But Hope instinctually knew he couldn't be far. If, for some reason, he'd climbed in that old truck and driven off, she would have felt it. That same heaviness that had landed in her gut when she'd tried to make a break for it that first day would have returned. Her heart would be speeding, her stomach-churning. She'd be in a panic.
But none of that was happening. She felt fine. So where ever he was, it had to be close.
The funny thing was Hope had almost no idea how Maddox usually spent his days. For all their time together, they'd spent surprisingly little of it talking.
Well, not about anything that mattered anyway.
Hope rolled the stiffness out of her ankles before swinging her legs over the side of the bed. She might as well try getting up. Her knees felt a little weak as she carefully shifted all her weight on to them, but they held her steady.
After five days and nights with an alpha, Hope figured that was nothing short of a miracle.
Not for an omega.
Surprisingly, Hope found herself smiling at the thought.
Like most betas, she'd grown up learning that alphas and omegas were something to be feared and avoided. They were the monsters in her bedtime stories. The danger in the dark woods. The boogeyman.
Of course, her parent's overly strict ideology hadn't helped. The sect they belonged to truly believed that alphas were the descendants of fallen angels. The actual spawn of the devil and his cohorts.
Of course, that made omegas the whores of Babylon. Which, to be honest, wasn't a huge leap from how her parents already felt about her. She had a feeling if her parents ever found out about her true nature, they'd shake their heads slowly and whisper told you she was born bad.
What Hope had been born with was a mind of her own. She'd never accepted anything at face value and loved to ask questions. She liked to roam. To see and experience things for herself. To live her own life. That sort of behavior wasn't exactly encouraged in a hyper-conservative religious cult.
She only prayed that Maddox didn't think the same way.
He obviously had some firm ideas about his role and hers, but if he thought that she was just going to follow in her mother's footsteps and crank out babies all day, he was mistaken.
The sex between them was good. Better than good. It was nothing short of divine. But nothing—absolutely nothing—was worth giving up your soul for.
Hope hobbled her way over to the closet, ready to pull on another one of Maddox's shirt as a makeshift dress, but her hand stilled midway. Much to her surprise, she found some of her own clothes washed and folded inside. Not just the cut up gown she'd woken up in, but the hiking clothes she arrived in too.
Hope was so glad to see the reminders of her old self that she scooped them up and hugged them to her chest. She felt a new sense of confidence as she pulled them on.
Sure, there was a ragged bullet hole in the shoulder of the shirt, but she didn't mind. If anything, Hope was amazed and proud to have survived such a traumatic experience.
Even though her friends had not.
Like a splash of cold water to the face, the image of Dave and Sandra came flooding back. Her blood chilled.
Here she was mooning over five days of earth-shatteringly good sex while her friends still rested in an unmarked grave, and their murderers walked free.
Guilt washed over her, and before she could waste another second, Hope was heading out the door to find Maddox.
But she didn't see him. He wasn't in the small clearing in front of the cabin. There was no sign of him near the hot spring or in the thick grove of trees beyond.
Shit. He wasn't anywhere.
Maybe he had gone farther away than she realized. Maybe miles away. Hell, maybe hundreds of miles away.
It wasn't like she had any real idea of how this bond between alphas and omegas worked. Maybe now that they were bonded and claimed everything calmed down. Maybe she wasn't tied as tightly to his side anymore.
Maybe she could leave.
Her stomach twisted at the thought. Bile rose up, burning her throat.
Oh, for fuck's sake.
She could do this. She knew she could. Sure, she knew that people said omegas never left their alphas, but people used to say that about the church too. Hope had spent her whole life proving people wrong.
Now she just had to prove it to every instinct that pulsed in her blood.
Okay. Maybe not leave, exactly. But take a nice walk…all the way to a phone where she could call the authorities and let them know what had happened to Sandra and Dave. Then she'd come marching right back. She swore it.
Hope arched a brow and waited for her body to rebel again. This time though, her stomach stayed nice and steady.
So, it was all in the phrasing. Hmmm. Good to know.
Hope spun on her heel and started walking down the same path as before. It was a little easier this time, and not just because she had pants and shoes. She even made it past the point where her feet had turned to concrete blocks before.
About fifty feet ahead of there, she stopped. Not because her heels started to drag in the dirt this time, but because someone cleared his throat just behind her.
"Goddamn it," she muttered under her breath. She didn't turn around to face the booming voice behind her. She didn't have to. She could feel him in her blood.
"Where the hell do you think you're going?"
"I'm going for a walk," she answered.
"The hell you are." The voice closed in on her quickly. "I thought you already learned the lesson that you can't run away. Or were you hoping this would make me tie you to the bed again?"
Hope's face flushed.
