Chapter 19
NINETEEN
Jez
“NO,” I WHIMPERED, THE force of my voice still crushed beneath the power of the alpha’s bark. My eyes squeezed shut, but all I could see was Knox lying on the bed as I injected him with enough air to cause a pulmonary embolism.
Rough hands grabbed my wrists, dragging them forward and strapping them tight together with a zip tie. Not even my fear of having my arms restrained was enough to bring me back to the present.
I’d been wrong. I’d thought nothing could be worse than the uncertainty. But this was worse. So much worse than not knowing. Tears squeezed from the corners of my eyes as the true weight of what I’d done suffocated me with its crushing force.
“Aw, don’t cry, honey.” Adrian’s hateful voice came from the front seat.
I opened my eyes reluctantly to see his blurry form leaning around to watch me.
“You lied,” I said stupidly. “You lied to me, and I believed you.”
He gave a careless shrug. “It was easy enough to feed you a story that you wanted to hear. And it got me what I wanted, too—so, I’d call that a win-win scenario. Wouldn’t you?”
A taunting note entered his voice on the final sentence. I stared at him dully.
“What did it get you?” I asked, my voice as weak and raspy as though I’d managed to scream my lungs out earlier.
He snorted. “A mating to a rich alpha, that’s what. No more scrounging to make the rent between acting gigs. No more worrying about my safety every time I leave the apartment.”
With a deep ache pulsing in time with my heart, I thought about the pack I might have had. I wondered if Gage was still asleep, dreaming of that same thing.
“What are you going to do to me?” I asked, not really caring. It just... seemed like the sort of thing you should ask, in this situation.
One of the alphas flanking me in the back seat chuckled. His copper and lime scent assaulted me from one side, while diesel and pine hit me from the other.
“Oh,” Adrian said, “well... you clearly ratted me out to Knox’s gang, so I expect you’ll be made to disappear. But Enzo likes to get value out of people before he discards them. He sells, y’know, videos and stuff.”
I knew exactly what kind of videos those would be.
And it should have horrified me... but my mind had already checked out.
I was gone, just like I used to go away inside my own head after my father sold me to the traffickers.
If anything, it struck me as kind of appropriate that I’d end up going full circle, finishing exactly where I’d started.
I’d escaped the gangs once, but instead of making something of my freedom, I’d slowly turned into a monster.
It was like what the Buddhists believed, wasn’t it?
If you don’t learn from your mistakes, you have to come back and do it all over again.
Except this time, I didn’t have enough strength left to fight what was about to happen.
Strength... will... it was all gone. I was just an empty husk, sitting limply between my captors, staring at nothing.
I made no attempt to keep track of the route we took as we left the park. What would be the point? I’d learned what I needed to know, and now I was just... done. Things would happen to me that I couldn’t control, and then it would be over—and then I could finally rest.
If Knox died too, I wondered if we’d see each other somehow, afterward. I could try and apologize to him; explain how I’d been fooled and manipulated by someone who knew how to take advantage of my blindness about alphas. Would he forgive me? He’d seemed really nice when I’d talked to him, before—
Before I’d tried to murder him.
The SUV pulled up to an old warehouse. The alphas dragged me out of the back seat, hooking meaty hands under my arms and taking my full weight when my legs refused to do anything except hang there like limp noodles. Adrian pulled out a phone and lifted it to his ear.
“Hey, lover,” he said. “I’m just dropping off your present. Are the boys inside ready for her?”
There was a pause; I couldn’t hear whoever was on the other end.
Adrian’s nose scrunched up in distaste. “No, I’ll just drop her here and leave afterward. You know I don’t like to watch that kind of stuff, baby.”
Another pause. Then Adrian softened, his body adopting the appeasing openness that I’d always hated in omegas.
“I’ll come straight there, alpha,” he said, his tone growing flirtatious. “My mating bite hurts ever so much. I need your tongue on it. And your big, fat knot filling me up...”
I let my mind drift away again, feeling vaguely nauseated.
The call ended, and a finger and thumb gripped my chin harshly, tipping my face up until I was staring at Adrian’s cold features.
“You shouldn’t have snitched on me to your red-haired Viking,” he said. “If you’d just kept quiet, we might’ve forgotten about you. Goodbye, Jez.”
I mustered enough energy to spit in his face. The open-handed slap that rocked me an instant later was stronger than I would have guessed Adrian capable of.
“Drop her inside with the others, and let’s get the hell out of here,” he ordered, sounding coldly furious.
The alphas grunted acknowledgement and half-dragged, half-carried me inside the old, echoing building. The world swung in slow circles around me.
Almost over, I told myself. Almost done now.
They dumped me on a metal table. My nose twitched. The sound of gruff voices conferring wasn’t enough to distract me from the faint hint of aged whiskey and oakwood that clung to the room... to the table.
The scent burrowed its way past the heavy layer of wool felt wrapped around my awareness, demanding to be smelled. I inhaled. My brain helpfully coughed up more impressions.
Rage.
Pain.
Fear.
Lust.
A heavy hand grabbed the side of my head, pinning me as something sharp slid into the side of my neck. I whimpered, flopping weakly against the table.
Mate, whispered the stale scent clinging to the room. Mate in danger.
A low keening noise struggled free of my chest. “Lemme go...”
The hand clamped around my jaw, forcing me to look up at a craggy face looming over me.
“You’re not going anywhere, doll face,” said the unfamiliar alpha.
“Well, except into a cell with Bruno. The boss owes him a bonus for a job he did last week, and you’re it.
Don’t worry, I just gave you a heat-stim.
So, you’ll probably enjoy it, right up until he brings out his knife and starts cutting.
” He turned to one of the alphas who’d dragged me in here. “Did anyone search her yet?”
The other alpha patted me down, pulling out Gage’s phone and the cash I’d stolen from him.
“Here you go,” he said, handing them over.
He leered down at me. “Don’t forget to smile for the cameras, pretty girl.
Oh—hey, that reminds me. Did the red-head go feral yet? I’ve got some money down on that shit.”
“Not yet.” The first alpha sounded sour. “I’m right there with you. If he doesn’t lose control in the next couple of hours, I’m out a couple of Benjamins.”
I lost track of the words as waves of blistering heat washed outward from the pain in the side of my neck. The unbearable sensation twisted together with my awareness of my mate’s fading scent, and I groaned in distress.
“Fuckin’ lightweight,” muttered the alpha leaning over me. “Dump her in the cell. Looks like the heat-stim’s already taking effect.”
The other alphas’ hands were like red-hot brands against my skin as they grabbed me and dragged me upright.
I hissed and tried to twist away, but they pulled me to my feet and manhandled me out of the room.
We went down hallways that seemed to twist and warp around me.
Then I was thrown into a bare cell like a sack of garbage.
I cried out as I hit the unforgiving concrete, unable to catch myself with my wrists still zip-tied in front of me. The scent of oak and whiskey was stronger in this part of the building, shredded through with unimaginable distress.
Heavy bars clanged as the cell door slammed shut. A camera in the corner hummed as it turned to focus on me, its single red light like an accusing eye.
“H-Heath?” I whimpered, my higher brain functions struggling beneath the simmering fever rushing along my veins. “Heath? Heath!”
There was no reply. Of course there wasn’t.
I staggered to my feet, moaning as my thighs rubbed together. Slick was pulsing from my pussy, but it hurt, it hurt. The first cramp wracked my belly, and panic swelled inside me as old, carefully buried memories rattled their chains.
The crack and flash of thunder and lightning. Sweaty, grasping hands pawing at me.
Gasping, I dragged and clawed at my clothing, my bound hands clumsy as I tried and failed to get rid of the sickening feeling. Every seam and stitch felt like sandpaper against my skin. Sweat drenched me; I was burning up.
Another cramp doubled me over.
“Heath,” I whispered, the word barely audible. “Gage...”
I wanted to call out for Knox, for that comforting cedar and campfire scent—but my throat closed around the plea. I didn’t deserve to have his name on my tongue. I didn’t deserve any of them. A pitiful sob hitched my chest.
The door clanged open. I stumbled back, my shoulders thumping against the wall. The biggest alpha I’d ever seen loomed in the doorway. Bigger than Gage. And so much scarier.
The scent of rosemary and greasy leather rolled over me, overpowering the hint of Heath’s musk that I’d been clinging to. I froze, trying to melt through the concrete wall.
The alpha closed the barred door behind him. He pulled out a wicked stiletto knife, running a thumb along the edge like someone stroking a lover.
“Well, now,” he said, in a voice like gravel. “Aren’t you a sweet little morsel? Too bad you’re so skinny.”
His scent wrapped around me, overpowering and so very wrong. I doubled over and puked on the floor, my stomach cramping in time with my womb.
The alpha lunged forward and grabbed me. “Fuckin’ cow. You think I wanna smell that shit the whole time I’m balls-deep in you?”
I coughed, choking on bile, and he slammed me against a different part of the wall.
Heath, I thought desperately—my eyes focusing with laser intensity on the blade of the stiletto as the alpha raised it threateningly to my face.
All at once, a silvery sheen of clarity settled over my mind. One thing mattered, and one thing only. My mate was somewhere in this building, and this alpha was standing between me and what I needed.
I darted forward, the edge of the blade sliding along my cheek as I grabbed the alpha’s forearm and buried my teeth in his wrist. My jaws closed with a strength I’d never realized I had; my teeth piercing through skin and gristle.
The alpha howled, taken completely by surprise as the knife slipped from his grasp and clattered to the floor.
I jerked my head, tearing at whatever was in my mouth and spitting it out as my teeth came free.
The knife hilt felt like a magnet. It drew me to it unerringly as I dove for the floor, coming up with it held in one of my bound hands.
I sprung upright again and jabbed sideways with savage precision.
The blade slid into the alpha’s jugular with almost no resistance, slicing through flesh like butter.
The man made a wet, choking noise of shock as he scrabbled at the protruding knife handle, one hand flopping uselessly as it dangled from his torn wrist. Then he toppled slowly to the side, his knees folding and sending him crashing to the ground.
I stared down blankly as he flopped like a fish, gouts of red spurting rhythmically from his neck. When he stopped moving, I looked slowly past him to the door. Then I looked back down at the twitching corpse.
A ring of keys hung from his belt. I crouched next to him and pulled them free before walking to the door. He hadn’t even bothered to lock it. It was heavy, but it swung open with a creak.
I glanced at the camera. Someone would see what had happened, probably. But I didn’t need much time. Outside the cell with its choking miasma of blood, rosemary, and leather, I could smell my mate. I clutched the keys tightly in one hand and ran toward the source of the scent.