Chapter 19
Cormac
Swiping my tongue over the scar that now mars Zira’s neck, not feeling an ounce of shame or guilt for having finally claimed my omega, I smile against her flesh as she hums, sending content, giddy, and deliriously happy vibes through the growing bond as she remains sprawled on top of me.
It’s not like she can go anywhere else for the time being, what with her most intimate holes currently being occupied with two thick knots that won’t deflate any time soon.
Chuckling against her back as he cleans his own bond mark on her back, Ford pulls back to kiss along her spine before going right back to cleaning the new scar, sighing as more of those blissful feelings greet us through the bonds that now tie us to one another.
“That feels so good,” Zira finally whispers, her words sinking into my quickly clearing mind as the rutting instincts fade now that we got what we wanted.
I nuzzle into her neck as I whisper back, “What does?”
Zira sighs, contentment bleeding through the bond once more before she answers, “Feeling you. Feeling Ford. It’s like there’s a tether tied to my heart that leads directly to you both. I can sense your emotions through it, and I like it. A lot.”
I pull back just as Ford does, and we both share a wide grin, before Ford gently demands, “What do you feel, pretty girl?”
She pauses for a moment before she huffs a laugh and begins explaining what she can feel through the bonds that officially make her our omega and us her alphas. “It feels like euphoria. There’s a bone-deep satisfaction, a blissful elation. There’s something else, too. I think it’s…”
She doesn’t finish her sentence, and I feel the shock thrum through the bond as she silently figures out what else she can feel.
Chuckling against her back, Ford leans in to press kisses over the side of her face he can reach, before pushing, “Go on, omega. What is it?”
I feel the emotion bubbling inside her, disbelief, shock, and a shattering joy that almost brings tears to my eyes. She shakes her head and I’m sure I feel a teardrop fall to my chest, so I do the only thing I can think of to comfort my omega. I wrap my arms around her and my brother, hugging them both tightly to me and uncaring about the weight that presses me into the bed. Hell, I could suffocate and die happy now that I’ve finally scarred Zira with my bond mark.
So, with her snug against my chest, I press my lips into the crown of her head as I answer for her, “That’s love, starlight. I love you, more than I thought I could love anyone other than Ford and my pack. You’re the greatest thing in my life, the most precious treasure, and I’ll worship you every day that you give me.”
Ford sends me a soft smile over Zira’s shoulder, and I nod at him, urging him to confess the feelings I know Zira is experiencing. And he does, not even considering withholding his thoughts and feelings. He leans his chin on her shoulder as he declares, “I love you, too, pretty girl. I couldn’t imagine my life without you in it anymore, and I wouldn't want to. Hitting you with that door and shattering your phone was the best thing I ever did, and I’m honored you chose us to be your alphas and the guardians of your happiness, health, and heart.”
I hear a small sniffle from Zira and chuckle as I feel her emotions untangle from their twisty state, a warm giddy joy washing away all else but the mirrored feeling I have for my omega. With a deep inhale, Zira reciprocates, “I love you both, so much. I just love you to the marrow of my bones. I couldn’t have chosen a better pack to belong to.”
Ford hums, and I smile softly as I nuzzle back onto her neck as I clean her scar once more while Ford croons, “Those words are music to my ears, sweet girl. Fucking music.”
Zira chuckles on top of me, and my brother and I both groan as her locked body tightens around our still swollen knots, and she gasps before giggling once more. Right before a loud yawn cracks her jaw and a pang of tiredness crawls down the bond.
Very carefully, Ford and I maneuver Zira until the three of us are lying on our sides in the bed and tucked beneath the stained but thick and warm comforter. Hooking her leg over my hip, I grin at her as Ford hisses and gripes through clenched teeth, “Not helping my knot go down. Fuck, you’re so damn tight, pretty girl.”
She laughs even as a fresh wave of perfume spills from her, and I chuckle darkly as Ford groans. “That’s not helping either.”
Nuzzling my nose against Zira’s, I mutter, “Who’s to say she’s trying to help? Maybe she’s trying to keep us trapped inside her body for the remainder of the vacation.”
My omega flashes me a beaming smile, faint desire still clinging to her, but her exhaustion outweighs the need for more orgasms. “Doesn’t sound like a bad idea if you ask me.”
“How will you eat all the food Champ and Laz cooked for us if we’re trapped in bed with our knots swollen inside you?” Ford counters, and I laugh loudly as I feel her drop of happiness at the mere mention of not being able to eat Barnes’s culinary masterpieces.
Then she yawns again, and I lean in to press a lingering kiss to her lips that she reciprocates with a soft hum and a flow of contentment through the bond. When I pull back, I gently demand, “Get some rest, starlight. When you wake up, we’ll dress up warm and sit outside for a while. Maybe even start the fire and roast some s’mores, cuddle under a blanket and count the stars like I count your freckles when you’re not looking.”
Her eyes had been fluttering closed as I spoke until I mentioned her freckles, and her eyes snap open with that bashful smile and rosy cheeks that probably mirror mine. “You count my freckles?”
I nod, because there’s no use in me hiding it. “Every single day. I lost count after I finished the right side of your face.”
“You’re such a goofball,” she giggles.
I shrug. “Your goofball now.”
“My goofball,” she sighs, and I’ve never heard a more peace-filled sound than that.
Well, that is before an adorable, little snore escapes her after she falls silent and drifts off to sleep between my brother and me.
As soon as she’s asleep, Ford snuggles closer, slinging his arm over her and me before he whispers, “We’re going to have to call the others to explain what just happened.”
I snort, knowing damned well Alek is going to lose his shit, but I nod in agreement. “Let’s rest for a little while and then we’ll do what we need to do.”
Sure enough, as soon as Zira’s body unlocks our deflated knots hours upon hours later, the sky is dark and glittering with sparkling stars visible through the large expanse of sky, not a cloud in sight to smudge them out of view. The three of us take a quick shower and redress in warmer clothes before I make good on my promise, providing a cozy night for my freshly bonded omega. And while Zira is twirling her melting marshmallow over the fire pit, her face pointed up at the sky as she admires the stars, I go about texting the guys about what happened.
I keep it short. I keep it sweet.
And then I turn my phone off so if anyone is going to deal with the backlash, then it can be Ford.
For the rest of the night, I spend it between feeling content and incredibly happy, sticking close to my omega and wondering how the hell we managed to snag a funny, caring, and beautiful omega I now get to call mine.
***
Three nights later, I’m awoken from a dead sleep, shooting up in bed in a panic while I clutch at the sheets now pooled around me. I have no idea what wakes me, only that my heart beats frantically beneath my chest and my mind is a foggy muddle of anxiety, fear, and something else I can’t really pin.
I sigh into the dark room, trying to remember the dream I was having and curious whether or not that had a part to play in my wake-up call. I go to lie down and fade back into sleep with Zira beside me and Ford cuddling against her back.
I’m just about to fall asleep when I hear it. The sound that must have woken me from my dream. I’m not sure what the sound is, almost a scuffing of a shoe if I were to guess, and I frown as I sit back up in the bed we all fell asleep in after expelling a whole lot of energy out of our restless omega.
At the mere thought of her, I peer over in bed to check on her, only to pause when I find Ford exactly where we left him, but no Zira. She’d fallen asleep between us for the third night in a row, spent and loopy with orgasms, and it’s dark enough that I know we haven’t been asleep long enough for her to be awake yet. After all, the sky is still dark, and Ford is snoring gently enough that I know he’s deeply asleep, meaning we’re still in the middle of the night.
Deciding to check on her, I carefully climb out of the bed, making sure not to wake my brother before tugging on a pair of shorts that probably belong to Ford, slip on my white Vans, and sling a hoodie over my head as quietly as I can muster before leaving my bedroom, but not before snagging my cell phone from the bedside table and tucking it into my pocket.
Shutting the door until it’s closed halfway, I walk down the hallway and whisper, “Starlight? Are you up?”
I don’t receive an answer, and I frown, wondering where the hell she’s disappeared to, when I hear the scuffing sound once more. I’m not sure where the hell it’s coming from, the house is big enough that it could be coming from downstairs or outside, so I head down the hallway, checking doors as I go and finding each room empty, one after the other. There’s no sign of her at all, only her bag left in my room after we moved from Ford’s to mine after the first night we soaked the entire mattress.
Chuckling quietly at the reminder, I make my way down the stairs, thinking I might find Zira down there making tea or something. Only, my movements slow as I get to the last step and I spy a single lamp switched on in the kitchen, a steaming mug sitting atop the marble counter. What has my steps slowing, however, is seeing the lamp tilted to its side, as though it was knocked over by mistake, the discarded spoon on the floor with a teabag that still clings to the metal surface, and the very faint but oddly placed waft of gasoline.
“Zira? Are you down here?” I call, an uneasy feeling blooming in my chest when I don’t receive a reply. “Come on, starlight. Come back to bed.”
I’m greeted with the ticking of the clock that hangs in the open-plan living room, and I shake my head as my brows furrow in confusion. Where the hell is she? Could she be in the bathroom down here?
Sensing the answer already but deciding to check anyway, I storm through the entire lower level of the house before returning to the tea that sits untouched. Eyeing the mug, the sight not making sense to me, I call out once more, “Zira? Zira, where are you?”
I pause while I wait for an answer, and one comes, but not in the way I was expecting. A muffled cry breaks through the silence before I hear someone hiss with a harsh shush, right before I hear that strange scuffing sound again. My head snaps in the direction it came from, and my eyes widen when I find the front door slightly ajar, only enough that I missed it on my first look around. Now, however, I can see a tiny sliver of the porch light seeping through the cracks, and those cracks highlight the broken door handle I didn’t notice before.
Cold dread washes over me so suddenly that I immediately feel sick, right before a wave of atom-deep terror crashes into me so hard that I stumble and crash into the grandfather clock Lazarus bought five years ago. Terror that isn’t mine, though it might as well be for how strong it is.
“Zira?” I shout now, clutching at my chest as I pull away from the shattered glass of the clock and hurry toward the broken front door. I sling the fucking thing open with enough force that it cracks against the wall behind it, right before I dive out of the house and scan my surroundings with wide, panicked eyes.
Everything inside me turns ice cold when I catch sight of Zira’s fiery red hair glowing beneath the moonlight through the copse of trees. But it’s not just the sight of her that floods my body with horror, but it’s the figure behind her dressed all in black as they drag her toward a car that blends into the night before trying to push her into the back seat of the idling vehicle I can’t make the color or model of in the dark.
“Hey!” I shout before thinking better of it, jumping off the porch and running toward where Zira is being shoved toward the car, my heart suddenly galloping a mile a minute as adrenaline slams through me with all the force of a battering ram.
I hear her muffled cry as she appears to fight the hold of whoever has her, but it looks like her arms are bound behind her back, leaving her without much options on how to fight back. Fury like I’ve never felt before explodes in my chest, and my speed quickens as I race toward them, Zira’s cries for help tearing my heart to ribbons right before it shatters when I hear a sickening thud and her voice stops dead silent and I see her body drop from between the trees.
“Hey, fucker! Leave her alone!” I shout, fury turning my voice hoarse as I pump my legs faster and faster, gaining on them just as the bastard manages to stuff Zira into the back seat of his dark sedan, I think, and gun it for the driver’s side.
I’m almost at them, jumping over brush and a felled tree, darting around thick trunks and tripping over a tangle of thorns, when the bastard who hurt my omega manages to wrangle his door open. The kidnapper pauses to look over at me as I sprint toward them, offering me a wave before they climb into the car and rev the engine.
I reach the trunk of the car just as the driver spits gravel at me, spinning out his wheels before screeching out of where he’d parked in order to kidnap the love of my life.
“Mac? Zira?” I hear called from the house, but I’m busy chasing after the car that contains my whole world, pumping my arms and legs as fast as they can go and pushing even further as I follow after the car with gritted teeth.
It’s no good, though, because as fast as the adrenaline is making me, I have no chance of outrunning a car. I still try, though, chasing after it with cramping legs and an ache in my stomach as I bolt after the car that puts more and more distance between Zira and me.
The only thing that stops me is a rogue rock in the middle of the road, the tip of my sneaker catching on it a split second before it sends me sailing across the gravel road and scraping up my hands and legs in the process.
I don’t give a shit about that. I don’t give a shit about any of it, because I’m absolutely helpless and distraught as I watch the lights of the car I still can’t make out fade into the distance as whoever abducted my omega disappears into the night, taking my fucking heart with them.
“Yo, hey, Mac! What the hell?” Ford yells as he finally reaches me in nothing but a pair of boxer shorts and a pair of sneakers, pale-blue eyes as wide and as frantic as mine. “What the fuck is going on?”
Choking back a haggard sob of terror, guilt, and disbelief, I swallow hard as I try to catch my breath and rasp, “Someone took her. He broke into the house and took her. I was too far away to get to her before she was stuffed into the fucking car and driven off to wherever the hell he’s going to take her.”
“Zira? Our Zira was just abducted?” he snarls, needing clarification that I offer with a sharp nod and a low, agonized growl that burns through my chest. “Did you see the car or anything?”
I shake my head, feeling sick to my stomach, my chest so tight that it’s a miracle I can still breathe at all. I choke my words out, though, because I know I can’t hold them back. “I know it was a guy, though. I know who fucking took her.”
Ford frowns down at me from where I’m still kneeling on the ground, bloody, bruised, and cradling a broken heart beneath my ribcage. I peer up at him with wild, terrified eyes, and I don’t have to utter his name before Ford knows who I’m talking about. “Gasoline. That’s what Zira said, wasn’t it? He smelt of burnt rubber and gas.”
I nod sharply, remembering the faint traces of gas I could smell as I passed through the kitchen, and Ford snarls as he comes to the conclusion I’d already gotten to before him. “The biology professor. That fucking creep.”
Nodding again, I slowly haul myself off the ground, feeling the warm trickle of blood as it slides down my legs and beneath my hoodie sleeves as it glides down my arms with the scent of copper. “Henry took Zira.”
“That motherfucker,” Ford seethes, the same fury now coursing through his veins as it is mine.
With a harsh swallow, trying to clear away the roughness of my voice, I instruct my brother, “We need to call the guys and the police. Then we need to go looking for all the places he could be taking her. And we need to do it now, before I lose my fucking mind completely.”
Ford nods, jaw clenched tightly, before he wraps an arm around my back and we make our way back to the house, the journey taking longer now that I’m not running fueled on adrenaline. As soon as we locate Ford’s phone, we both make the phone calls that leave me sick to my stomach, relaying what happened and any other information I can hand over to whoever needs to hear it.
By the time we’re done and the rest of our pack promises to be here in under an hour, my nerves are frayed and my patience nonexistent, the only thing on my mind is where Zira is, what he’s doing to her, and how the fuck I’m going to find her.
As soon as the rest of our pack screeches into a parking spot at the lake house, Ford and I are done speaking with the police, and the guys all tear us into hard hugs and back claps, looking as stressed as I feel.
“Any news?” Barnes asks sharply, voice strained as he pulls back.
I shake my head, swallowing. “Nothing yet. They said they’d keep us updated on the search for her.”
He nods, though he doesn’t look happy about it, and steps back with the rest of our pack. “Do they have any idea who it was?”
Ford and I share a look before Ford nods. “They think it’s that biology professor, based on what we were able to tell them. Apparently, Hunter Gary Johnson has a record that was hidden when you looked into him. His father is a very wealthy and powerful man, so it was nothing to pay the right people to keep his son’s past failings on the down low.”
“What records?” Alek asks, unusually serious and angry, and rightfully so.
“There was a case two years ago of an abduction. An omega was walking home from work late one night. She was nabbed right off the street, only to be found the following day, chained in a house Hunter had bought three months prior. That was several states away, though. The omega was fine, but she had a lot to share about the guy. He’s fucking crazy, guys,” Ford explains. “Like, batshit crazy. Delusional as they come. He kept claiming she was his omega, that they were in love and destined to be together. She had no idea who he was other than an occasional customer who stopped by the diner she worked in every couple of nights.”
“Fuck,” Alek growls, dropping his hands onto his head before he starts pacing, tense with pent-up energy. “So, he has her?”
I nod. “I think so. I could smell rubber and gas in the kitchen when I went looking for her when I woke and she wasn’t in bed with Ford and me. It’s him.”
Laz nods before taking a deep breath, jaw clenching for a moment until his eyes narrow and he asks, “Is Zira’s mobile here?”
I pause, frowning, before shaking my head and then stopping when I realize I don’t actually have the answer to that. Looking over at Ford, I ask, “Did you see her phone?”
Ford thinks about it for a moment before he shakes his head. “No. She usually keeps it in the waistband of her pants if she doesn’t have pockets on the clothes she’s wearing. I have no idea what she’s wearing, though.”
“But she might have her mobile on her?” Laz pushes, pulling his own cellphone from his pocket.
“It’s a possibility, yeah, but I wouldn’t hold my breath,” I offer, hating that I can’t give more. Hating that I couldn’t do more to make sure she wasn’t taken in the first damned place.
Laz flashes me a dangerous smile before he quips, “A possibility is all I need.”
Sharing a look with the others, I ask, “Why? What are you doing?”
“Remember when you asked me to set up her new phone and I put a tracker on there?” he asks, and it’s all he needs to say before I catch on quickly. He’s smirking at me with a lethal edge to it as he nods. “Yes, exactly. Let’s see if I can track our omega.”