5. Talya
CHAPTER FIVE
TALYA
T here were things an omega was taught from an early age. Omegas were rare and cherished. Treasured. We were wanted. We needed a pack, and we shouldn’t deny that craving.
But there was also a scarier topic we were schooled in. Do not travel alone. Ever. Because the rarity of being an omega also came with the threat of those who would do anything to obtain one. If they were willing to take you against your will, there wasn’t anything you were going to be able to do to convince them to let you go.
It was a dark world. A nasty world under the bright, promising blue skies.
While I was growing up, I dreamed of a pack. I learned to recognize the part of me that yearned for my alphas as a biological demand for the security and home that only a pack offered. I never tried to deny that or look beyond it. I had never wanted to be something I was not.
However, in the same breath that told us that we would be hunted like large game, we were also told that an alpha’s biological calling was to keep an omega safe—whether that omega was theirs or not.
We were also told that betas had a stick up their asses concerning omegas and omegas just needed to learn to deal with it. Look beyond them because they didn’t matter to our internal needs and drive. They were just there, around every corner.
I’d never personally met or known an omega who had been a victim of these dark recesses of society. On the Omega Forums, I was told about a male omega named KnotWanted on the who had disappeared. This was before I joined; I’d never spoken to him. There was speculation that he’d been abducted by these people.
There were a lot of whispers that went around about what the groups were called. The notorious crime lords of the Decrescenti family were in the business of dealing with human sales and drugs, but there were many other groups as well. Everyone suspected the Decrescentis ruled the dark underworld of omega trafficking. They were a name everyone feared from the time we were kids—ghost stories told before bed or on creepy nights with your friends.
Why did all of this flash through my mind as I tugged my shirt over my head before our bedroom door was broken down? Because I knew three things immediately.
One: although Colby managed to knock out one of the intruders with a superb swing of that bat, filling the air with a nasty crack and thwack, he was a single man against the two remaining intruders.
Two: omegas needed defense training. When one of the men came after me, all I could do was scream.
Three: we were not going to escape this.
Time slowing, I watched in horror as one of the men who were fighting Colby jammed what I thought was a blade into his neck. A scream of pure terror escaped me as he fell, but thankfully, in the moonlight, I could see that there was no blood. It wasn’t a blade but a needle. They’d drugged him.
I dodged the man coming at me. His diluted sunflower scent told me that he wasn’t an alpha but a beta. There was a moment before he caught me that I thought how inappropriate that was. How could he smell of something so pleasant when he was committing such a heinous crime? It just wasn’t right.
And then his hands were on me. I kicked and flailed, desperately trying to get away. I even managed to sink my teeth into his arm, though I immediately gagged when I got a mouth full of arm hair, a spurt of blood, and the disgusting taste of skin on my tongue.
He grunted, his hand going to my hair and craning my head back at a painful angle. I thought I’d receive a needle in my neck, too, but instead, my hands were zip-tied behind my back and a dirty, oily scarf that certainly wasn’t mine was tied over my face and wedged in my mouth.
I continued to scream as the man picked me up in a bear hug, rendering me suffocatingly immobile. Tears streamed down my face, and fear consumed me at the sight of the two men hauling Colby up like a limp noodle and dragging him into the hallway.
Once outside, I tried to make as much noise as I could in the hope that someone would hear me. I thought I was doing a decent job of making a racket and maybe I stood a chance, but then my captor’s hand closed around my throat. With my air cut off, I couldn’t breathe.
Colby and I were loaded into a van. As soon as I was loose, I flailed once again, kicking everything I could reach, thrashing my body to make as much noise as possible.
Finally, a foot landed in my gut, making me gasp in pain and jerk away.
“Stupid fucking omega,” one of the men mumbled. Another snorted.
I rolled until I was pressed against Colby’s motionless body then stilled against him, trying to shimmy my way into his arms. Even in an unconscious state, he would still wrap me up in an embrace. I knew he would.
But the only indication that he was alive was his breathing. Struggling to calm myself, I quietly sobbed. Panic was making me irrational. I was half convinced that I should continue to make as much noise as possible, but the threat of pain was enough that I laid where I was.
“Enjoy him while you can, omega,” one of the men snarled. “Your days together are numbered.”
A new fear blossomed inside me as I tried to suck in a breath. They were going to kill me. Or Colby. Maybe both. How was I supposed to get out of this?
I snuggled further into Colby and used his warm cedarwood and allspice scent to calm me. For a long time, I concentrated only on him, letting his scent fill me until I was thinking somewhat lucidly.
Thankfully, the betas—they were all betas based on their floral and herbal scents—left me alone as they drove, but I wasn’t surprised. Betas didn’t have that drive to possess an omega. In fact, part of me was sure they’d love to make omegas extinct so that alphas had no choice but to take an interest in them.
I supposed it could be worse. These could be alphas with me, a helpless omega. I’d heard horror stories, and I had no doubt they were true.
Focus, Talya. Right now, I needed a plan. I needed to figure out how to wake Colby up. And short of that, I needed an idea about how to rescue us. How to maybe dispose of the betas.
Speaking of… They had left one behind, the one Colby had taken out. Surely that should tip someone off? But with Fenton not being due home for a couple days, it would be at least that long before he was found. By then, we could be who knew how far away.
But surely, that should be enough to track us. Right?
I just needed to find a way to hold out until then. It wasn’t like I could appeal to them, not while I was gagged.
I took a breath, pushing the frustration aside and racking my brain for any possible solution. Oh! I’d seen a hack on how to get rid of zip ties… Except that was when you were wearing shoes. Right now, I was barefoot, and based on the darkness outside, we weren’t on a well-traveled road. There were no streetlights and very few headlights, so conserving my energy was certainly in my best interest. No use in making noise when there was no chance of being overheard.
I didn’t give myself time to think about how damning this was or give much thought to where we were headed. My goal needed to be strategy, which was almost comical since I was a fucking graphic designer. I didn’t even like action movies. How was I going to think of a useful plan?! One that was even semi-successful took a much different skill set than the ones I had.
“We’re sure this is the pair they’re after?” one of the betas asked, making me calm my breathing to almost nothing so I didn’t miss a word.
“Bonded and no pack. Seems about right.”
“They were the only ones there, though. I thought there was a beta, too.”
“There’s a heavy beta scent all over the house that I know you didn’t miss. It would have been better if we’d gotten him, too, but the omega and alpha were our primary targets.”
Chills raced down my spine. This wasn’t a chance abduction. We were targeted . I swallowed, trying to keep back the panic that was once more trying to take over my conscious thought. I needed to glean whatever I could from them, as much as I could.
“She’s older than I thought they’d be interested in.”
“This isn’t that kind of assignment.”
Silence followed this information, then, “Ah. I’d love to be a fly on the wall.”
My heart raced at the dark satisfaction in his voice. Internally, I begged for them to continue to talk, but was it better to know what was ahead or not? Better to mentally prepare yourself for the worst or go in blind?
The drive was long enough that I dozed despite my fear. I opened my eyes when the door to the van slid open. Anger washed through me as I mentally kicked myself for not using every spare minute to think of a plan to save me and my alpha.
My time to think was over. A rough hand grabbed my arm and dragged me harshly across the floor of the van. He yanked me out and hauled me to my feet. I could have continued to act like the victim I was and screamed, but I wasn’t stupid. It was daylight, and if they were pulling me out of their vehicle still tied up, there would be no one here to help me.
I was on my own, and my alpha was still unconscious.
“Let’s go, omega,” the beta said, shoving me forward. I stumbled but kept my balance, then glanced behind me to find that they were dragging Colby out of the van now, too.
“Take a good look at him,” the beta said, smirking nastily. “You’ll never see your alpha again.”
I froze at his words, my eyes going wide. Everything around me fell away, and the day darkened as I focused solely on my alpha.
This beta couldn’t be serious. What good was a bonded omega without their alpha and vice versa?
It wasn’t until I came to a painful stop that I realized I had begun sprinting toward Colby. The beta grabbed me by my hair before slamming me to the ground. This time, it was my terrified panic that had me trying to pull free and scream through the gag still wedged in my mouth.
The beta laughed as he unceremoniously hauled me over his shoulder and began leisurely walking away. I screamed and squirmed in his hold, but all the beta did was laugh at me, his hand harshly gripping my thigh so I couldn’t so much as knee him in the throat.
My view of Colby was cut off when we stepped inside. I hadn’t taken a good look at the building since the beta had startled me with the worst-case scenario right off the bat. There was no way I was going to let this separation be my future. This wasn’t going to be permanent. I wouldn’t let it. That wasn’t an option.
I stilled as I studied the hall we passed through. It didn’t look like a warehouse. If anything, it looked like a hospital. I closed my eyes for a moment, fearing the unknown that laid ahead. What was the plan? Why did they want me? I was bonded, and they knew that. They couldn’t just sell me to another pack. A door opened, then the beta dropped me onto a hard mattress that rested on the floor. I took a good look at his face, memorizing every detail that I could. His confidence in his victory was written in his nasty smile and the way his scent blossomed with pleasure at seeing me on my ass in little more than a cell.
“Enjoy your new life, omega.” He turned on his heel and slammed the door behind him.
This was not my new life. I turned inward for a moment, concentrating on my bond and feeling for Colby. He was there, strong and steady, but he was silent. Unmoving. Which likely meant he was still unconscious. I needed him to wake up, but how could I make that happen?
I was left alone in the room for several hours. The only indication of the passing of time was the way the sunlight shifted through the window that was too high to reach and too small to fit through. Not that any of that mattered since my hands were still trapped behind my back.
Perhaps one might think being left alone was a good thing because it meant their attention wasn’t on me. Sure, it meant I wasn’t being tortured, raped, or anything else, but it also meant that I had nothing to do but play all the worst-case scenarios over in my mind, each minute coming up with something worse than the previous. All the while, I felt that my alpha was still unconscious.
My nerves were frayed by the time the door opened. It wasn’t any of the men who’d abducted us. In fact, one of the betas who walked in the room was a woman.
There was no compassion on her face. She wasn’t even looking at me as if I were a living person. To her, I was little more than an object to be studied.
She nodded, then the three men with her pulled me to my feet. They were gentler than those in the van, and for a minute, I reconsidered my expectation. Perhaps these people weren’t going to hurt me. A blossom of hope built in my chest as I took a breath after they released my hands and pulled the gag out.
I was given water, which I drank all of, then I was given half a sandwich before being led to a bathroom, where I was left alone to use the facilities. After that, they brought me to a different room; this one was more of a bare-bones guest room if I’d ever seen one—a bed on a metal frame, a long table against the wall, and a couple chairs.
“Alright, omega,” the woman said as she placed her hands in her pockets and faced me. “Time to see what we need to do to get rid of your bond.”