Thirty-Three
THIRTY-THREE
Nat
IT HAD BEEN YEARS SINCE I’d been punched in the kidney, but the sharp, radiating pain in my lower back was still familiar. It swept me away to places that I’d rather not revisit—my adoptive father pacing back and forth in the next room, random items clattering noisily to the floor as he swept them off the nearest horizontal surface to expend his rage; my adoptive mother’s lips pressed into a thin, bloodless line.
There were no abusive parents here to rain down disapproval on my head. Instead, I was locked in a dusty old office inside a disused building, trapped with a terrified omega and the alpha I’d let fuck me three times in a motel room.
I’d been gearing up for an unpleasant discussion with Byron Harper in the alley behind the Elderflower Inn when Luca had confronted us. He must have followed Byron outside and overheard part of the conversation, because he was clearly not happy .
I couldn’t really blame him. He and Mia were friends, if not more, and he’d just found out that Mia’s husband and one of her lovers had both been hiding one hell of a secret from her. I’d dreaded the fallout that was about to crash down on me... but now, I’d happily go back in time and face the mess head-on, if it meant avoiding what had come next.
When the headlights turned into the alley, accompanied by a screech of aging brakes, I’d had absolutely no clue what was happening. Luca had immediately panicked, cursing as he scrabbled away from the vehicle, trying to get deeper into the alley. An instant later, a strong hand grabbed me by the arm, shoving me after him. Byron had placed both of us behind him, caging us in with his spread arms.
The alley was blind—a dead end. Getting back to the door of the restaurant would have meant heading straight toward the blinding lights, and I could already hear the squeak of car doors opening. Dark shapes swarmed toward us, silhouetted against the piercing yellow-white headlights.
“What the hell?” I’d demanded, not sure if I should be pushing past Byron to stand next to him, or pulling Luca deeper into the alley. Behind me, the omega whimpered.
Everything descended into chaos. Hands tugged Byron forward, away from us. The sound of grunts and fists on flesh echoed against the brick walls. Someone grabbed me by the hair and pulled, dragging me off balance. The brutal impact of something too hard to be a fist crashed into my lower back, and I crumpled to the concrete as pain exploded outward, paralyzing me.
Everything around me had gone distant and confusing, punctuated only by the ebb and flow of crippling agony from my back. When I regained more awareness after a dizzying couple of minutes, I was sitting on a hard bench with a cloth bag over my head and my wrists trapped behind me. Harsh panting came from my right, and high-pitched, terrified keening came from somewhere across from me.
The bench beneath me had shifted, throwing off my balance. My injured back impacted cold metal, sending my awareness spinning dizzily again.
“Byron?” I’d choked out. “Luca?”
“Shaddup!” came a sharp, angry voice. The blow that rocked my head to the side was more shocking than painful, my attacker unseen through the muffling cloth of the hood.
My brain finally started putting two and two together at that point. We were inside a van with at least one of our attackers, being taken god knew where. Whatever was binding my wrists felt sharp and unforgiving. A zip tie, maybe. It was hard to breathe, the inside of the cloth hood already growing humid and stifling as the stale air built up.
As insane as it sounded, we’d clearly just been kidnapped from right outside a fucking Michelin-star restaurant during a busy dinner service. Had anyone even noticed? Would a van pulling up and the sounds of a struggle filter into the busy kitchen with its clatter of pots and pans, the hiss of the grill and the noise of people calling back and forth?
There’d been no way to tell where we were being taken.
“What do you want with us?” I’d demanded, the words muffled inside my bag. “This must be some kind of mista—”
The words were cut off by another cuff to the side of my head. This time, I’d tasted blood where my tooth cut into the side of my cheek.
“I told you to shut up , motherfucker,” snarled our captor.
Across from me, Luca whimpered again.
I shut up.
The journey seemed like it took an hour, but it was probably less. At the end of it, we’d been dragged out and frog-marched inside a building that smelled like dust and decay. Our staggering footsteps echoed around what must have been a large open space. Then we’d been dumped in this locked room, our wrist ties cut, and the bags pulled from our heads.
“Stay here,” said the guy who seemed to be in charge of our kidnapping.
It was an unnecessary order. The door slammed, a lock clicking ominously. The room was dark—not quite pitch black, thanks to a barred and dusty window on one wall... but not far off. The only light that reached us was the faint glow of the city outside.
I heard a scuffle, and a darker shadow among all the other shadows disappeared into the farthest corner. It was Luca, his ragged breathing coming short and quiet.
“Byron?” I asked cautiously.
“Yeah.” The word was a bare rasp of a whisper.
“Are either of you hurt?” I tried.
Luca didn’t reply. The rhythm of the soft, frantic breathing in the corner remained unchanged.
“Stab wound.” Byron’s voice was tightly controlled.
My stomach dropped. “Where?”
“Thigh,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. You?”
“Bruises,” I said, hoping that if there was any more serious damage, it would keep. “What about Luca?”
There was a pause. “I can’t smell blood. Well, just mine, I mean.” Byron’s larger shadow shuffled toward the omega in the corner with a hitching limp in his gait. “Luca?”
A desperate, angry snarl sounded from the corner as Byron approached.
“ Crap . Okay. Okay, I’m not going to touch you,” Byron said, backing off. “I’ll just be over here by the desk.”
“What’s wrong with him?” I asked, not feeling right about referring to the omega in the third person, but needing to know.
Byron settled against the blocky silhouette that must be the desk. A heavy sigh escaped him. “PTSD? I’m guessing, anyway. Fun fact—the same gang that’s after your restaurant kept Luca prisoner for years. They used him for... well. I’ll let you engage your imagination. Anyway, he might know me, but I’m still an alpha. And I expect the last thing he wants right now is an alpha anywhere near him.”
My breath caught as the coin dropped. I knew better than to fall into the ‘helpless, delicate omega’ stereotype, after having been married to one who could put drill sergeants to shame. But everything I’d seen of Luca pointed to a quiet, sensitive soul—the kind of person you wanted to wrap up in a blanket and ply with hot cocoa until the melancholy behind his huge green eyes faded to peacefulness.
Or... maybe it wasn’t normal to think of someone you barely knew like that. But, damn it, it had been pretty well established already that I wasn’t as straight as I might have liked. If a sweet and beautiful male omega managed to dig his way into my emotions, maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise.
I thought of Mia being held captive. Used . Bile rose in my throat, followed by a wave of hot anger. Back when we’d been able to communicate properly, I’d known what she needed when she was truly upset about something. The idea of her friend—maybe one of her lovers—being thrown headfirst into what must be his worst nightmare and then left to huddle trembling in a corner, broke open something inside me.
“I’m not an alpha,” I said quietly, and limped over until I was just outside the radius where Luca had started growling at Byron.
This was uncharted territory, but I pictured what I would do for Mia if—god fucking forbid—she’d been the one hyperventilating in a corner.
“Hey,” I said. “I’m going to sit down right here, okay? You’re safe, no one’s going to touch you without asking first. I just don’t want you to be alone.”
The ragged, fearful panting paused, as though Luca had momentarily held his breath. It resumed a few seconds later, but no warning growl followed. I eased myself down the wall to a sitting position, my head swimming as my bruised kidney protested the movement in the strongest possible terms.
I was aware of a heavy alpha gaze on me—watchful and wordlessly threatening. Do not fuck this up , that gaze said. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, covering a fresh flinch of pain.
“I’m sure the police will be here soon,” I said. “We were right outside a busy restaurant. Someone must have seen what happened.”
The snort from the desk implied Byron had his own opinion about that. I glared at him, doubting he could see the expression properly.
“I’m going to come a bit closer now,” I told Luca. “Unless you tell me not to. We just need to keep calm until the cavalry gets here, right?”
I scooted within arm’s length, only to be rewarded with a lightning-quick slap across the face—my third of the night.
“ Ow ,” I said, my palm coming up to cover the stinging mark.
“You fucking asshole !” Luca shouted in my face, the words wet with repressed tears. “How could you betray Mia like that? Both of you!”
I winced. Apparently, we were still having this conversation, kidnappers and all.
“Because I’m an idiot,” I said tiredly. “A beta idiot living in the closet and terrified of admitting that I might be gay.”
“Christ, you’re dense,” Byron muttered from his perch. “In case no one has clued you into this before, bisexuals exist. Mind you, so do self-absorbed assholes. I should know.”
“You are an idiot!” Luca choked. A sob wracked him, ugly and wrenching. “ Fuck , I can’t be here. I have to get out of here! I can’t do this again !”
The last sentence was barely intelligible as Luca curled forward into a sobbing ball. Aware that I was one twitch away from getting slapped again, clawed, or worse, I scooted around until I was sitting next to him against the wall, only a few inches separating us.
With a moan, Luca toppled sideways into me. I caught him around the shoulders mostly on instinct, the scent of green grass and sweet summer flowers filling my nose. Conflicting emotions washed through me in waves—guilt at holding someone else who was close to Mia so intimately... embarrassment over the picture I must make, on the floor with a crying man in my arms. But that self-consciousness was buried beneath a strange sense of rightness at being someone’s comfort in the midst of the storm.
An unaccustomed protectiveness welled up in my chest. I couldn’t begin to imagine what the omega in my arms must have been through. The idea that he might be in danger now made me want to cave in the skull of anyone who dared try to hurt him. It was an uncivilized, barbaric impulse—completely foreign to the person I’d always believed myself to be.
Byron came over, keeping his distance, but joining us in the same part of the room. He lowered himself down with a pained grunt, one leg held awkwardly out in front of him. My eyes had adjusted enough that I could make out his face in the darkness. Our gazes locked, and something of my helpless confusion must have shown through.
“I know,” Byron said to whatever he saw in my expression. “Don’t feel bad. He just has that effect on people.”
We stayed like that for hours, Luca’s sobs eventually quieting as he slipped into a restless doze. Outside the window, the dirty sodium light glow of the city faded to a lighter gray as a new day dawned, cloudy and lackluster.
It revealed our surroundings in more detail. The old metal desk Byron had been leaning against, its legs bolted to the floor. Bars on the window, rusty but solid looking. Some odds and ends of old junk lying around—a battered mop bucket, a few moldering banker’s boxes.
I wondered idly how long the place had been abandoned.
In my arms, Luca gasped awake, at the same time Byron straightened abruptly from his exhausted slouch. The stain of dark blood soaking the right thigh of his trousers was still glossy and wet. With a jolt, I realized I’d underestimated how bad the stab wound must be. I should have tried to bandage it somehow. I drew breath to berate him for downplaying it—
—only to be interrupted by the heavy lock on the room clicking ominously. The door swung open with a creak of unoiled hinges.