Page 17 of For All My Effort
“It’s okay,” the female said. “Honestly, if what they’re saying is true, I bet y’all are stressed over there. I’ve been trying to check in with Hannah and when I couldn’t get ahold of her, I was starting to worry.”
“We don’t know what you’re talking about,” Han admitted.
Through the screen, her jaw actually dropped open. “It’s literally all over the news, like trending right now. Hold on, let me pull up the article Jen showed me. Uh … here it is. Omega gets attacked by so-called omega activists. They’re claiming a bunch of beta protestors attacked Hannah because she refused to join them. It also says that her injuries had her in the hospital.”
“They got part of that right,” I admitted.
“You were in the hospital?” she shrieked.
Zeke turned the camera in my direction, and I half turned so they could see the back of my head.
“Oh, Hannah, your hair.”
I had the same reaction when I saw the monstrous square of missing hair that made me look like a botched haircut gone wrong. It didn’t help that the dark black stitches against the paleness of my scalp made the whole thing look even more extreme.
“What really happened? You told me you were going to the protest, and you’d text me later. Well, it’s later.”
“Um, I don’t know,” I told her. “Apparently the injury to my head caused some sort of memory loss.”
I adjusted myself over the back of the couch, half leaning on Zeke’s shoulders so I could better talk to Koda.
“Wait, hold on. You don’t remember anything at all?”
“Nope. I lost a few years apparently.”
“Years?” She screeched the word, making me wince even as I chuckled. “But how, I mean … if you … what does that mean exactly?”
“It just means I can’t remember anything that happened in the last few years. Like meeting you or my mates—”
“You don’t remember claiming your alphas?” Through the screen, I could see the whites of Koda’s eyes turning red as she tried to stop herself from crying.
I shook my head, unable to admit the words out loud.
My mates all seemed to shuffle closer. Zeke turned so he could rest a hand on my shoulder. Jackson touched my ankle that was up on the couch’s arm. Han adjusted so he was sitting sideways on the couch, facing Zeke, and stretching his arm out to press against my forearm. Even Sebastian moved out of the living room, into the hallway space so he was behind me, gently pressing against my back.
“Sebastian,” one of the men behind Koda said. The alpha had blond hair, and an air to him like Han and Seb that made me think he probably came from money too. “They haven’t identified you all yet, but there’s photos circling with the four of you hunched over her. Someone is going to recognize y’all soon. Especially at the rate of popularity this is getting.”
The concern in his voice had me turning to look at my mate, almost falling off the couch and making every single alpha lunge for me. I giggled, then gasped when Jackson slapped his hand down on my ass. It didn’t hurt—the opposite actually, my mind instantly giving me delicious ideas of exactly how my heat will go.
My perfume bloomed, and Jackson chuckled.
“Has anyone reached out to you?” Seb asked the other male.
Some sort of private conversation happened on the other end before the blond sighed. “Yes, actually. My mother reached out. She said nothing that should be repeated, but she’s at least seen it, I know that.”
Sebastian nodded as if this information was helpful. I felt like I was somehow in the middle of the conversation despite having been the one to answer the call.
“Not to continue giving you bad news,” Koda said. “But the news is also saying that the OC is currently investigating the circumstances. Like, right now.”
Jackson and Seb both started searching the living room space, most likely for a remote. Han pulled me off the back of the couch, resettling me between him and Zeke. His arm rested over my shoulder, his hand squeezing the back of Zeke’s neck.
The move was easy, like he’d done it a bunch of times. I watched Zeke’s face, looking for any signs that the move did something more to him than a simple gesture from another alpha packmate.
Then my attention was pulled toward the screen. Sebastian was frozen with the remote in his hand and my phone in the other.
“Again, our latest report on the victim of this devastating beta protest. To you Chelsea.” The woman on the screen was replaced with another. “Thanks, Veronica. I’m still outside the restaurant where the protest took place just earlier this week. Both the local Omega Compound, and this district’s peace officers, are unable to tell us what exactly happened since the issue is still under investigation.”
I didn’t recognize the restaurant behind the reporter, although it wasn’t really what I was looking at. Next to her, a male in a suit stood, diligently waiting for his turn to speak. He was an older male, not so old as to have a full head of gray hair, but old enough that the fact he had no gray hairs was probably due to him dying it.