Chapter 9
OWEN
I punch the guard so hard blood seeps through the bandage on my hand. Fuck, that feels good. He’ll live, but he won’t be getting up anytime soon. These assholes have been working for our fathers for years and get off on their power trips.
“Give me his keys,” Weller snaps, already moving for the door.
I dig through the guard’s pockets, fingers sticky with my own blood, and toss the jangling ring of keys. Weller snatches them mid-air with barely a glance.
“Let’s move,” he snarls, scanning the empty hallway. “Tristan, get his phone. Gun.”
Tristan’s hands are covered in blood—mine, the guard’s. Impossible to tell at this point. He wipes them on the guard’s uniform, then digs in his pockets. He finds the phone and something else shiny and metallic.
“Garage access,” he says, holding up the keycard between two fingers.
Weller jerks his chin toward the end of the hall. “Stairs. No elevator.”
We take the stairs three at a time, our footfalls echoing in the concrete chamber. My heart hammers against my ribs, not from exertion but pure adrenaline. Every muscle in my body feels primed. I’m shaking, but it’s not fear—it’s fucking anticipation. Every step down is one step closer to her.
We hit the exit door and burst into the underground garage. Weller immediately presses the key fob, sweeping it in an arc until an SUV chirps and flashes its lights about thirty yards away.
I throw myself into the back seat with enough force to rock the whole vehicle, slamming the door behind me.
Freddie slides into the passenger seat, his hair wild, chest heaving.
He doesn’t bother with the seatbelt—just stares straight ahead, fingers digging into his thighs, like he can will the distance between us and Bianca to disappear.
Weller takes the wheel, his movements calm despite the tension radiating off him. The engine growls to life, headlights cutting through the darkness of the garage.
Tristan’s already got the guard’s phone in hand. “Calling Winston now,” he says, tapping the screen and hitting speaker as Weller throws the SUV into reverse and peels out so fast we screech around the first pillar.
Fucking love the energy.
There’s a click when the call connects, and Winston’s deep, sleep-filled voice comes over the speaker. “Yeah? Who’s this?”
“Winston, we need to ta—” Tristan says, holding the phone up.
“Tristan? Where the FUCK is my sister?” Winston explodes, and I hear Clara ask him something in the background, but he doesn’t answer her.
The tension in the vehicle spikes. None of us get a chance to speak before he continues, words tumbling out in a furious rush.
“I know she’s not in a goddamn mental hospital having a breakdown like my parents were told unless you did something to her.”
Weller grabs the phone. “Winston, she’s not in a mental hospital, but she is in trouble.”
A beat of silence, then: “What kind of trouble, Weller?”
Weller’s jaw works as he glances at each of us, clearly struggling with where to begin. “The short version? Bianca broke into Whitney’s mansion, bonded with me, and it worked, got captured by Montgomery, made a deal with him for our freedom, and just killed four people who broke into her room.”
The silence stretches so long I wonder if the call dropped. Then I hear rustling. When his voice returns, it’s dangerously quiet. “Run that by me again. Slowly.”
While Tristan explains everything, I stare out the window, watching the city blur past. Dawn’s still hours away, streets nearly empty. Our fathers might not know we’ve escaped yet, but we won’t get far with the trackers embedded in our necks. We need them out. Now.
“Whoa. She killed Whitney?” Winston finally asks, his voice shifting from disbelief to something darker.
I lean forward. “And three of her friends.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Winston mutters. “What the hell has my sister been doing in the woods? Becoming a ninja?”
“Apparently,” Tristan sighs, running a hand through his hair.
“You better get my sister away from him. I would do it myself if I could fucking walk.” Something crashes in the background followed by cursing. “Her friends are here. From the refuge. Ezra and Megan. They came looking for her when she stopped responding to their calls. Hang on.”
There’s a thunk, like he set the phone down. When his voice returns, he rattles off a number. Tristan repeats it under his breath, committing it to memory.
We end the call with Winston and immediately dial the number. The phone barely rings once before someone answers.
“Ezra.”
Jealousy flares instantly. Fucking ridiculous since I’d blow my own foot off if it meant getting Bianca out safe, but still. Bianca was close with this guy. The keeper of the orgasms.
Tristan doesn’t waste time. “This is Tristan. Winston gave us your number. Bianca needs help.”
A loaded pause. “You’re one of the alphas?”
“That’s right. We just escaped, but we have trackers. We need them gone before our fathers catch up to us.”
Ezra grunts. “Location?”
Weller reads off the street name, taking a hard right that throws me against the door. “We stole a guard’s SUV. Can you meet us somewhere?”
“Abandoned warehouse off Delano?”
“We’ll be there,” I growl, leaning forward between the seats.
Weller floors it. The SUV jumps the curb at the first light, nearly clipping a trash can.
Nobody says shit. We’re all wound tight, and even Freddie’s too fucked up to crack a joke.
His knee bounces double-time, thumb bloody from picking at the cuticle.
Tristan stares out the window, eyes unreadable.
I want to rip the door off its hinges and take off running for her—no plan, no backup, just bare hands and violence. Fuck a plan. But I know if I’m dead or locked up again, I can’t do anything for her.
I’m not letting her down again. I’m haunted by Bianca with that fucking collar around her neck, just like we had to wear. The way she looked at us through that glass, her eyes still defiant. Still our girl. The thought of her suffering what we did makes me want to bury Montgomery alive.
The streetlights flicker past, and nobody talks.
The warehouse materializes out of the darkness, and its broken windows reflect our headlights. A nondescript van sits in the lot, engine off. Weller pulls alongside it, cuts our lights, and kills the engine.
We pile out, gravel crunching beneath our feet.
The van’s door slides open, and two figures step out. Omegas, from their scent. A man and a woman. The woman’s short, muscular build and confident stance immediately tell me she’s dangerous despite her size. The man moves in a way that screams military.
“So you’re the assholes I made voodoo dolls for?” The woman—Megan, I assume—calls out with a crooked grin. “Gotta say, the real versions are much better looking.”
Ezra gives her a sharp look that shuts her up immediately. His face gives away nothing as he approaches, but I recognize the way he catalogs each of us and assesses the threat. Just like Weller would.
“Situation report,” he commands.
Weller steps forward, and the similarity between them hits me immediately. They’re practically fucking twins in how they carry themselves. Serious as fuck.
Our girl spent five years in the woods fucking a carbon copy of Weller.
I guess I’m actually kind of okay with that.
If he were like me or Tristan, I’d have to kill him.
“Dr. Montgomery has Bianca,” Weller says without preamble.
“She made some kind of deal with him to get us away from Whitney for her cooperation. We were able to get eyes on her yesterday. She’s in pre-heat, collared, and under his control.
A few hours ago, Whitney and three of her friends attacked Bianca in her room. They’re all dead.”
Ezra doesn’t even blink. “She killed all four of them?”
I hate it. I hate that she had to become this. But I also can’t deny the dark thrill that runs through me when I think about her offing our enemies. My omega, deadly and hot and sassy as fuck. I clench my fists at my sides.
“As far as we know.”
“Bianca’s condition?”
“Unknown. But alive.”
Ezra nods once, processing. “Inside,” he says, gesturing to the van. “We need to get the trackers out. Time is critical. Our hacker has been working to get into Montgomery’s surveillance, but no luck yet.”
As we follow them into the tight space of the van, I catch Tristan’s eyes tracking Ezra with the same intense focus I am. When he notices me watching, he raises an eyebrow. I roll my eyes. We’re on the same page then. This perfect specimen charmed the panties off our omega.
The inside of the van is a mobile command center: monitors, equipment, weapons. Megan grabs a few items and pulls a stool over. “Who’s first?”
Freddie immediately jumps into the seat like he can’t get the tracker out of him fast enough. Megan runs a scanner over his neck and then makes a cut, digging inside. His face twists up, but he doesn’t make a sound.
“You don’t seem surprised,” Freddie says, probably trying to distract himself from the pain. “About any of it...”
“That’s because we’re not,” Ezra replies flatly. “Bianca’s resourceful but impulsive. She will follow her instincts right into hell if she thinks it’s the right play.”
A laugh almost escapes me. This is fucking surreal. It’s like watching Weller with a different face. No wonder she gravitated toward him.
Megan makes a sound of triumph and flicks the tracker she’s just located into a small dish. She patches Freddie up quickly before saying, “Next.”
I take the seat, rolling my shoulders back. I hear a quiet chirp from the scanner, and then there’s a cut, no warning. The pain is sharp, but I relish it.
“There you are. Big guy, hold still,” she says, digging deeper. “I know you want to punch something.”
“Just do it.”
“She carved your names into trees,” Megan says casually.
“Target practice. Hundreds of arrows, knives, and even some sessions with a hatchet... Poor trees look like they went through a war. I’m surprised they survived.
But you know what?” The tracker finally comes free with a wet sound. “Meeting you guys? You’re not so bad.”
“How recently was she doing that?” Tristan asks hesitantly.
Megan chuckles. “Look, I know this really sucks, but you should know—Bianca’s no damsel. She’ll be okay.”
“She escaped a bear once,” Megan continues, like she’s trying to be reassuring while digging the blade deeper.
“And got lost for a week in the dead of winter. Then there was the rattlesnake bite. The fall off that little cliff.” She’s rambling now, moving to Tristan with the scanner. “Oh, and that time she––”
Weller’s head turns a fraction. “Enough... please.”
I’m with Weller. Each story about Bianca’s near-death experiences in the wilderness twists my stomach into tighter knots. We could’ve lost her a dozen times over and never even known. Never had the chance to make things right.
Megan shrugs, but something in her eyes softens as she glances between us. “Just trying to make you feel better. She finds a way.”
Ezra speaks. “We need to move as soon as the trackers are out. Every minute we sit here is a risk.”
“Got it,” Megan says, dropping Tristan’s tracker into the dish with a metallic clink. She presses a bandage to his neck and moves on to Weller.
Weller sits rigidly on the stool, staring straight ahead as Megan runs the scanner over him. His face doesn’t change when she makes the incision, but I notice his hands gripping his knees.
“Jesus,” Megan mutters, digging deeper. “Yours is buried. Sorry.”
Blood trickles down Weller’s neck, but he doesn’t flinch. He just sits there, taking it.
“There,” Megan says finally, dropping Weller’s tracker into the dish with the others.
“Abandon everything tied to the guard.” Ezra opens the van door. “And the trackers.”
Then he hands us each a water bottle from a cooler bag as the engine of the van roars to life. Megan rides shotgun, typing furiously on her laptop.
“Anything?” Ezra asks, his eyes never leaving the road.
“Still working on it.” Megan’s voice is tight. “Mason says Montgomery’s security is next level. Multiple firewalls, rotating encryptions. He’s good, but this is taking longer than expected.”
“Mason?” Tristan leans forward between the seats, suddenly alert.
Megan glances back, eyebrow raised. “Yeah. Our hacker friend. Why?”
“I might be able to help.”