33. Bloodhound Alpha
Bloodhound Alpha
Tony
My heart beats in my ears and my soul extracts from my body at her words. Kelya took a pill to bring her scent back. Those are massively effective. They’ll counteract any descenting condition in under thirty minutes. She leaves my arms and backs away. As she turns, her scent blooms.
Sweet. Melon. Sugar. Floral. Sunshine and warmth.
“Prickly pear.” The words fall out of my mouth before my brain even processes what I’m saying.
I can feel the way the words will scratch against the page in my notebook. Kelya. Omega. Prickly pear.
It’s a cactus with beautiful bright pink flowers. It’s in Puerto Rico and here in the American Southwest. People eat the fruit. Kelya ordered a goddamned prickly pear mojito while I was in PR, and I licked it right off of her lips.
She knew.
I smelled that sweet note in Morocco. I assumed it was a sweet rose, maybe. The Livingstons told me her scent was sweet and floral, but didn’t offer anything more. Those descriptions don’t come close.
My omega smells like something I’ve never smelled before. It makes my body wake up. I want to rub her all over me. Drown in it. I want everything of mine to smell like something she touched.
I knew I would love her scent because I love her. I can’t even tell which came first. My god, if I had her full scent in Morocco, I wouldn’t have wasted a single second.
And I won’t now.
I don’t care if there are seven fucking people waiting for her to take her back to her old life.
She’s mine.
Fuck everything else.
As I take a step forward, determined to march out of the terminal and figure this out, someone bumps into me. It’s hard and purposeful. He knocks my shoulder so hard my glasses go flying. He smells of cold steel and snow. I look up in time to see Kelya with the Livingstons.
Woodsmoke. Peppermint candy. Lilies. I can’t see them to see which ones are which scent, but that has to be the Livingstons, whom I’ve never interacted with in real life.
I know it’s them because all three of these smells are rancid.
Just like that alpha at the bar who tried to hurt Kelya.
The rancid scent only affects alphas who have harmed an omega.
Suddenly, their motivation for having Kelya back becomes clearer.
If they’ve been walking around for two years smelling rotten, they’d want to fix it.
If she came back, they would have a chance.
I nearly laugh out loud. Kelya was sick being away from them, and they were rotting away from the inside out. How utterly ironic.
I can also smell another omega, lemon and yogurt, and her three alphas. I reach down to retrieve my glasses, and that’s when Cold Steel casually steps his boot over them. Crunch.
I’m not a fucking idiot.
The shoulder hit could have been an accident, but this certainly wasn’t.
I stand up and square off with the man. I’m taller than him. He’s wearing tight pants with the shirt tucked in and smells like he hasn’t showered in days.
Based on the cheap cigarettes and booze smell—I’d say bounty hunter. He chews something, and when he opens his mouth to speak, I smell the tobacco. I’m going to make him choke on it.
“Alpha Racine. Come with me and let’s talk.”
“Sorry, but I have an omega to run after…” Cold Steel grabs me by the back of my neck, and I throw an elbow into his side. He’s quicker than I give him credit for, and built like a brick house. He braces for the hit, takes it, and holds my neck even tighter.
Fuck.
I’m about to swipe his feet out from underneath him when I feel the tip of his knife at my side. We are in a fucking airport!
I settle down and let him lead me—by the neck—farther into the terminal. This fucking bitch.
Over the intercom, I hear a flight to Louisiana being announced, and based on the direction we are headed, I can safely guess what he was hired for.
“All this just to make sure I took a flight out of here?”
He laughs.
“I’m surprised they didn’t tell me to slit you from throat to toe after seeing you touch their omega.”
She’s not their fucking omega.
“Are you acquainted?” I ask. He digs his nails into my skin.
“I’ve done a few jobs for them.”
“Anything to do with omegas before?” He’s silent. What did Kelya tell me about asking a man a question about himself and then he’ll talk for hours? I change my strategy. “How much did they pay you? I’ll tell you what they paid me. Maybe you can negotiate…”
“I only got 5k for this. But last time they had me track this omega down and scare the shit out of her. I dragged her to their lawyer’s house, and she signed an NDA. They paid me eight for that.”
“They paid me 500 to bring her here. But that’s not even what they paid to find her…”
“For that…” Cold Steel’s grip loosens. “Five hundred thousand?”
“Yeah, he negotiated himself from two.”
“That’s not like Roman…”
The knife still digs into me, hidden in his loose palm.
“She must be extra special. More than the one with the NDA,” I offer.
“No, there’s no way. I’d never even fucking heard of her. But I did know they had an omega in temporary placement years ago. There was a rumor they killed her and stuffed her body in the nest. Apparently they’d avoid it like it had a dead body shut inside. And then there was a smell…”
While I hope nothing is dead and rotting in her nest, it sounds like they shut it up and didn’t touch it. Thank god. That means Kelya will be able to return.
The smell from the Livingstons’ rotting pheromone scent is not a dead body; though, Cold Steel might not have known that.
I move my head slightly away from his hand, and his grip tightens again.
Everyone has already boarded, and they are calling my name over the intercom.
I can see the attendant’s mouth slightly delayed, calling my name.
Cold Steel brings me right up to the gate.
“Here he is,” he says with his alpha influence.
“I won’t be boarding the flight,” I try to tell her in my most relaxed tone. But the knife digs in, piercing through my shirt and skin. It’s apparent to me this man knows I’m a bloodhound, and that’s why he’s staying at my back. If I can just get him in front of me, I can bite him.
A bite from a bloodhound is not to be underestimated.
Not every bite from an alpha is a bonding mark; it’s all about intention.
If I bite him, I could do it like anyone else, except I would do serious damage with my strong jaw and sharp teeth.
When I turn my head, I see him eyeing my mouth.
He knows. He digs the knife in, and I feel the warm blood drip down my hip.
“Yes, he will be.”
The woman sees the knife and the hold he has on my neck and does nothing about it. I’m ushered onto the ramp. At the bottom of, the flight crew seems alarmed, but after a moment, moves out of the way, directing me to an empty seat in the first row. When I turn to sit down, I strike—
Cold Steel isn’t able to back away in time due to two members of the flight crew crowding behind him, so I swing forward and clamp my teeth on his forearm.
He screams.
An electric surge drives through my brain, and I bite harder, knowing it’s doing the same thing to him. My bite won’t bond him unless I want it to. Bonds are questions and answers. What I’m doing is violence only. This is assault.
I bite down until I hit bone, then stop digging in.
“Fuck! What the fuck, you dog!”
He screams again and tries to fling himself back, only knocking down the two flight attendants.
Others around us scream in response.
At the risk of accidentally drinking his blood, I detach my jaw, and he falls all the way down to his ass. His screaming persists.
I launch out of my seat to make a run for it. I’m lurched back into it, and not only is a muzzle thrown over my head, but then handcuffs are locked onto one of my wrists before I know what’s going on.
Two fucking air marshals hold me down while they get my other hand into the cuff.
Fuck!
“This man needs to get to Barberie! He’s staying on this plane!” Cold Steel declares, holding out his bounty hunter badge for all to see.
The captain stands behind the melee and points at me.
“Get this monster off my plane!”
It’s not the first time I’ve been called a monster after I’ve bitten someone.
Then the captain reaches down and pulls the bounty hunter up by his shirt collar.
His knife tumbles out of his hand and onto the floor.
“This man has a knife!”
More people scream. I spit blood into the muzzle, getting it out of my mouth. More security comes onto the plane, and all of us are escorted off.
This is such a fucking disaster.