Chapter Two
Roderic
My lip curled as I brushed at the blood on my cuff. It stood out against the white fabric, reminding me I’d forgotten to throw an extra suit in the back of my car after last time.
“Why’d the fucker have to bleed so much?”
I snarled under my breath as I made my way down the back staircase of the apartment building. We’d gotten word that members of the Walkers were dealing there, and Leo had sent me to see to the issue.
It wouldn’t be a problem any longer, but it was forcing me to go home to change shirts.
Distracted by the stain, I almost didn’t notice what was happening as I passed the landing on the third floor.
At first it looked like a simple scuffle outside someone’s apartment, and I took the next step down before the breeze blew through the walkway, carrying the sweet scent of pears and an omega in heat.
My eyes narrowed, nostrils flaring as I sucked in the smell again. Pear, a hint of jasmine, and something earthy.
Plus slick.
Sweet, tart, and mouthwatering.
It didn’t take more than a moment to assess the situation.
Two alphas walked through an open doorway, disappearing into the apartment, while a third carried a struggling woman.
His hand covered her mouth, muffling any sounds she tried to make, and his other arm pinned hers to her sides, but she flailed her legs like her life depended on it.
She could be right.
The beating I’d delivered moments before had already gotten my blood flowing, and the situation I observed only added fuel to the raging inferno that lived inside me.
No alpha who preyed on omegas deserved the title, and the mood I was in meant bad news for the three trying to take an unwilling one during her cycle.
As hopeless as the situation seemed, the omega hadn’t given up her fight.
Just as the alpha carrying her was about to take her through the doorway, and make getting to her harder, she braced her feet on the frame and pushed them off balance.
It was unexpected enough that the alpha started to teeter, but if he fell there was a chance she would get hurt, and I couldn’t allow that to happen.
I made it to their side in time to steady him, gripping his shoulder so he didn’t fall.
Before he could get his bearings and realize I wasn’t one of his buddies, I reached forward with my other hand and took hold of the arm holding the omega to his chest, wrenching it to the side.
The surprise was enough to make his other hand release her face, a snarl breaking free of her slim throat once her mouth was no longer covered.
Bottomless pupils rimmed in blue were wide as they met mine, the woman just as confused as the alpha I held. Winking at her, my lips twitched even as I twisted the other alpha’s arm behind his back and jerked upwards, dislocating his shoulder.
His howl had her expression morphing from shock and fear into something more feral as her gaze dipped to where he was bent forward between us, trying to relieve the pressure on the arm I still held. Hauling back her leg, she nailed him in the nose with her knee before backing away.
Sufficiently immobilized, I let him drop and turned my attention to the two alphas coming back out of the apartment.
Both wore expressions of fury, but I grinned in return as I loosened my stance and waited for them.
Neither was thinking beyond the instincts telling them to fight for the omega, and I had one whimpering on the ground while the other drooled blood in silence before the female had a chance to take more than two steps down the walkway.
“Stop.”
My voice was rough, the growl I’d held back coming out in the single word, and the omega froze in place as my full attention swung to her.
She was a beauty.
Even without the pheromones she was pumping into the air I’d have been drawn to her.
The redness on her face from the first alpha’s grip, and the disheveled state of her short hair and thin clothing, did nothing to detract from her delicious curves and the plump lips pinched into a flat line as she trembled against the brick wall.
“Do you live here?”
Her pupils were larger than usual, but they weren’t so blown that I thought she was too far gone in her heat to respond. The adrenaline from fighting the alphas would combat the hormones for a little while, but I could smell how close she was to being lost to her baser side.
She hesitated, like any smart woman would, before giving a small negative shake of her head.
I wanted to curse but I held it in. I had no idea why she was out this close to her cycle when she should have been curled up in her nest, but for all I knew, the goons I’d fought off could have kidnapped her.
“Do you have an alpha?”
The only ones I could smell were the three on the ground, and her scent marked her as unclaimed even if my eyes hadn’t been drawn to her bare neck, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have one. The thought made me want to snarl, but I held onto it, reminding myself I needed to do the right thing.
After another hesitation she shook her head again, and my already hard cock twitched in my pants. It wanted me to swoop in and take her right there against the wall, but I had to be smarter than that. My momma had raised a better man than one who’d violate an omega against her will.
My attention had drifted as I thought but a quiet whine snapped my focus back to the woman shivering against the wall.
She’d wrapped her arms around her belly, the pain she was in clear on her face.
I couldn’t help the way my gaze drifted down her body as the scent of fresh slick reached me, and the stain between her thighs almost had me groaning.
“What do you usually do during your heat? Do you go to a center? Do you have suppressants?”
It was a struggle to get the words out, every instinct calling me to close the space between us and take care of the omega myself, but I had to at least attempt to do the honorable thing.
I wasn’t a good man by most standards, but I wouldn’t take advantage of her the way the three at my feet had tried to.
I released some of the tension building inside me by kicking the asshole closest to my feet. His winded groan and the fact that he hadn’t tried to get up yet proved he’d learned his lesson, but fury still lurked at the edges of my mind. I was just too distracted by the female to entertain it.
When she didn’t respond I returned my attention to her face. It could have been a trick of the light, but I swore her pupils had expanded further. She was panting through parted lips, her brow wrinkled, but she finally answered.
“No. I—I don’t have a—anything.”
Narrowing my eyes, I debated pressing her since that didn’t seem like the truth, but I wasn’t likely to get much from her with the state she was in.
“Can I call someone for you? Is there anyone close?”
At another shake of her head I clenched my fists tighter, letting my blunt nails dig into my palms to help me focus. If she was being honest and didn’t live nearby, or have an alpha or anyone else to call, and yet was outside in this state, she was foolish.
Or desperate.
Her heaving chest pulled at my gaze, begging me to stare.
To do more than stare.
I wanted to cup her breasts as I tasted those plush lips. Tweak her nipples as I sank into her wet warmth. Draw out more sounds than the pathetic whimpers escaping her throat.
Footsteps from above jerked me back to reality, the fantasy playing out in my head leaving my shaft throbbing against my seam. I didn’t care about someone finding me with the alphas I’d beaten, but the omega was in danger as long as she was in the open.
I was moving before I had made the conscious decision to take her, wrapping an arm around her back as I watched more of her irises disappear.
Scooping her up with my other arm behind her knees, I cradled her to my chest and told myself I couldn’t lean down and take her lips with mine, no matter how tempting the thought.
The fact that she didn’t do more than put up a token struggle should have told me it was too late.
I waited until we were far enough down the walkway to be out of sight to risk breathing.
The closer I was to her, the stronger her pheromones, and I’d already been fighting to hold myself together.
With her feverish body against my chest, her trembling traveling through my arms, and her thick scent so close to my face, I wasn’t sure I could even make it to my car.
Taking the smallest sips of air I could get away with, I turned my focus to the stairwell at the front of the building, ignoring every urge begging me to do more than carry her.
“What’s your name?”
It wasn’t unusual to call someone by their designation, so I could have simply called her Omega, but I needed something to distract me from what my instincts wanted me to do.
“Paige.”
It was a bare whisper, gasped out between whimpers as I felt her muscles tightening. The cramps an omega went through during their heat without an alpha were brutal, and I picked up my pace, even though I wasn’t sure what I was going to do yet.
My footsteps thundered down the stairs, echoing around us, and although I was trying not to pay attention to her, I didn’t miss the way her eyes caught and lingered on the last door we passed on the floor we left.
With her in my arms I couldn’t tell if her scent lingered there, but I was willing to bet whatever was inside that apartment was the reason for her being out in the state she was in.
“Where are you taking me?”
The question helped distract me from the tumble of thoughts going through my head.
The desire to go kick in the door she’d stared at would have been hard to resist without her weight in my arms and the risk it would have been to her.
The jealousy was irrational, I didn’t know who or what was in that apartment, but that didn’t matter. Instincts didn’t always make sense.
Thinking though the muddle, I answered as I kept moving.