Mads, Vol. 1 (Cash City Omegaverse #3)

Prologue

Mads thought they had to be done with him.

Both alphas were out of breath as they circled him from above like two prehistoric vultures circling their prey, hovering on a column of hot air shooting up from his broken body.

He didn’t want to continue to lie here in a tight ball trying to protect the soft parts of his body with his limbs, but it was out of his control.

The Dougherty brothers were twins and bonded alphas.

They were in their late twenties, with soft jaws and pale faces.

They had trouble growing facial hair, and yet one of them was still trying for a mustache.

It was patchy and thin. The brothers wore blue jeans and white t-shirts, and it appeared as though they shared clothes between them.

The mustached one spat on Mads and called him the same thing he’d been calling him since they first drove him off the road.

“Bastard. Fucking bitch. If you think you can take our omega from us, then you have another thing coming.”

He could have sworn he saw Nancy in the cab of the truck that chased him over this bridge.

The Dougherty brothers drove their own truck out to hunt down Mads, not bothering with anonymity.

It was a gaudy, current-year Dodge Ram 2500 that had to have cost them as much as most people’s mortgage payment.

Running down Mads didn’t scratch the body, and thank god, because it was a custom paint job—pearl white.

The truck had struck him with the chrome bumper, causing his body to fly into a hidden slope off to the side. The Dougherty brothers exited the vehicle to continue the assault with their heavy boots and leather lined knuckles.

They came prepared to beat the shit out of him.

And for what?

Mads didn’t know their omega wasn’t allowed to date other people.

Shit, he thought she was as free as he was.

But Nancy had deceived him. Making him an unwitting pawn and loser in whatever game she’d been playing.

Did she plan to make her bonded alphas jealous?

He didn’t know, and yet he asked himself this as they rushed up on him.

The alphas grasped at whatever part of him they could get their meaty little fists on.

The non-mustached one sunk his hands into Mads’s hair, fingernails scraping against his bruised scalp, then yanked his head back like a doll.

The other used the opportunity to punch Mads square in the face, breaking his nose upon impact.

Mads heard the sound of breaking bone before he felt the pain of it.

Non-mustache Doughtery brother wanted his chance to punch Mads too, but didn’t let go of his hair to do so.

This time, Mads flew back from the force, skidding on the gravel.

The alpha laughed, wiping Mads’s unattached hair off on his pant leg.

“You’re just a pretty boy that our omega wanted to fuck, you know? That’s all betas are good for anyway, a quick fuck. We should just keep you as our whore since you are too weak to be of any good. Useless and weak!”

One of them found a piece of rebar, about three feet in length, off in some concrete rubble, and when he returned, they took turns beating him with it.

Each powerful blow resulted in fractures along his body, splitting the skin and cracking his bones.

Mads wanted to fight them off, but being thrown across the road by that lifted truck earlier had put him at a disadvantage from the start.

Every blow had to be accepted. Mads thought that each hit would be the most he could handle, and then another would follow, making him a liar.

His body lay sprawled out across some construction rubble and the gravel filled road.

If he had had control, he wouldn’t be twisted at the waist with his legs upside down and his face towards the danger.

But he didn’t have control. He could just barely move his head to the side.

When he did, he saw the brother with the mustache sweating profusely and out of breath from exertion, his hands resting on his knees while he was hunched over.

It must be tiring work, beating a man.

For their last hurrah, his less tired brother jumped into the air and landed on Mads’s thigh, crushing his femur under his steel-toed work boots.

The pressure and force cracking his femur bone was like the earth cracking in two underneath your own feet.

There was a vibration powerful enough to kill a man that snaked its way up his entire body and back down.

His teeth clacked and tasted of metal. It felt like God himself had dolled out this punishment with his combined powers of life and death.

It caused Mads to pass out for a time, and when he came to, the truck was gone and he was alone.

Every breath was a painful pull, and he knew his ribs were broken.

The sun shone down on him, burning his skin, adding insult to injury.

Mads lay in the dilapidated part of town, next to the bridge, until the sun went down.

Earlier that day, Mads had been thinking of going to a river casino with some friends over the weekend, or turning them down to see Nancy again.

He had been thinking of asking his boss for a raise and was going to look into ways to do that more effectively.

He was thinking of buying another fish for his tank, even though it was out of his budget.

But lying on the ground, none of those futures existed anymore.

It had been ripped from him.

All the lives he was going to live were gone. And he was empty, and so was his future. He knew he didn’t want to die, but this was a death, too. Blood ran over his eye and down his neck, carrying with it a single tear.

Mads realized two things at once: he could no longer feel most of his body, and if he was going to be rescued he’d need to do something about it.

He would need to alert someone, anyone, that he was there and he was alive.

He moaned and raised his voice. By the time someone found him, a runner out for a late night run, Mads’s voice was hoarse and nearly gone.

“Hey man, are you ok?” The voice of a young man came out of the darkness. “Oh fuck, are you alive?”

The runner called an ambulance and stayed with him until the police arrived.

Mads didn’t recall all the details that had happened that night, and most things had to be told to him later by the police, who pieced it together from the reports of the first responders and the evidence of his own injuries.

The whole attack was from 3:10 pm to 3:25 pm.

He laid near the road until 9:00 pm, when the runner heard him yelling and found him.

The timeline didn’t make sense to him. He thought the attack lasted hours, not a measly 15 minutes.

His recollection of the details was lost. But what his hindbrain did remember was how the alphas made him feel: Powerless.

Out of control. Defenseless. Weak. They taught him that, if motivated enough, any male alpha can destroy, almost completely, everything.

Alphas equal danger. Alphas were danger.

Stay away.

At all costs.