The Pack Slut (The Fae Omegas Standalone Series Book 1)
Chapter 8

Nate

I was walking to my car planning to skip school when I saw Thomas Quinn standing beside Ginny’s car.

“Come on,” He said as he held her wrist, preventing her from unlocking her car. “We need to talk.”

“Can’t we talk at home?” She asked.

At home?!

So all this time she disappeared, she was staying with Thomas Quinn? What a little slut! And now she was calling his temporary house her home?

I gritted my teeth and moved stealthily into the shadows in the parking lot, wondering how the goddess had made the horrible mistake of choosing Ginny as my true mate when the only thing she could offer anyone was her body and she didn’t even know how to keep it exclusive and was willing to share it around to anyone who wanted it.

“Don’t insult my intelligence Imogen, we both know you have no intentions of returning to my house tonight or ever again.” Thomas reprimanded her.

I was stunned to see Ginny look away with an adorable, shifty look of embarrassment. It was bewildering because I had never seen her with such a look.

Thomas held her wrist and dragged her towards the woods, “Come on, this place is too open, and we need to talk privately.”

I followed them stealthily, deep into the woods until they found a spot under a tree where Thomas asked Ginny to sit. She didn’t say a word as she sat beside him with her knees pressed to her chest and her chin on her knees, as though she wanted to occupy as little space as possible. She always sat like that, but I had never seen how vulnerable it made her look until today.

“We need to talk about the nightmares and why you can’t seem to sleep in your own house, wherever that is,” Thomas said, gazing at her. “I need to understand the full scope of the situation as I try to get you out of the Paxon pack.”

Now that he said it, it was true. Ginny always wanted to sleep over at my place, but I had never been to her house. And with how much she claimed to love me, it was a little weird that she hadn’t ever invited me to her house.

“Everyone has nightmares, Thomas. And my father doesn’t care if I come home or not, so I don’t have anyone waiting for me to come home, anyway.” Ginny’s reply was dodgy, and I could tell she was lying through her teeth.

Thomas was quiet for a few minutes, as if contemplating how to go about questioning her. “The night I caught you sleeping at the house, you had a nightmare. I wouldn’t have known you were in the house without hearing you because I couldn’t smell any foreign scents. Back then, I didn’t hear your mutters. But the night we slept together...you spoke out loud.” I watched him pause and take a deep breath.

Then, he continued, “Do you want to tell me why you were whimpering and sobbing on my bed even after I had woken you up, or do you want to explain the words you said? How is crying and saying, ‘Daddy, that hurts!’ in a little girl’s voice a regular nightmare?”

I covered my mouth with my hand to hold in my gasp of surprise. I knew that if I made any sound, Thomas would replace me, and they would stop this conversation, so I had to be careful. Because I had to hear Ginny’s answer.

I remembered that Ginny usually had nightmares, but they were silent ones with heavy gasping and sometimes a lot of kicking. Whenever I asked about them, she always used the excuse of everyone having nightmares to avoid telling me about them. I used to think they had something to do with losing her mother early in life, but now I realized that there was more to her nightmares than I’d thought.

Ginny stood up and paced as if she was trying to think of a lie to tell.

Thomas seemed to think so, too. “Don’t bother lying to me. I know your father has been sexually abusing you for a while and that you sleep in other people’s houses every night to escape from your own house. But what I don’t understand is the look of sadness in your eyes when you asked me if we’d had sex. Did it…bring back terrible memories? Did being with me remind you of your father?”

It took a lot to resist growling at the reminder that Ginny had cheated on me with this duplicitous Alpha who didn’t live with his pack but instead worked as a member of the Supernatural Council.

He was probably the one and only Alpha werewolf in the Supernatural Council who didn’t lead a pack or assist his father in leading his pack. Instead, he gave up being Alpha to his brother without a fight and went to join the Supernatural Council. What kind of Alpha did such a thing?

Ginny seemed to have heard the sadness in Thomas’ questions because she immediately squatted in front of him, holding his hands. “No, not at all. I panic during sex sometimes, but it didn’t happen when I was with you, okay? Having that nightmare had nothing to do with having sex with you. It was just bad timing.”

Ginny sat beside Thomas and held his left hand.

After a few minutes of silence, she finally said, “I had a mate, but my father broke us up. I don’t know how, but he found some sex tapes, or probably made them himself, of me with some pack members, and posted it on the pack’s intranet so everyone in the pack saw it.”

“Is that why they isolated you?”

Ginny nodded, saying nothing.

I watched as Thomas grasped her right hand, which had let go of his left hand, and squeezed it in consolation.

“Your mate. Is it that Nathan boy, Alpha Alfred’s son?” Thomas asked, even as I stiffened.

“Yes. He doesn’t want me. He had wanted to mate with me at first. But when my father found out and posted those videos, he rejected me. I... I accepted his rejection recently,” Ginny said, and my heart broke to hear the deep, depressing sadness in her voice.

“I see. It doesn’t matter. He’s just a short-sighted child now. He’ll know what he lost when he gets older.” Thomas said with a smile.

If I wasn’t hiding away to glean Imogen’s secrets, I would definitely walk up to Thomas and challenge him to a duel. Being older than me didn’t give him the right to call me a short-sighted child.

They went quiet and started playing with each other’s hands.

I wished I could go over there to separate their hands, but I decided against doing that.

“Do you mind telling me how old you were when your father started abusing you?” Thomas’s question was abrupt, but I also wanted to hear Ginny answer it.

Although she seemed taken about by the quick change of subject and looked shiftily about, obviously not wanting to answer, she still gave him an answer. “About 13. It was just after my mom’s death. I couldn’t do anything about it for about 3 years, but I thought of a way later.”

“Would you go with me to the Supernatural Council if I negotiate the terms with your Alpha?” Thomas asked.

Watching Ginny bite at her fingernails, I knew that she was nervous, and I realized that she really wanted to leave the pack even though she didn’t give Thomas a positive answer and only asked apprehensively, “What do you want from me in return?”

“Nothing, I just want you to be happy. My wolf feels very protective of you.” Thomas said.

When he stopped talking for a minute, I realized that he was right. There was something really vulnerable about Ginny, and when we first met, I couldn’t help feeling protective of her.

However, for a while now, since the sex tapes and the humiliation that came with their appearance, I had suppressed all my protective feelings towards her.

Thomas must have been thinking of a way to reassure Ginny because he suggested, “If you’re afraid that I’ll take advantage of you, we can sign a contract or something that I’ll deliver you without harm to the Supernatural Council. I still need to tell you some things, but I give you my word that I will never take advantage of you.”

“It’s alright. I trust you. If you wanted to hurt me, you would have done it already.” She said in a small voice.

“Imogen?”

“Hmmm?”

“Don’t you want to get back at your father? I can help you punish him.”

“No need. He’s not worth it. It’s fine for me to leave the pack and come back when I’m stronger to deal with him myself.”

Thomas was quiet and then, he sighed and replied. “Okay, I’ll respect your wishes.”

Then he practically held her in his lap and held her face to his chest.

“You can cry on my shoulders if you want. Remember that you’re not alone anymore. You have me now. And I’ll never leave unless you ask me to.” Thomas said as sobs racked her body.

And I could only stand there in the shadows, watching my mate cry in another Alpha’s arms while I tried to come to terms with the secrets I’d just discovered about her.