Chapter 13 #2
I don't turn around. I don't need to. Connor and Buzz cut have their guns out, I can feel it. The air changes when weapons are drawn. It gets heavier. Quieter. Like the whole world takes a breath and holds it.
The third guard, the younger kid with the patchy beard, isn't drawing though. He's fumbling with his radio, fingers slipping on the dial, ready to call for backup the second Anton requests it.
I cut a look to my left at Perrin. His jaw is set, his body coiled tight. He looks calm, but I know him well enough to see the calculation running behind his eyes. He's measuring the distance to Adam, ready to haul his brother out of this the second things get ugly.
Angling my head to one side, I glance around Cliff. Adam is still holding the woman—Pérez…or whatever—against his chest, and he looks terrified.
His honey-brown eyes are too wide, his lips pressed into a thin line, his free hand gripping the back of her shirt like he needs something to hold onto. And the woman is worse. She's curled into Adam like she's trying to fold herself small enough to disappear, her face buried in his shoulder.
Every few seconds a shudder wracks through her that's so violent Adam has to adjust his grip, keeping her upright.
They look like two animals cornered in a cage, and it enrages me to no fucking end.
My jaw clenches, putting pressure on my temples.
Every alpha instinct I have, every protective impulse that's been hardwired into my nervous system since the day I presented, locks onto the image of Adam's face and the way this girl is shaking in his arms, and a rage so pure it's almost peaceful settles in my bones.
"Talk to me, Elowen!" Anton's voice cracks with something that sounds less like anger now, and more like fear. "Did he hurt you? Did this fucker touch you?"
"No." The single word falls from her lips, then her body folds and a guttural sound punches from her gut. It’s the raw, involuntary grunt of someone whose body is tearing itself apart from the inside.
I stare at her, taking in the way she clings to Adam to stay upright.
My eyes narrow to her black pants, then they widen slightly as I realize the inside of her thighs are wet.
Soaked, actually. The dark fabric of her scrub bottoms is glistening with it, the moisture spreading down her legs and catching the light where Adam's shirt rides up.
Then it hits my nose.
It’s so faint that if I hadn't been standing downwind, if the breeze hadn't shifted at exactly this second, I would have missed it entirely. Sweet. Warm. Like overripe fruit left in the sun.
It threads through the chemical nothing coating her skin and reaches the back of my brain and flips a switch I didn't know I had.
Omega.
She's a fucking omega.
Perrin wasn't lying.
Anton goes still, then his grip on Cliff's shirt loosens. His nostrils flare, wide and hungry, and his eyes go glassy for half a second before he blinks it away. He smells it too.
"Run!" Cliff roars. "Fucking run! NOW!"
The guards hesitate, their eyes darting between the two locked alphas and the rest of us, trying to figure out who to aim at and who to chase.
And it’s all the time I need.
I move.
I rip the omega from Adam's arms, duck my shoulder into her midsection, and throw her over my back in one fluid motion.
She makes a strangled yelp that turns into a whimper as her fingers claw at the back of my shirt.
My free hand shoots out and locks around Adam's forearm, grip tight enough that he couldn't break it if he tried.
Then I run. Dragging Adam with me.
I cut hard to the left, away from the main path, toward the omega holding tents. It's the only corner in this entire camp where no one will risk shooting us. The guards won't risk a stray round hitting a hundred-thousand-dollar asset.
My boots thunder across the packed dirt. Extension cords snap under my feet. I hear footsteps behind me, close and fast. Adam first, his stride light and quick, eating up the ground. Then Perrin, heavier, not as fast, but keeping pace. His breathing is loud and ragged, but he doesn't fall behind.
Cliff isn't with us, but I don't look back.
He can handle Anton and three guards, and whoever else is dumb enough to try him right now. That man was born to fight.
So I run harder.
My heart pounds as I cut past a scissor lift, making my way right for the medical tent.
The omega flung over my shoulder whimpers again, and I catch another slip of sweetness flowing off her.
It’s weird.
I was taught that an omega in heat would be pouring pheromones and slick all over the place. But I’m barely picking up this omega’s scent at all. It’s so thin, like a vapor of sweet pears, and each inhale gives me a little more.
And my body is responding.
It’s not a sharp, mindless drive to fuck, but something different. It’s a bone-deep certainty that the woman on my shoulder is mine to protect. That if anyone touches her, or even looks at her wrong, I will tear them apart with my bare hands.
I round a corner and nearly barrel into a cluster of nurses hauling supply bins between tents.
They scatter with a yelp, bins clattering to the ground, and I cut right, weaving between two large tents with generators humming outside.
The flaps are tied shut, and the air around them is thick with that dull, flattened sweetness I clocked earlier.
Nurses scatter out of our path, pressing against tent walls, their eyes wide. Someone shouts something behind us, but the words are swallowed by the blood pounding in my ears.
"Left!" Perrin gasps from behind me. "Cut left. We’re parked on the other side of the tree line."
I do as he says, pulling Adam with me.
The tree line rises ahead of us, thick pines pressing together, and beyond them, somewhere in the shade and the dirt, is our SUV.
The omega’s fingers dig into my back and a fresh wave of that sweet, broken scent bleeds through her skin and into mine.
Hold on, I tell myself. Fucking hold on.
We're almost out.
The tree line is fifty yards away when two guards step out from between the tents, weapons raised, blocking the path.
"Stop! On the ground! Now!"
My body cuts right, my boots sliding on the dry dirt, and the only direction that's open is the one I don't want.
Straight into the main camp. The alpha side.
"Shit, shit, shit." Perrin's voice is right behind me, breathless and terrified, and I hear him cut with me.
The concrete barriers loom ahead. They’re at least five feet of solid cement separating the omega quarter from the alpha side.
Adam pulls free, and clears them first, planting one hand on the top and vaulting over in a single clean motion. He lands on the other side, spins, and reaches back like he's ready to pull us through a burning building.
I don't vault. I can't. Not with the omega on my shoulder.
I turn sideways and throw one leg over, dragging us both across the top, the rough concrete scraping against my hip.
The omega whimpers against my back. Then I'm over, boots hitting dirt, and I look back right in time to see Perrin hauling himself across. His face red and his jaw clenched, but he makes it. Both feet on the ground. Adam grabs his brother’s arm to steady him, and Perrin nods once. He's good.
We're on the alpha side now.
The auction side of the Morder stretches in front of me, crowded and loud and crawling with alphas.
Folding chairs arranged in uneven rows. A makeshift outdoor bar built from plywood and sawhorses.
A bonfire burning in a steel drum, sparks drifting into the evening air.
Music thumping from a speaker mounted on a pole.
And alphas…
They’re everywhere. Hundreds of them. Standing in clusters, sitting on stools, drinking, talking, waiting for the show.
I force myself to walk.
Every nerve in my body is screaming at me to run, but running will draw attention. So instead, I take measured steps, like I've got somewhere to be but I'm in no rush to get there. A guy carrying a sick friend out of a party.
Nothing to see.
Adam and Perrin fall in beside me, matching my pace. Adam on my left, Perrin on my right. Neither of them speaks. I can feel the tension radiating off both of them, but they keep their heads down and their strides even.
But the omega’s scent is growing. I can feel it now, filling my nose and coating my tongue.
The slick soaking through her scrubs is warm against my shoulder, spreading down my chest, and with every stride her pheromones are bleeding through the chemical mask faster.
The overripe pears and vanilla that were barely a whisper thirty seconds ago are thickening into something real, something alive, trailing behind us like smoke from a fire.
And the first alpha turns his head.
Then a second.
Then ten more.
A low growl rolls through the crowd. It starts from the men closest to us and spreads outward like a ripple in water, heads turning, nostrils flaring, bodies going rigid. I watch the recognition hit them one by one. Confusion first. Then hunger.
"Move!" I snarl at Perrin. “Don't stop!”
I shoulder past a cluster of alphas near the bonfire.
One of them reaches out, his hand grabbing at the air inches from her leg, and I pivot and drive my elbow into his face without breaking stride.
He drops. But the alpha next to him lunges, and I kick him in the chest, sending him backward into a folding chair that collapses under him.
We manage to make it past the bar.
Bottles rattle as someone slams into it behind us, the crowd surging, alphas tripping over each other trying to follow.
The trail of pheromones the omega is leaving is pulling them like a leash.
I hear it building behind us. The collective growl deepens into something that sounds less like men and more like a pack of animals waking up.