was coming his way? Or would he now stick close to his own father? And try to make it look like he was at the man’s side learning his role. When, in fact, he was hiding behind his own father, so Slade couldn’t come at him.

It wasn’t going to work, no matter how long he thought he could stand next to his father if that was his choice, that boy had to turn up for Alpha Unit training with Slade and the boys. Which was going to start at 5am tomorrow morning, as expected, seeing as he was now home and hadn’t personally trained with his unit in a year. It was pack protocol to train with his unit right away.

Slade was currently in the pack nightclub, and had a beer in his hand, though he would not drink

himself stupid ever again. He now regretted the last time he’d done that, so he wouldn’t do it again. One beer was more than sufficient in his eyes to unwind after a long day.

He sat at the bar in the same place as Ori had, only he was facing the crowd watching the wolves out there dancing. He nodded to the pack members that greeted him. It seemed after a year, things here had gone back to normal for all of them.

If it wasn’t already late at night when he’d gotten home, he’d have gone right to the tech department and asked for an update on Ori’s case. Not that Palmer and Yuri hadn’t been giving him weekly reports, via sss, for the past year. So far no one had gotten anywhere. She’d just simply vanished.

She’d still not used her pack card, not once since the Pheonix airport. He hoped every single day that she would find a reason to swipe it or hit an ATM to draw out the maximum daily limit of cash for her. It would give him a clue as to her whereabouts and that was all he needed. Prayed for every damned day she was out there on her own.

He had told his father he had better not ever cancel her pack card or all hell would break loose if he found out. He also didn’t want it flagged as stolen because that could see her getting into.

trouble in the human world; depending on where she was, she could well be hauled in and arrested by the human police.

He wanted her to have access to pack funds if she needed them for whatever reason, regardless of how long she was out there. He couldn’t actually help her right now, but he’d be damned if he’d leave her out there with absolutely nothing at all.

Her pack card was the only thing she’d taken with her, and just one swipe of that card would alert the tech department within an hour of her using it, and maybe he’d be able to get to her before she left the area. It was the only real hope he had.

His father had told him, ‘that of course he wouldn’t cancel it’ but had then told him in the next breath ‘It had an expiry date, that it would expire when she was 21. Their pack cards were all only valid for three years, and she’d gotten a new one at 18, just like he, Palmer and Yuri had.’

So the day his stopped working was the day hers would as well. That card in his wallet was like a ticking clock that counted down the days to the last time she could use it, be tracked by it.

He waved away a she-wolf trying to entice him out onto the dance floor. Felicity was her name, and they’d slept together before. A year ago, he would have stepped out there and laid hands on her. However, he was no longer interested in having sex with anyone, sex had ruined his life, and not just here inside the pack, but in Alpha College as well.

He could now understand those wolves that wanted to wait for their Goddess-Gifted Mates to come along. He was now going to be one of those wolves that waited, regardless of how long it took.

Though he could see that both Palmer and Yuri had girls hanging off them, and he would let them go about their lives as they normally would. He’d not yet talked to them about what was going to happen now that he was back inside the pack. His plan was to leave the pack and hunt Ori himself, ask if they wanted to go with him. He wouldn’t make them, but he was hoping that they would.

She’d left it out the front of the packhouse and when he’d returned to Alpha College it had been in the garage parked right next to his, where he himself had put it. It should still have been there, he had the keys to it. So, who had moved it? He was betting on Hayden or Anders.

The question now was, where was it? He was willing to bet they’d moved it so he wouldn’t come home and see it, and be reminded of her, or maybe that fateful moment he’d had with her inside the car, when those eyes of hers had turned on him filled with pain, betrayal and then anger.

Little did they know it was all he thought about while he lay in his bed and tried to sleep, she was all

he could think about. Where she was, how she was. Had childbirth been long and agonizing or hard and fast? Had she survived it? Did they have a son or a daughter? What did their child look like?

Had she kept the child or given it up? He tortured himself with that one, a million times over the past year, with the thought of her just giving up their child and abandoning it, because it was his.

Because she believed he’d betrayed her. That she wouldn’t want to raise his child, even if it was hers as well.

A part of him was always in a very dark place where that child was concerned, and all the horrid thoughts that he had about her hating the child she’d had with him, and what she would do with it.

That darkness, he just couldn’t seem to keep at bay some days, and it would lead him down dark torturous roads. Where she just gave the child up, would just hand it over to any old pack she came across, and walk away from it, uncaring what would happen to it, herself, because of who he was, and what she now felt about him.