19. Hawk
19
HAWK
S eraphina went rigid beside me. Her happy cherry pheromones turned sour with distress. Instinct took over, and I dove into her space, wrapping my arms around her. Loki and Blaze jerked their heads around from the front seats, their nostrils flaring, their eyes wide with alarm.
“Tell me what’s wrong, Paige,” she said into the phone, her voice deceptively calm. “Tell me where you are, and I’ll come get you.”
We were aware that Paige was Seraphina’s suitemate and one of her few true friends at the OFS. In our communications over these past few weeks, Sera had lamented Paige’s infatuation with Professor Hart and expressed her concern over how much time she spent with him as an assistant of some kind.
My flame, normally unflappable to the point of lunacy, was immediately frightened for her friend. Dread crept in, and judging by the concerned looks I exchanged with Loki and Blaze, they were on the same page.
Thank fuck we’d decided—against our better judgement—to crash the party at the OFS. I shuddered to think about Seraphina running headfirst into something dangerous without us, which she would’ve done without a second thought.
She put the phone on speaker.
“I… I don’t know where I am,” Paige whispered. “I’m with Professor Hart in his car, and we’re stopped at a gas station. He just stepped out to fill up the tank. I don’t have much time to talk.”
“It’s okay,” Sera replied quickly. “I’ll be able to find him. Is he holding you against your will?”
“Um.” Paige sucked in a few quick breaths. “I went with him willingly because he said we were just going to go get some coffee. To help us push through these last few exams we were grading, but… but then he injected me with something, Sera. I’m scared.”
Fuck.
Seraphina’s fist clenched around her phone. “Hide your phone in your purse, but leave the call connected. Try to get him to tell you what’s going on, okay?”
“Okay,” she whispered. “He’s coming back.”
A car door slammed in the background.
Sera jabbed the Mute button. “Can you track him?” she asked me.
I nodded, pulling my phone from my pocket. “As long as he hasn’t removed the tracker you placed on his car.”
Hart’s voice was muffled, but the ominous silence in the car allowed us to just make out his words. “No need to be nervous, Paige,” he said brightly. “This is a very exciting thing for both of us. I wish I’d had more time to talk to you about everything and introduce you to the project, but I’ve unfortunately had to move my timeline up a bit.”
“I don’t understand,” Paige said. “Are you kidnapping me? What did you inject me with?”
A loud, patronizing sigh. “I’ve always known you were different, Paige. You’re not like the other omega girls. So bright, so inquisitive, so pleasant . I enjoy talking to you. And, of course, you’re very beautiful.”
“I will kill him,” Seraphina muttered between clenched teeth. “Slowly and painfully.”
I squeezed her tighter. “We’ll get him, Little Flame.”
“But the courting packs at the OFS don’t see you like I see you, do they, Paige?” Hart went on. “They make all the overtures, but ultimately they won’t choose you because you don’t have that pedigreed bloodline they all want. Your family is new money, and they turn their nose up at it.”
“Well, I mean, some of them aren’t?—”
“But I don’t see you as less. You know that, right? You’re a diamond among pearls. It’s why I chose you for this. We’re going to change the world , Paige.”
Growing more alarmed by the minute, I tossed my phone to Loki. Sera’s tracker glowed on the screen. “He’s driving northwest on Highway 88,” I said. “Let’s get moving.”
Seraphina snapped her fingers. “The lake house. He’s taking her to the lake house he just bought.”
“That makes sense,” Loki agreed. He pressed the ignition button, starting the car. “It’s surrounded by vacation rentals that are often vacant, so it’s more isolated than his house here. You two keep listening—it may be harder for Blaze and me to hear when we get on the road.”
“I’m recording it,” Sera told him.
“Our princess is always thinking on her feet,” Blaze said. He smiled at her, encouraging and sweet, and she relaxed just the tiniest bit in my arms.
Paige had probably just stared at Hart, dumbfounded, during the several seconds of silence that’d followed his last statement. It’s what I would’ve done. Finally, she said, “You didn’t answer my questions, Professor.”
“Ah, well, I can’t get anything past you,” he said, chuckling. “I’m sorry I sprung a needle on you, but they can be scary if you’re bracing for the pain. I think you’ll be excited once I tell you what’s about to happen.”
“He better not have done what I think he did,” Seraphina ground out.
I held her tight, wishing I could purr for her now to soothe her distress. I couldn’t recall ever feeling this urge so acutely, but it didn’t matter. Purring for Sera would drown out her ability to hear Hart’s words, and it wouldn’t help us save Paige from whatever fucked-up plans he’d laid.
“I’ve injected you with a drug that will induce a mini-heat in which you will be fertile,” Hart said.
Sera gasped.
And then you could hear a pin drop in the car.
There was our stolen drug.
“Now, not to brag, but this is a design of my own making,” he went on. “A pharmaceutical company from up in Fort Wayne developed the prototype, but in preliminary studies, the drug took twenty-four hours to induce a fertile window in an omega. My version will induce it almost immediately.”
“But I… I don’t feel like I’m going into heat, Professor,” Paige stammered.
“Well, no, unfortunately the heat-blocker suppressants they allow for you special omegas means it will take a bit longer. But I suspect you’ll be feeling the effects in a couple of hours.”
“Why would you do this?” Paige’s tone had gone from meek confusion to shrill panic. “I don’t want to have a heat! I don’t want to be fertile!”
Hart tutted. “Paige, you are being given an opportunity here so many women would kill for. You and I are going to make a baby together, and he will be the first of my legacy.”
“What! No, no, no, no?—”
“Shhh, Paige, it will be okay. It will be wonderful. I have powerful friends invested in this endeavor, and they’ll eliminate anyone who tries to deny us the opportunity to create this amazing thing. Eventually, we hope the drug will be able to help even beta women become fertile, but for now, it is up to the omega women chosen for our project to save beta families.”
“I don’t want to have a baby with you! I want to find my Alphas and bond and create a family on my own terms!”
“I’m sure you can still have that later on, Paige,” he replied dismissively. “There’s no need for hysterics, and I’m sure you’ll change your tune once your heat begins. Normally this mini-heat would last for four or five hours, but if I help you through it, it’ll be much shorter. You’ll be begging for me, just like you’ve always wanted but never had the courage to voice.”
“Fuck!” Seraphina roared.
I caught her phone before she could chuck it across the car.
Blaze was on his own phone, likely updating our handler on the current state of emergency.
“No, Professor,” Paige whispered. “Not like this. Never like this.”
“We’re about forty minutes out from the lake house,” Loki reported. “Hart should get there in about fifteen minutes.”
“We just launched a drone that will head that way to scope it out,” Blaze added. “Hart’s comment about having powerful friends has my hackles up, especially since we’ve already run into armed guards at his house.”
“But any further backup from Sentinel would be hours away,” I pointed out, my concern growing. “We only have our handler and a couple of others in town working this case with us, and they aren’t field operatives.”
“Don’t worry,” Sera replied. She held her hand out to me, and I gently placed her phone into her waiting palm. “I’ll have backup on the road shortly.”
I brought her delicate wrist to my lips for a kiss, hoping she took some comfort in the gesture. She gave me a little smile before she began texting furiously. Hart and Paige had slipped into tense silence, only the sounds of the road coming through her phone’s speakers.
“Okay, Jere is sending backup,” she announced after a minute. “Blaze, can you please have your team secure a place near the lake house for us to meet?”
“On it.”
She looked at me, her big green eyes livid, anguished, and determined all at once. “I texted Paige and told her to lock herself in the first room she can escape to and barricade the door. I just hope we can get to her before the worst of the heat hits her. And before that motherfucker touches her.”
“It would be my pleasure to hold him down while you cut his dick off, Little Flame.”
That got me a real smile. “Didn’t get enough earlier tonight?”
Not even a little bit. We’d been gone for ten days, and the first time we truly laid eyes on Seraphina after our return, we found some asshole with his hands on her while she held a knife to his throat. If we hadn’t desperately needed the dean not to revoke our special access to the OFS campus, that fucker would be dead.
We’d been on a bit of a roller coaster ride this evening, and I was looking forward to releasing some pent-up energy by tearing Hart apart.
“We’ll save your friend,” I said, my lips against her hair. “And we'll make Hart pay for his sins. I can’t help but think that it could’ve been you, Little Flame. What if he’d targeted you for this fucked-up scheme?”
“Fortunately, I have a knack for making myself undesirable.”
Loki shook his head, a wry grin on his lips as he voiced what the three of us were all thinking. “Not to anyone who knows the real you, Lamb.”
She stilled in my arms. A frown tugged at her pink lips. A switch in my Alpha hindbrain flipped straight into panic mode, and I nearly tossed all caution to the wind and caved to the urge to purr for her.
But her rum-and-cherry scent bloomed, no longer sour with distress. I clutched her, taking deep, calming breaths lest those pheromones get me really fucking drunk when we had shit to do. Blaze’s nostrils flared, and his eyes almost rolled back in his head. Loki gripped the steering wheel with such force that his knuckles turned white.
We needed to keep it together. We’d come to Ciudad del Sol with a very specific goal, and we would not achieve it by diverting from our mission so we could lose ourselves in fucking this beautiful omega for days on end.
There was a girl who needed our help in the worst way right now, and that was what mattered. I knew Sera would agree wholeheartedly.
The tense moment passed, and an air of focus settled over the car.
We would be ready for whatever awaited us at that lake house.