Chapter 21 The Escape
The Escape
Mads
Ro leaves the cage to do god only knows. She kissed us, and now she’s talking about sending us away. How fucking irritating.
I look at Locke, who is definitely in sync with me. We both give each other a “what the fuck” look. Good. I’m glad he hates this. He bonded her, so I can see why he’s upset, but I…I feel things, too.
I can’t help but think it’s Cadi’s heat that’s making us so fucking keyed up.
I could easily get on board with a threesome situation right now.
I’d have Locke whimpering and Ro delirious.
A tangle of limbs and kisses and soft and hard parts, their desperate breaths in my ears, moving and writhing and falling into the same brilliant rhythm.
Locke grabs my arm, throwing me out of my fantasy, and we join her outside the cage. She’s running her hand over a chair rail on the wall.
“I think it’s best to go through the passageway, but I can’t find the latch.”
I look at her father on the ground, and he seems like he may wake up any second.
All that coke in his body can’t be good.
I keep my eyes on him. Locke, however, simply goes up behind Ro and traps her between the wall and his body with his hand on the wall and his other hand on her hip.
She’s not facing him, but she stops searching for the false door.
His body arches over her small frame. I can feel the tension between them.
Delicately, Locke lifts his hand from her hip and eases it up to his bite mark on her shoulder.
He moves her dress strap out of the way.
A shiver runs through both of them as the bite mark is exposed to the air.
He whispers something, and she nods, bracing herself against the wall with her forearms. He dips down and licks their bond mark.
It’s so animalistic.
It’s primal.
It’s hot as fuck. She melts into the wall, and he pushes into her with his body, bent over her, licking her mark. My mouth is open to get enough oxygen into my body.
The two of them. So beautiful. Despite forcing them to bond, they really do seem good together.
This is so fucked up. Cadi is his omega.
He has two omegas now. Is that even possible?
I guess it’s possible, but it’s so unheard of I can’t imagine it’s…
ok. He pulls her up and into his arms, so her toes barely touch the ground.
His tending to the mark has put her in some sort of trance.
Oscar licked my mark after he made it, but it didn’t make me horny.
It made me feel like someone cared. Deeply cared.
Her breath is shaky, and he’s growling over her skin.
Legs stirs.
Fuck.
“Uh, guys, I don’t think the monster in the room is going to stay knocked out for long…”
Locke finally sets the omega down and then puts her strap back over her shoulder. She thanks him with the fluttering of her eyelashes and a look over her shoulder.
She tries one more time for the false door, and I hear the click of the latch, and part of the wall swings open. She rushes to a cabinet by a wall, fishes some things out, and comes back, herding us to the entrance.
“There. Take this all the way out. Keep your hand on the right wall and follow it out. Once you make it to Lily Street, don’t stop moving. There’s a bus depot about a half mile on that street. Get out of here. Get your pack and disappear.”
She hands me two wallets and phones. Locke and my stuff.
“Liam had them in here.” I hand Locke his things and pocket mine.
“Come with us.”
She shakes her head.
I rub my hand down my face.
No.
No. No. No.
“You can’t stay here.”
“Mads, I…” Her face hardens. “I don’t want to leave. Don’t make me.”
She’s doing that thing I’ve seen her do—the manipulation thing.
“Come with us. We’ll protect you.”
“I said no. Now go!”
“Are you going to be ok?” Locke tries to touch her shoulders, but she’s made a few large steps away from us, almost herding us towards the passageway.
“Of course. I’ll be fine. I’ll reject the bond. So will you. We’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. Now go!”
“Aurora?” Legs’s voice comes from the other side of the room, groggy and in pain.
“Go,” she whispers.
I hand her a small cylinder I found in the arena. A man threw it in after Honey gave it to him. She takes it tightly in her fist.
Locke and I step into the dark passageway, and she shuts the door, sending us into darkness.
Well, fuck.
“We’re not going to leave her here, are we?” Locke’s voice is just above a whisper.
“Unless we plan on kidnapping her…” She said she doesn’t want to come. She said no. Locke lets out a small, defeated sound. “Come on, alpha. Let’s get out of here. Cadi needs you.”
“I can’t…” His head hangs low in the darkness. “This is going to tear me apart.”
I pull him into a hug.
“I got you. It’s ok. We’ll figure it out.” His head rests on my shoulder, and his breath goes over my neck, reminding me I’m still in a collar. I stroke his back and let his heartbeat thump between us. I rub my cheek against his hair.
“Mads, I’m really glad you’re here with me.”
I huff out a small laugh.
“Yeah? Why?”
“Because you’re like Oscar and make good decisions. And you’re Kol in that you’re clever and can think on your feet. Because you smell like a buttery pastry. And because you touch me like you want me.”
“I do want you.”
He shivers, and I hold him closer. His nose nuzzles across my skin. He’s such a good guy. He has been nothing but kind to me. Kol and Oscar look at him like he’s the most charming, sweet man, and I know it, too. He’s so pretty, too.
“You don’t deserve any of this.”
“I want to protect Ro.”
I rub his back.
“What should we do?” I ask him and then kiss his forehead and hair. “Don’t you have alpha instincts?”
“They are fried. They want to suck your cock until you pull my hair out. They want to go right back through this door and use my teeth to rip out Legs’s throat and then fuck his daughter in his…”
I pull his hair, and it yanks his head back.
“Locke.”
“Sorry. Alpha instincts can get dark.”
“You’re cute when you’re violent.”
“I wouldn’t actually do anything.” I can see some of his smile in the dark.
He pushes me into the wall on the right and hikes up my thigh onto his hip, pushing his body into mine.
Those drugs Ro has been giving me are like military grade painkillers.
I’m high as shit, and the pain is throbbing somewhere else in my mind.
It’s there, but I can kind of ignore it a little.
However, as soon as his deliciously firm hand starts to massage my thigh, I moan and drop my head into his shoulder.
I lick the crook of his neck.
“Am I so horny because of Cadi?”
“Yes. I’ve been hard since yesterday. I fought a fucking tiger with a chub.”
His thumb pushes into bones, and I whine at the pleasure of it. He follows my noises and massages me right where I need it.
“I’ve been dying to see where it hurts,” he mumbles.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been watching you. It’s not just your thigh. It’s your hip, too, right?”
“Yeah, my hip got a hairline fracture. Nothing is healing as fast as they said.”
“You just need someone taking care of you. Looking after you. Making sure you rest. Take a car. Do you do physical therapy?”
I suck in a breath when his hand grips my inner thigh just right.
“I did. It got…expensive.”
“Ok, well, when we get home, let’s get you set up. I’ll take you there. So I can learn what you need to do. I looked it up, and people can heal from a femur break. It’s not a lifelong sentence.”
He’s lulled me into a stupor. Is this how Ro felt as he licked the mark?
Fussy Locke, they called him.
I’d let him fuss over me.
Anytime.
“I really liked Kol and Oscar when they first got here.” His voice is low and raspy as he starts to recall this memory.
“I thought they were together. Everyone did. I used to be desperate for any information on them, but when I was actually around them, I couldn’t hear anything over the roaring in my ears.
I was embarrassed to be around them. You look like a fucking sex god in a collar, but I looked like…
I don’t know. Everyone treated me like a dog.
Like something lesser. And I felt like it.
I was always embarrassed, but around them I was humiliated.
Legs would pull me out to sit at his feet. He’d even pet my head.
“Oscar had a reputation. Once Legs realized who he was, he wanted to impress him. He wanted to be partners with him. But all Oscar wanted to do was negotiate Kol’s business.
“I don’t know what you remember, but Kol had been a supplier for prescription hormones and drugs.
Oscar wanted him out. The way he stood up for his alpha was intoxicating to witness.
I became kind of obsessed with them. I’d fantasize about them.
In a sexual way, yes, but also other things.
Cutting their hair. Washing their feet. Making them coffee. I don’t know. It sounds stupid.”
“It doesn’t sound stupid.”
The rage I feel imagining Locke here, before he was rescued, could fuel an entire nation.
“I didn’t believe it when people said Kol was staring at me. Even when Legs punished me for it. Why would Kol want me? He was handsome, clever, and funny. All the girls wanted him. Except Ro. She did not like him. Not one bit.
“I wondered about him constantly. Maybe Oscar would want me. Legs would…loan me out to people sometimes. I hoped he would do that with Oscar. When I was near them, I didn’t feel like a dog.
I felt like an alpha. Oscar would look me in the eye and talk to me like an equal.
Kol would joke with me, but not at my expense. More like we were brothers.”
His hands stop moving. The silence in the dark hall is filled with memories of Locke’s old life.
“It was the day they were going to leave. I still can’t remember a single thing that was said.
It was like ocean waves were beating against my ears.
They were going to leave, and I was going to stay.
And then I’d worry about who was going to be with them while I wasn’t.
I was jealous. I was angry. I was scared. I was already mourning.
“Legs was holding Ro in front of him, bragging to the Sotos about her. Probably detailing his plans for us. Oscar bowed his head, saying goodbye. They turned to leave…Then I felt Kol’s jaw on the back of my fucking arm.
It woke me right the fuck up. Like the sun finally shining.
Suddenly, there was Oscar, and I felt how worried he was for us.
I felt how much Kol cared for me. I’d never even imagine someone would feel that much for me.
“Kol didn’t let me go. He looked feral. He ripped my collar off with his teeth. He growled at anyone who came near us. He held me so tight that I bruised. And I didn’t mind. I knew he would keep me safe.
“The funny thing was, I didn’t realize that Oscar should have been mad that his pack mate did that. Oscar wasn’t mad. He was annoyed. Worried. Sure. But when he looked at me, I could see he cared for me, too.”
Locke’s hand has absentmindedly gone up the back of my neck, and he tugs on my hair, soothing himself with the motion.
“I love them so much. I love how they treat me. When I saw Cadi and realized she was my scent match…Mads, you have no idea what I felt. I felt everything all at once. Every fucking emotion we are capable of.
“It had to have been some cosmic mistake, or something. I ran right to Oscar and Kol. I knew I’d be safe with them and they would know what to do.
They weren’t jealous. They didn’t call me a liar.
God, I love them so much. I love that they found you and Cadi for me.
I love you, Mads. So fucking much. I want to make sure you are ok.
And Cadi? My fucking god. I love her already. ”
It feels like a balloon is growing in my chest. His story is making me angry and fucking pissed off.
This place is a goddamned nightmare. His story is also filling me with so much hope about our pack in Cash City.
I never have to worry about them and how they will treat Locke. He’s precious, and they know it.
“I have an idea…” he says against my skin.
“What?”
His hard cock pushes into my belly, so that’s where my head is at when he has to repeat twice, “We should release the tiger.”
“What? Maximus?”
“Yeah, that’s the only tiger I know.” He pulls back a little and lets my leg come down to the ground. The blood rushes through it, and it feels warm and relaxed. “We should release him before we leave. Tell him to eat Legs. If he dies, all the better.”
“Is that your violent inner alpha speaking?”
“It’s all of me.”
Release the tiger.
Goddamn. Why didn’t I think of that?