Chapter 25
The neighborhood gets worse the farther I drive.
Strip malls give way to boarded-up storefronts. Streetlights flicker or don't work at all. The few people I see on the sidewalks move with their heads down, shoulders hunched against something more than the cold.
I turn. The street narrows. Industrial buildings loom on either side—warehouses, a shuttered auto body shop, something that might have been a meatpacking plant before it was abandoned. Chain-link fences topped with razor wire. Graffiti on every surface.
This is–
This might have been a mistake.
The thought surfaces and I shove it down. I don't have a choice. I need those suppressants. I need to get out of this city before the heat takes me again, before I end up back in that house, back in that bed, back on my back with my thighs spread wide begging three men who don't even want me to—
I tighten my grip on the steering wheel.
Focus.
The intersection comes up faster than I expected. I pull over to the curb, killing my headlights, and check my phone. 10:27. Three minutes early.
The street is empty. No other cars. No pedestrians. Just me and the darkness and the distant sound of traffic on the highway overpass a few blocks away.
I wait.
The heat pulses under my skin, a low simmer that hasn't stopped since I left the house.
My thighs are a little sticky with slick.
My cock is half-hard and has been for the entire drive, which is humiliating and uncomfortable and exactly the kind of detail I don't want to be thinking about right now.
10:28.
I scan the street again. Still nothing. Maybe I got the address wrong. Maybe this whole thing is a scam and I just drove forty minutes for nothing and I'll have to go back to that house and face—
Headlights.
A car turns onto the street behind me. Dark sedan, tinted windows. It rolls past slowly, then pulls to a stop about twenty feet ahead.
My heart hammers. This is it.
I grab the cash from my center console—two hundred and eighty-three dollars, everything I had plus what I scraped from the emergency fund Margot gave me. It's not quite three hundred, but maybe they'll take it. Maybe I can negotiate.
The sedan's engine cuts. For a long moment, nothing happens.
Then the driver's door opens.
A man steps out. Big—really big, the kind of bulk that comes from steroids or prison or both. Shaved head. Dark clothes. He doesn't move toward me, just stands there, one hand resting on the roof of his car, watching.
Something about this feels wrong.
I ignore the feeling. Get out of my car.
The night air hits me like a slap—cold, damp, carrying the smell of salt water and rotting garbage. My scent must be pouring off me, that honey-vanilla-smoke that's been driving everyone crazy. If this guy is an alpha, he'll smell it. Everyone smells it.
"You the one looking for suppressants?"
His voice is flat. Bored. Like this is routine for him.
"Yeah." My voice comes out steadier than I feel. "You said three hundred. I've got two-eighty. That's all I have."
He doesn't respond. Just tilts his head slightly, like he's listening to something I can't hear.
That's when I notice the earpiece.
Small. Nearly invisible against the shadow of his jaw. But it's there—a tiny curl of plastic tucked into his ear canal.
Who wears an earpiece to sell black market suppressants?
"That's fine," he says after a pause. "Two-eighty works."
Wait. He should be negotiating. Complaining. Demanding I make up the difference somehow. That's what dealers do—I've seen enough movies, read enough news articles. They don't just shrug and accept twenty dollars less.
Unless the money isn't the point.
"Cool." I take a step forward, then stop. "Do you have the pills on you, or...?"
"In the car." He jerks his chin toward the sedan. "Come take a look. Make sure it's what you need."
Every instinct I have screams at me to get back in my car and drive away. This is wrong. This is so obviously wrong that even my heat-addled brain can see it.
But what's my alternative? Go back to the Graves house? Face Atlas and Zero and Bane across the breakfast table, knowing what I said, what I begged for, how pathetic and desperate I was?
Not tonight.
The memory hits like a fist to the gut. Atlas's voice. Calm. Final. Rejecting me even when I was spread open and begging for it.
I can't go back there.
I can't.
I walk toward the sedan.
The man watches me approach. His expression doesn't change, but something in his posture shifts—a subtle tension, like a predator preparing to strike. I'm three feet away when the back door of the sedan opens.
A second man steps out.
Smaller than the first, but there's something about him that's worse. Something in the way he looks at me—not like a customer, not even like prey. Like merchandise. Like an object being appraised.
"Well." He smiles. It doesn't reach his eyes. "The pictures don't do you justice."
Pictures?
Ice floods my veins. "What pictures? What are you talking about?"
"Shh." He steps closer. The big man moves too, circling around behind me, cutting off my path back to my car. "No need to be scared. We're going to take good care of you."
The world tilts.
This isn't happening. This can't be happening. I'm dreaming—I'm still in my bed at the Graves house, having some kind of heat-induced nightmare, and any second now I'm going to wake up and—
But I can feel the cold seeping through my shoes. Smell the salt and rot on the wind. Hear my own heartbeat pounding so loud it drowns out everything else.
This is real.
Oh god. Oh god oh god oh god—
My brain short-circuits. Every horror story I've ever heard about omegas floods back at once.
The news reports Margot tried to hide from me.
The whispered warnings in foster care. Don't go out alone.
Don't trust strangers. Don't let anyone know what you are because there are people who will pay good money for—
I turn to run.
I don't make it two steps.
The big man's arm wraps around my chest from behind, lifting me clean off the ground. A scream tears out of my throat—raw, primal, the sound of an animal caught in a trap—but a hand clamps over my mouth before it can reach anyone who might help.
Not that there's anyone here to help. Not that anyone would come even if they heard.
I thrash. Kick. Claw at the arm that holds me, nails raking across skin, desperate for any kind of grip. My feet swing uselessly in the air. My lungs burn. I can't breathe—his hand is too tight over my mouth and nose and I can't breathe—
Atlas. Zero. Bane.
Their names flash through my mind like a prayer. Like a plea to gods who can't hear me.
I should have stayed. I should have faced them. I should have dealt with the shame and the humiliation and whatever came next because at least I would have been safe, at least I would have been—
The big man's grip shifts and I suck in a desperate breath through my nose. Use it to scream again, muffled but loud, thrashing harder even though it's useless, even though he's too strong and I'm too small and this was always going to end this way—
Stupid. So fucking stupid. You walked right into this. You let your shame make you reckless and now you're going to die in some warehouse and no one will ever know what happened to you—
"Hold him still," the smaller man snaps. "He's going to hurt himself."
I don't care. I'd rather hurt myself than let them—than be—
I bite down on the hand covering my mouth. Taste blood. The big man swears and his grip loosens for just a second—
Not enough. Not nearly enough.
"Careful with him." The smaller man's voice is clinical. Detached. "He's worth more undamaged."
Worth more.
Worth more.
This isn't a drug deal. This is—
A needle slides into my neck.
I feel the prick, then a cold rush spreading under my skin. My struggles slow. My limbs go heavy. The world tilts sideways, colors bleeding at the edges.
"There we go." The smaller man's face swims into view in front of me. He's still smiling. "Just relax. It'll all be over soon."
I try to speak. Try to scream. But my mouth won't work. Nothing works. My body is shutting down, system by system, and all I can do is hang limply in the big man's arms as they carry me toward the sedan.
The trunk opens. A dark mouth waiting to swallow me whole.
Atlas, I think, and I don't know why his name is the one that surfaces. Zero. Bane.
Please. Please find me.
I don't want to die. I don't want to disappear. I take it back—all of it. The shame, the running, the stupid fucking pride that made me think being alone was better than being vulnerable.
Please.
They lower me into the trunk. The lid slams shut, and everything goes black.
I don't know how long I'm out. Minutes. Hours. Time has no meaning in the dark.
Consciousness comes in waves—the rumble of an engine pulling me up, then the drugs dragging me back down. Voices filter through, muffled and distant, speaking words I can't quite make out. The smell of exhaust and old carpet and something chemical that burns my nostrils.
I try to move. My arms won't respond. My legs are numb, folded under me at an awkward angle. My wrists are bound—zip ties, I think, biting into my skin every time the car takes a turn.
Think. Think.
My phone. Where's my phone? Did they take it?
I shift, trying to feel for my pockets, but my body moves like it's underwater. Sluggish. Wrong. Whatever they injected me with is stifling my system, turning my muscles to jelly.
The car slows. Stops.
Doors open. Footsteps crunch on gravel.
The trunk opens, and I'm blinded by a flashlight beam. Hands grab me, haul me out. My legs buckle immediately—I can't stand, can't do anything except hang limply between two sets of arms as they drag me forward.
A building. Concrete walls. Metal doors. The kind of place where no one can hear you scream.
No. No no no—
"Processing's in the back." The smaller man's voice again, somewhere behind me. "Get him cleaned up and catalogued. Full workup—blood type, heat cycle, scent profile. The buyers are going to want documentation."
Buyers.
The word echoes in my skull, horror crashing over me in waves. This isn't random. This isn't a robbery or a kidnapping for ransom. These people traffic omegas. And I just walked straight into their arms.
Because I was too ashamed to stay.
Because I thought being unwanted was worse than being dead.
They drag me down a hallway. Fluorescent lights flicker overhead. I catch glimpses of other doors, other rooms. A woman's voice crying somewhere in the distance. The smell of fear and heat and desperation—other omegas, I realize. Other people like me, trapped in this nightmare.
A door opens. They throw me inside.
I hit the ground hard, shoulder first, the impact jarring through my drugged body. The door slams behind me. A lock engages—heavy, mechanical, final.
I'm alone.
The room is small. Concrete floor, concrete walls, a drain in the center that I don't want to think about. A single bare bulb provides just enough light to see by. No windows. No furniture except a thin mattress in the corner and a bucket that I assume is meant to be a toilet.
I curl in on myself, trying to make my body work, trying to think through the fog in my brain. My wrists are still bound. My phone is gone—I can feel the empty space in my pocket where it should be. No one knows where I am.
No one is coming for me.
The thought hits with devastating clarity. Atlas doesn't know. Zero doesn't know. Bane doesn't know. They're probably still at the house, sleeping or working or doing whatever they do, completely unaware that I snuck out and drove straight into a trap.
By the time they realize I'm gone—if they even care—it will be too late.
A sob tears out of my throat. Then another.
I can't stop them, can't hold back the terror that's been building since the needle slid into my neck.
I cry like I haven't cried since I was nine years old, huddled in Linda's basement, learning for the first time what it meant to be an omega in a world that wanted to own me.
I thought I escaped that life. Thought Margot saved me from it.
But here I am. Right back where I started.
Alone. Afraid. And worth nothing more than what my body can provide.
The drugs pull me under again, and the last thing I see before the darkness takes me is the bare bulb flickering overhead—a single point of light in an endless, suffocating black.