Plunder a reverse harem.., p.11
Plunder: a reverse harem omegaverse romance, page 11
Was Raider careful?
I eye him, on the other side of the table. How’d that go down?
Why did Gable give that to him, and not to me?
Raider raises his gaze to mine. He shakes his head slowly. “We’re not doing this. We’re not doing any of this. We’re not going to let our designations run this band.” He’s saying this to me, though, and I get the impression that he’s saying to me, We alphas are going to keep this band in line.
So, really our designations are running the band, aren’t they?
“Cam, whatever these omegas did, it wasn’t even about us. It was about whatever pissing contest they’re having between themselves.”
“Eew,” says Bandit. “That’s not what this is.”
“I’d win,” says Gable. “You don’t have the equipment.”
She sneers at him.
He sneers back.
“Truth is,” Raider breaks in, “neither of you have an alpha. I don’t see any bite marks, and I sure as fuck don’t think either of you are claimed. So, there will be no more discussion of taking anyone’s alpha from anyone else, because neither of you belong to either of us.”
“Oh, fuck you, Raider,” says Bandit. “Just like you to make it about bites.”
“Well, that’s an inevitability, right?” says Gable to her.
She turns on him, eyes wide. “How dare you?”
“Did you think you could trust me after you screwed me over?” Gable spits the words across the table at her.
“I don’t see how it even matters!” She spreads her hands. “Is Cam not allowed to fuck other people, is that it?”
“You know it was about the knot,” says Gable. “You heard us, and you did it to hurt me. Deny it.”
She raises her shoulders. “It just… I’m not going to be your sidekick, Gable. You don’t get this band. This is my band.”
“This is our band,” says Raider.
Bandit gets up from the table.
“Gonna be hard for you to get his bite if I get it first,” says Gable to her.
Bandit’s lips part. “You—”
“She doesn’t want that from me,” says Raider, and his voice is shaking.
I’m not hungry anymore.
I feel like Gable just reached into my chest and ripped out my pulsing heart. Not because I thought I was ever going to bond him. Not because we’re anywhere near…
But what the fuck?
That’s how he feels about Raider now?
One night with Raider, and that’s how he feels?
Bandit is still standing at the table, shaking from head to toe in rage. I figure she’s trying to storm out dramatically.
I beat her to it.
Except I just walk off and only stop to dump my cereal and juice in a trash can. Not that dramatic. I go back to the hotel room and pack everything up.
We all drove here in three vehicles. Two people can travel in the van, which has a driver and a passenger’s seat. Then I have my car and Lloyd has his. We need that many cars because we may sometimes want to drive someplace and not drive the big ass van. So there will be enough room for everyone if I just leave. I know where we’re going next, after all.
Driving might do me good. I need to clear my head.
So, I leave.
Thirty minutes later, my car screen beeps to tell me I’m getting a phone call from Raider.
I answer it. “Yeah?”
“Where are you?”
“I’m heading to the next stop on the tour,” I say. “Meet you guys there.”
“Okay,” he says. “Cool, just making sure you didn’t…”
“Take more than that to make me quit this band.”
“Hey, I’m not biting him.”
“Okay.”
“He can’t just make me do it. It’d be a pair bond, and you have to apply for those.”
“I know how it works,” I say to him.
“Right,” he says.
“Anything else?”
“Nope. Uh, drive safe.”
I hang up without saying goodbye.
lloyd
“YOU’RE NOT RIDING with me,” says Raider to Gable. “Not after all that bullshit.”
We’re in the parking lot right now. We’ve just realized that Cam has taken his car, so we’re trying to figure out how to split up for travel, and it’s all awkward.
“Well,” says Gable, “I’m not riding with her.”
Bandit gives him a withering look. She presses into me the way she does when she wants my arm around her. But I don’t do it, because this band is currently in some kind of designation free-for-all, and I’ve never felt more beta and more uninteresting in my entire life.
Raider takes Gable by the shoulders. “Let’s make something clear, omega. I don’t lose control of myself, not even with omegas, not even with you. I will never go out of my head and bite you. Got that? Never.”
Gable gapes at him.
“You’re not riding with me.” Raider sucks in a breath. “Okay, Bandit with me.”
“No,” I say.
Bandit sighs heavily. “But Raider…”
“Gable and Lloyd are fine together,” says Raider. “And you and I are used to being annoyed with each other, so we know how not to explode. It’s the best solution. Come on.”
Gable is gazing at Raider in this slack-jawed way, as if whatever it was that Raider just said made him all swoony, and I don’t get it. Who understands omegas?
Bandit looks at me. “Lloyd, you don’t want me to ride with him, do you?”
I mean, I don’t. But I’m also not going to get into a fight over an omega with an alpha, either, especially not Raider. Because I know two things. One, Raider would mop the floor with me—not necessarily in a physical way, either, because I can’t see either of us ever punching each other or anything like that, but in a way where I’m just reduced to nothingness and worthlessness with his alpha stare—and two, Raider and Bandit are not exactly over each other no matter how much either of them pretend they are.
Bandit’s never ending up with me.
I know this.
And right now, I’m angry with her, anyway, because she fucked Cam last night. She got knotted, which I can’t even do. And it was all about… I don’t know… Gable.
I feel invisible in this moment.
“Gable can ride with me,” I say to her.
“But Lloyd—”
“Raider’s right,” I cut her off.
“When did you stop taking my side?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “But you don’t need me, do you? You can just take alphas whenever you want them, right?”
“Oh, Lloyd, please don’t be like—
“Jealousy is boring. I know.” I roll my eyes and turn and head for my car. Gable falls into step with me.
“Fuck you, Lloyd!” yells Bandit after me.
I let her have the last word.
Gable and I get into my car, and we buckle up, and I pull out of the parking lot. I plug in my phone and pull up the maps app.
“Can you put in the address?” I say to Gable.
“Do I have that?” he says. “Oh, right, yes, I do.” He gets his own phone out, and then he’s busy with that while I’m looking for the interstate signs.
Soon, we have the directions up and I’m merging onto the highway, and then I put on the adaptive cruise, and it’s downright relaxing.
Gable fiddles with the music. “Can I put something on?”
“Sure,” I say.
“You like Chili Peppers?”
“Everyone likes the Chili Peppers,” I say.
“Well, they’re old, and—”
“Stadium Arcadium,” I say. “Changed my life.”
“That was the album I was going to put on,” he says, grinning. “I don’t know if I’d say it changed my life, but it was good. I was a kid when it came out, and my parents weren’t really into that sort of music, but my friend’s big brother had it, and he used to drive us around for ice cream, and we’d sit in the back and sing, ‘Lions and tigers come running just to steal your luck.’” He sings it in that amazing voice of his.
But I join in, singing it too.
We both giggle like we’re eleven again, and he puts “Especially in Michigan” on.
“What is that lyric?” I say. “What’s that even mean? Why lions and tigers?”
He’s still giggling. “I don’t even know.”
We both start singing along with the music at the top of our lungs, and the scenery flies by as we travel.
After a few hours, we take an exit to get some food, gas up, and use the facilities. It’s one of those gas stations that also makes food, so we order fries and subs on the touch screens and then go wandering around to find drinks in the coolers.
I’m looking at the energy drinks, trying to decide if I want one that tastes peachy when I realize there’s some girl looking at me. I mean, not a little girl, a grownup girl, but it’s weird to think of people my own age as women.
I guess they are.
I’m twenty-eight.
Maybe I’m in denial about my relative adulthood?
Gable comes over to me with his hands full of chocolate bars.
“Those all for you?” I say to him.
He shrugs. “So?”
I laugh.
He laughs.
The girl-woman-person gasps.
We both look at her again, and she goes bright red and turns away from both of us and rushes off.
Gable and I exchange a glance, both confused. Did we do something?
The girl stops. Turns. Comes back, rummaging in her purse, and gets out her phone. “Um? Would you guys take a picture with me?”
Gable and I exchange another glance. Wait. Does she… recognize us?
“You’re from Plunder. Don’t act like you’re not.” The girl is still bright red all over, and she’s shaking, literally shaking.
Is this real life?
What?
“Lloyd Cho,” she says, nodding at me. “And you, Gable, I just saw you last night for the first time, but—”
“We’ve been driving for hours, though,” I say. “You saw us last night?”
She shrugs, scratching the back of her hair. “We’re big fans. We back all your songs. This is the closest you’ve ever come to play, so we drove.”
“We?” says Gable, grinning at her.
“Me and my friend Vanessa, who’s—”
A shriek. Behind us.
We whirl.
Another girl is streaking across the store for us, shaking her head, yelling, “Omigod, omigod, omigod” over and over again.
I start giggling.
Gable puts both hands over his mouth.
We take only twenty-five pictures with the girls. We sign their receipts from the touch screens where they have ordered food.
Their names are Vanessa and Jenny. They drove three hours one way to get to our show last night. They scream a lot.
We take pictures with our arms around them, kissing them on the cheek, letting them kiss us on the cheek, and it goes on and on.
We end up in the parking lot, leaning against my car, all eating our food and continuing to talk.
“My favorite song is ‘That Girl,’” Jenny tells us. “I played that song on repeat for two weeks straight.”
“I got so sick of that song,” says Vanessa. “Don’t get me wrong, I love it, too, but geez.”
“Does Sam really have cancer?” says Jenny.
“What?” I say. “No, totally not. She’s fine. Are people saying that?”
“I saw it on a message board,” says Vanessa.
Right, the message board. There are two, neither of which are affiliated with us. Both are maintained entirely by fans. We used to monitor them, but it got weird. People say things about you online you don’t want to hear. They feel ownership of you, especially when they are paying your salary with very little go-between? So, for the sake of our own sanity, we stopped looking.
Honestly, they never said much about me. Mostly it was about Bandit. But it was never nice, you know? That she was a slut or that she should have stayed with Raider. Or disgusting things that men wanted to do to her, which made both Raider and me rage out. The one time there was something on there about me, it was this stupid racial comment. It wasn’t meant to be insulting, but people just… it was like something about how I was really good at drums because Asians are hard workers who are good at math and that drumming took that kind of, uh, selfless dedication and attention to counting out the timing or some shit?
It just pissed me off.
Not because it was insulting necessarily, but because it was just another way to call me out and single me out and to do it because of my race.
I’ve noticed that I’m Asian, by the way. I’m aware. I don’t need anyone to clue me in to that.
And I’d rather be recognized by my own merits and not because of something that I don’t have any control of.
And anyway, not all Asians are good at math or hard workers or dedicated or whatever the hell it is they said.
Point being, I don’t go to the message boards anymore. No one in the band does. We do get some weird comments on our FretFund site, but it’s not as bad. There’s a sense that people are coming into your house there, and they’re not going to spit venom into your face.
“So, if Sam’s not sick, why did she leave?” says Vanessa.
“She and Raider broke up, and I think it just got too painful for her,” I say.
“Plus, he never wrote her a song,” says Jenny.
“How does he feel about you and Bandit?” says Vanessa.
“I mean he’s fine with it,” I say.
“I meant you, Gable,” says Vanessa. She looks me over. “Wait, what?”
I groan. Great, so glad I said that. Of course it’s not common knowledge that Bandit and I are together-together. We didn’t go around announcing that.
“There’s nothing with me and Bandit,” says Gable. “She and I don’t like each other.”
“I saw the show last night,” says Jenny.
Gable shakes his head. “It’s just an act.”
The girls exchange glances and then look at us.
“And she’s really with you?” Vanessa points at me. “Seriously?”
“Look, it’s…” I clear my throat. “I mean, Bandit probably would rather people focus on her music rather than her, um, you know, who she’s kissing.”
“But what do you mean, you don’t like each other?” says Jenny to Gable.
Gable glances at me and then down at the ground. “Yeah, it’s uncool to talk about her while she’s not here.” He shrugs. “But she’s a spoiled brat, you know?”
“Gable,” I say, sighing.
“Maybe say that on your message board,” says Gable.
“Come on,” I say, opening the door to the car. “We got to get going.”
It takes a while to get Vanessa and Jenny to leave us behind, but eventually we’re back on the road.
Gable’s putting on more music.
I don’t even know how I feel about that whole situation. On the one hand, it was insane being recognized like that. I’ve never had that happen before. It was pretty damned cool. On the other hand, I feel like I need to explain something to Gable, and I’m not sure how it is he’s going to take it.
“We have this unspoken sort of pact that we’re loyal to each other first,” I say. “It’s not cool spreading rumors about Bandit.”
He snorts. “She’s out of control, though, isn’t she? You’re annoyed with her, too.”
“I don’t get you, actually,” I say. “The other night, you left poor Cam high and dry with us at the bar. You went off with Raider—”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“It might not be, but it does mean that you don’t have any room to talk. If you cared so much about Cam—”
“You’re being such a beta about this.”
“Yeah, well, you’re being such an omega about this,” I fire back. “You and her both. And you guys could stand to cool it with the drama for two minutes.”
He huffs.
I roll my eyes.
He turns the music up.
I turn the music down. “What? It’s just that you wanted Cam to knot you first? Is that why it was such a bad thing?”
“She did it on purpose to hurt my feelings,” he says. “I wasn’t even thinking about Cam when I left him behind to go off with Raider.”
“Cam was lonely. Do you think he cared you didn’t do it on purpose?”
He sinks down into the seat and looks out the window.
I grip the steering wheel.
We drive.
Moments pass and eventually, I reach over and turn the music back up.
He turns it down. “I don’t just let people do that is the thing.”
“Okay,” I say. “I get that. I don’t think I’m ever going to let someone shove a big knot into my asshole, so I’m with you.”
He laughs.
“I know it’s not the same thing, but—”
“People have done things to me that I didn’t want,” he says. “And it’s not like… it’s not like I don’t still like being fucked or whatever, because I do. It’s just that I want to decide myself from now on.”
I don’t even know what to say to that. I’m stunned and freaked and horrified and a kind of simmering rage is building on the edge of my consciousness. “I’m so sorry, Gable. I’m so—”
“No, I didn’t mean—”
“Where are these people? What happened to them? Did they just get away with it?”
“Lloyd, come on.” He laughs a little. “I don’t even know why I told you this.”
“Sorry,” I say. “I just…” I laugh too, helplessly. “I want to kill them for hurting you is all. I can’t understand how someone could hurt you. What kind of fucking monster would do that?”
He’s quiet.
I’m quiet.
When he speaks, he’s gruff. “I’m fine.”
“Okay,” I say. “Obviously, I probably can’t kill anyone anyway.”
“It’s not like you’re saying,” he says. “It’s not like it’s really their fault. Like, I got myself into those situations. I went to those creepy alphas’ houses. I let them take me to those weird clubs. I let—”
“You said you didn’t want it, though,” I say.
