Claimed By Fear (The Chase #3)

Chapter 1

Dalvin

The fluorescent lights in the bus station bathroom buzzed with the particular frequency of failure.

I knew that sound. Had been living inside it for twelve months now, moving through spaces that hummed with neglect and indifference, places where nobody looked twice at a too-thin omega with shadows under his eyes.

The air hung thick with industrial cleaner and something worse underneath, the sour ghost of a hundred travelers who'd passed through before me. Water dripped from a rusted faucet in the far corner, a metronome counting down the minutes I couldn't afford to waste.

I set my bag on the cracked counter and pulled out the scissors I'd stolen from a dollar store in Memphis.

My reflection didn't look back at me from the scratched metal above the sink. The surface was too warped to show much of anything, just suggestions of shape and movement. That was fine. I didn't need to see what I was doing. I just needed to do it.

The first cut sent nearly three feet of brown hair falling into the grimy basin.

The second took another foot. I kept going until the weight I'd been carrying for twenty-six years lay in a tangled pile against the porcelain, until my hair fell just past my shoulders instead of brushing the floor.

Vernon had loved my hair. Had wrapped it around his fist when he wanted my attention, had stroked it when he wanted to remind me I was his.

Had forbidden me from ever cutting it, insisting that floor-length hair was proper for an omega of my status.

The scissors clattered against the counter. My hands were shaking again.

I gathered the hair, shoved it deep into the trash can, and buried it under wet paper towels. Paranoid, yes. But Vernon had resources I couldn't begin to match, and I'd learned that paranoia kept you breathing when money couldn't.

The burner phone in my pocket vibrated. I fumbled it out, checked the number against the one I'd memorized, and answered.

"It's me."

Rosa's voice came through tinny and flat. "They came to the neighborhood yesterday. Two men in a black SUV, asking questions at the corner store. Showed pictures."

My stomach dropped through the floor. "Did they—"

"They didn't find anything. I moved him to Maria's the day before, remember? He's fine. Asking when Daddy's coming back." A pause. "What do I tell him, Dalvin?"

I pressed my palm flat against the cold tile wall.

The chill seeped through my skin and settled somewhere in my chest, right next to the permanent ache that lived there now.

Eli's face swam up through my memory. Three years old with Vernon's dark curls and my grandmother's eyes, the only good thing to come out of eight years of hell.

"Tell him soon," I said. "Tell him Daddy's coming soon."

"You keep saying that." Rosa's tone stayed brisk, practical, the same voice she'd used to coordinate nap schedules and smuggle cash into offshore accounts. "Soon isn't a plan. Soon is what people say when they're out of options."

"I have a plan."

"Does this plan involve you finally staying in one place for more than a week?"

"It involves me belonging to someone who isn't him."

Silence stretched across the connection. When Rosa spoke again, her voice had softened by a fraction of a degree. "The Chase."

"Registration closes in forty-eight hours. I'm on my way to Thornhaven now."

"Dalvin." She said my name the way she said everything. Direct, unadorned, stripped of comfort. "You understand what that means. Once you're caught, you can't refuse. Whoever claims you—"

"Owns me. I know." I watched a roach crawl across the floor and disappear under the row of stalls. "But a new bond breaks the old one. That's the law. If another alpha claims me, Vernon loses all legal rights. He can't come after me, can't come after Eli. It's the only way to make this permanent."

"It's also the only way to end up belonging to someone worse."

I didn't have an answer for that. She was right. The Chase was a gamble with stakes I couldn't afford to lose. But the alternative was running forever, watching my son grow up in hiding, waiting for the day Vernon's money finally caught up to us.

"I'm out of time, Rosa. They found your neighborhood. They'll find Maria's eventually. I need this over."

More silence. Then a sharp exhale. "Call me when it's done. Whatever happens."

"I will."

"And Dalvin? Try not to die. That boy needs his father."

The line went dead before I could respond.

I pocketed the phone and looked at myself again in the warped metal surface. My hair fell just past my shoulders now, the ends uneven where I'd hacked through with dull scissors, lighter than it had been in years. But it was mine. The first thing in years that belonged only to me.

The bus to Thornhaven left in twenty minutes.

Seventeen hours on a bus gave you time to think. Too much time, honestly. The kind of time that let memories crawl out of the locked boxes where you'd shoved them and parade themselves across your mind with all the subtlety of a brass band.

I pressed my forehead against the window and watched the landscape blur past. Farmland giving way to forest, forest surrendering to mountains.

The seat next to me stayed empty. Nobody wanted to sit beside an omega who smelled like exhaustion and barely-contained panic.

My scent had been off for months now, the warm notes of bergamot and cedar smoke that I'd been born with buried under layers of cortisol and sleepless nights.

The rules of The Chase cycled through my head on repeat. I'd read them so many times the words had lost all meaning, become just sounds, just shapes.

Omegas would be released into the preserve at dawn.

Given a six-hour head start before the alphas were set loose.

The hunt would last seventy-two hours. Any omega not claimed by the end would be released from their contract, free to return to their lives.

Any omega caught and claimed would belong to their alpha pending the seventy-two-hour trial period, after which the alpha could accept or reject the bond.

Simple rules for a brutal tradition. But traditions survived because they worked, and The Chase had been working for centuries.

It was the only legal way to break a bond without the original alpha's consent.

The only loophole in a system designed to keep omegas exactly where their alphas wanted them.

Vernon would never consent to releasing me.

He'd made that clear the night I ran, when I'd heard him on the phone with his lawyer even as I climbed out the window with nothing but cash and a desperate hope that Rosa had gotten Eli out in time.

A clawing, breathless hope that the one good thing in my life would survive my mistakes.

The bus lurched over a pothole and my head knocked against the glass. Pain flared bright and sharp, a brief distraction from the constant thrum of anxiety beneath my skin.

I closed my eyes. Made the mistake of letting my mind wander.

Hazel eyes flashed behind my eyelids. The color of autumn leaves caught in amber, warm and steady and focused entirely on me.

Hands that had been elegant once, before they'd learned to shape metal, with long fingers that had brushed against mine in the library after lights-out.

A scent that had wrapped around me in the darkness of a dormitory hallway, cedar and juniper, sharp and green and alive.

My eyes snapped open.

No. I wasn't doing this. Wasn't letting myself spiral into memories of Min-ho Irvin, the boy who had been my step-brother for two years and my obsession for the years that followed.

That path led nowhere good. Min-ho was part of a life that had been stolen from me, sold off by parents who saw their omega son as currency rather than family.

The almost-kiss lived in a locked room in my mind, and that door was staying shut.

The bus ground to a halt. A crackling announcement informed us we'd arrived in Thornhaven.

I grabbed my bag and joined the trickle of passengers filing off into the cool mountain air.

The temperature had dropped twenty degrees from the flatlands, and I shivered in my thin jacket as the wind cut through layers that had been more than enough in Memphis.

The sun was setting behind the peaks, painting the sky in shades of coral and gold that would have made my artist's hands itch for a brush.

But I hadn't painted in years. Vernon had considered art a waste of time, and I'd learned quickly which battles weren't worth fighting.

The Thornhaven Intake Facility rose from the mountainside ahead, all sweeping glass and weathered stone that somehow managed to look both ancient and impossibly modern.

Massive timber beams framed windows that caught the dying light and threw it back in fragments of fire.

The architecture spoke of money and tradition and power held with an easy, casual grip.

Even the air smelled different here. Pine and snow-melt and something older, wilder, the scent of mountains that had existed long before humans decided to turn them into hunting grounds.

I shouldered my bag and started walking.

The entrance hall swallowed me whole. Vaulted ceilings soared overhead, carved with scenes from old hunts, alphas and omegas frozen in eternal pursuit across the dark wood.

Crystal chandeliers cast everything in a warm glow that felt obscene given what this place represented.

A marketplace dressed up as a cathedral.

A beta woman in a crisp uniform approached me with a tablet. "Name?"

"Dalvin Grace."

She typed something, frowned at the screen, typed something else. "Registration closes in thirty-six hours. You're cutting it close."

"I'm aware."

"Any questions about the process?"

"No."

Her eyes flicked up to meet mine. Professional curiosity, nothing more. She'd seen a hundred omegas walk through these doors with that same hollow look in their eyes. I was just another body moving through the system.

"Follow the green line to medical. After your exam, you'll be assigned a dormitory and given your participant number. The welcome orientation is at nine tomorrow morning." She handed me a lanyard with a barcode on it. "Don't lose this. It's your identity for the next week."

I took the lanyard. The plastic was warm from her hand.

Medical was everything I expected. Blood draws, scent samples, a heat cycle assessment that confirmed what I already knew.

My body had been holding off the worst of it through sheer survival instinct, but three days in close proximity to unmated alphas would push me over the edge.

That was part of the design. Omegas in heat were easier to catch, easier to claim, easier to sell to the highest bidder.

The doctor who conducted my exam was brisk and impersonal. She noted my weight loss, the dark circles under my eyes, the slight tremor in my hands that I couldn't quite control. She asked if I wanted to speak with a counselor. I said no. She wrote something on her tablet and moved on.

Finally, they brought me to the registration desk. A stack of forms waited, dense with legal language I couldn't begin to parse. Waivers of liability. Acknowledgment of risk. Consent to claiming.

The woman behind the desk watched me read. "Take your time. This is a significant decision."

I picked up the pen. Signed my name on every line they'd marked. Didn't hesitate, didn't pause, didn't let myself think about what I was agreeing to.

"Emergency contact?" she asked.

I looked at the blank line on the form. Thought about Rosa, about Eli, about the careful distance I'd maintained to keep them safe. If something happened to me in The Chase, I couldn't risk Vernon tracing that call back to them.

"None," I said.

She raised an eyebrow but didn't push. Just typed something into her system and handed me a key card.

"Dormitory C, room 14. Dinner is served until ten. Orientation at nine." A pause. "Good luck, Mr. Grace."

I took the key card and walked away without responding.

My room was small but clean. Two beds, two desks, two narrow windows looking out at the mountains.

My roommate hadn't arrived yet, which suited me fine.

I set my bag on the bed closest to the door and took stock of the space with an artist's eye.

Cream walls, pine furniture, industrial carpet in a shade of gray that swallowed all personality.

A blank canvas designed to hold nothing but bodies in transit.

The sheets smelled of industrial detergent, stiff and impersonal.

The mattress creaked when I sat, cheap springs protesting even my diminished frame.

The bathroom was barely large enough to turn around in, but it had a lock on the door.

That mattered more than square footage. The tile was cold under my bare feet when I tested it, the mirror above the sink actually reflective, unlike the warped metal at the bus station. I avoided meeting my own eyes.

I sat on the bed and let myself breathe for the first time in two days. Outside, voices drifted up from the courtyard. Other omegas comparing notes, making friends, pretending this was summer camp instead of an auction block with better marketing.

A couple more days until The Chase began. Seventy-two hours after that, and I would belong to someone new.

The bond mark on my neck throbbed. Vernon's claim, faded but not gone.

It wouldn't disappear until a new alpha bit over it, until foreign hormones flooded my system and rewrote the chemical signature that tied me to a monster.

Until then, I could still feel him sometimes.

A distant pressure at the edge of my consciousness, oily and cold.

He was looking for me. He would never stop looking.

I pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. Made myself small, the way Vernon had trained me to be. The way I'd sworn I would never let myself become again.

This was survival. Not sacrifice. I was choosing the lesser evil, picking my poison, playing the only card I had left.

I almost believed it.

***