Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
Heath
I WAS LOSING MY FUCKING mind.
No. Scratch that. Gage had lost his fucking mind. The light from the hallway fell across his face, illuminating a look of resignation that made me want to punch him square in his perfect fucking jawline.
The she-devil was passed out in his bed, tucked snugly beneath the covers, and snoring like a freight train.
“She’s scared of storms,” Gage said, quietly enough not to wake her. “Well... not scared. Pretty sure it was actually a PTSD flashback. I brought her down here where it was quieter.”
My teeth hurt where my molars were clenching together. “She tried. To kill. Knox.” I forced the words out on the back of a growl.
“Yeah, and she’s still our scent match,” Gage replied, apparently unconcerned. “We can say it back and forth as many times as you want. None of it will change.”
I couldn’t deal with this. Not on top of everything else. I could not fucking deal.
“I’m not having this conversation,” I grated out. “Put her back in the fucking attic.”
“That’s not happening,” Gage said. “Our scent match does not get locked alone in a room when she’s so scared that she ripped half her fingernails off trying to claw her way free.”
Rage boiled in my chest, not so much at Gage, as at the fact that any of us had been put in this goddamned situation in the first place. I knew from bitter experience that my two choices were to lose control of myself... or turn around and walk away.
I turned around and walked away without another word.
“Heath—” My packmate’s low voice called after me, and I ignored him.
I had a name and a gender designation to work with.
Adrian.
Male omega.
It was barely one step up from nothing, but if I didn’t start pounding pavement and fucking do something, my head was going to explode.
I’d slept for maybe an hour-and-a-half before my nerves jolted me awake. I looked like three-day-old dogshit, and someone had thrown a scratchy wool blanket over my brain—leaving it itching and stifled.
The vague idea that I should probably eat something wriggled through my awareness like a silverfish struggling through mud to get back to its pond, and then it was gone. Instead, I grabbed my wallet, keys, and phone, slamming the door behind me as I left.
My BMW was parked around back, its shiny blue paint beaded with rain from the storm. The engine purred to life beneath my touch, accelerating smoothly onto the main road as I pointed it toward the Loop, with its collection of trendy bars.
With Knox’s help, I’d left my life as a barely functional alcoholic behind. I still knew people, though. It was time to track those people down and start asking some questions.
I was six bars deep, and lugging around a pocketful of blank rejections. Nope... no one knew anything about a male omega working for the Vozzina pack, who might or might not be called Adrian.
Chartreuse was the second-to-last stop on my list. I’d met Ames, the bartender, during my card-sharking days—assuming she still worked here. Stalking inside, I scanned the area behind the bar until my gaze fell on a shock of shoulder-length purple hair.
Good.
I shouldered my way past the crowd and got her attention.
At six-foot-five, Ames had a couple of inches on me in both height and breadth.
I was pretty sure she was trans, although I’d never asked since it wasn’t my business.
Her bi-colored gaze fell on me—one brown eye and one blue eye.
Hetero-chrome-something-or-the-other, it was called.
Purple-dyed eyebrows furrowed as she looked me up and down in all my rumpled and sleep-deprived glory; then she visibly smoothed her expression and pasted on a smile.
“Heath,” she said in her familiar husky tone. “Been a long time. Gimme a second, I’ll be right with you.”
I gave her a curt nod and waited while she slid drinks to a group of laughing betas. Biting down on a sudden craving for alcohol, I tapped my fingers impatiently on the deg of the bar until she came back.
“Ames,” I said, forcing myself to exhibit some basic degree of not being an asshole. “How’ve you been keeping?”
Ames raised an eyebrow and poured me a glass of seltzer water, sticking a lime wedge on the edge of the glass before handing it to me.
“Well enough,” she said cautiously. “You here for a social call?”
“No,” I said, mindlessly twisting the glass back and forth in my grip on the bar top. Christ, I needed to get an answer and get out of this place before I ended up asking her to dump three fingers of gin into the goddamned seltzer. “Got a question, and I’m wondering if you’ve heard anything.”
Her expression softened into sympathy. “I heard about Knox, if that’s what you mean. Has there been any change?”
That wasn’t a surprise, since the attempted murder had been all over the news.
“He’s stabilized some, but that’s not what I meant,” I said. “I’m trying to find any information I can about a male omega who works for the Vozzinas. He might be called Adrian.”
Ames’ face closed off again. “Heath, babes... the Vozzinas buy and sell omegas by the dozen. They don’t put them on the payroll.”
I had more reasons than most to know that already. It wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear, though.
“I’m well aware,” I told her. “But there hasn’t been anything making the rounds about an omega mixed up in their business somehow?”
She blinked, wiping her hands on a rag and leaning both palms on the bar across from me. “Well, I mean... when you put it like that.”
I scowled. “When I put it like what?”
She tipped her head side to side a couple of times—a ‘neither here nor there’ gesture. “Nothing to do with putting an omega on the payroll... but Lorenzo Vozzina just mated a male omega, and it's big news in the gossip mills.”
My heart gave a little kick of excitement. “He’s mated? When did this happen?”
“Yesterday,” Ames said. “Sounds like it was more of a business transaction than anything else. It’s outside of a heat, so there’s a big reception going on tonight at the Waldorf Astoria.”
“Is there, now,” I muttered, my craving for a drink forgotten as I turned this new puzzle piece over in my mind. “What’s the omega’s name? Do you know?”
“Hang on... let me think,” Ames said. “Erm... Paolo, I’m pretty sure it was. I don’t remember the last name, but it probably wouldn’t be hard to track it down.”
“That’s okay,” I said, adrenaline chasing away some of the fog of exhaustion that had been surrounding me. “You said the reception is at the Waldorf? And it’s going on right now?”
“Yeah, I guess it’s a pretty big deal among the people who like to be photographed at that sort of event,” she said with a shrug. “I wouldn’t have thought it was your kind of scene, though.”
“Oh, it definitely isn’t,” I replied. “Thanks, Ames—I owe you one.”
She snorted, and picked up a beer glass to wipe. “Right. I’ll add it to all the others you owe me, asshole.”
A mating reception at the Waldorf Astoria wasn’t the kind of party you gatecrashed while wearing rumpled street clothes from two days ago.
So, I walked into the gleaming marble reception area and booked a room for an eye-watering sum, ignoring the way the receptionist looked down his nose at me.
At least that way, no one would summarily toss me out onto the street.
It took a frustratingly long time to find a waiter who would let me borrow his jacket for a cool grand in cash—and I sure as hell hoped I wouldn’t need to bribe anyone else tonight, since that was all the money I’d been carrying with me.
As disguises went, it was paper-thin. Anyone who gave me more than the most cursory of glances would do a double-take...and my flaming red hair and beard tended to get quite a few glances at the best of times.
I grabbed a random tray from a pile in the kitchen and followed the parade of champagne and vol-au-vents to the ball room—where the reception was, as promised, in full swing.
My only saving grace was the fact that most assholes with a certain level of wealth looked at serving staff as scenery rather than as people. It didn’t take long to read the room and home in on the center of attention in the echoing space.
Lorenzo Vozzina was nowhere to be seen, which was probably just as well. Instead, a slender male omega was holding court by the buffet tables, surrounded by fawning hangers-on holding champagne flutes as they tittered with polite laughter.
Vozzina’s new mate was movie-star pretty in an androgynous sort of way, with jet-black hair artfully tousled over half his forehead, and a pair of cool gray eyes that were striking mostly because of their hardness.
As I approached, an unpleasant hint of rosewater and peppermint hit the back of my throat.
I was only going to have one chance at this, and I only had a single piece of ammunition in my arsenal.
“Adrian!” I called, pitching my voice to be heard above the chatter. “I need to talk to you! Jez sent me!”
The fake name had only earned me the most fleeting of perplexed glances. But as soon as the word Jez came out of my mouth, the omega’s eyes widened in clear alarm.
His gaze darted to first one side, then the other—a classic omega escape response. Then his face turned stony as he purposely returned his attention to me, lifting his chin.
“Security!” he called. “Someone detain that man! He’s impersonating a waiter!”
Dozens of eyes snapped to me. Cries of alarm went up from the group of social climbers, even as not-Adrian slipped away toward an inconspicuous side door, casting me a sharp glance over his shoulder as he went.