Chapter Seven
Paige
I woke up groggy but sated in a way I never had before. Adam had definitely been holding out on me if what I had experienced over the past few days with Roderic was what my heats should have been like.
My cheeks heated as flashes of all the things we’d done popped through my head. I’d never realized how monotonous my times with Adam had been. I wasn’t sure if it was just who Adam was, or if he was that way with me because we’d never really been attracted to each other.
That wasn’t an issue with Roderic. That man was sin on a stick. Everything my mamma had warned me against, that my omega nature craved. He hadn’t made me feel like a chore, instead assuring anything and everything I could have wanted was provided, and more.
My core throbbed as I shifted under the sheets, grimacing at the dried fluids caked on my thighs and the bedding beneath me.
I vaguely remembered begging him to paint me with his cum at one point, and despite the room being empty of the alpha in question, I covered my face to hide from my embarrassment.
Who was I?
It was a question I’d asked myself more than once, but never quite in that tone. Omegas in heat were known to be extremely sexual and needy, but I’d been… depraved. I had faint bruises to prove some of what I remembered had been real.
Before I could begin to wonder where Roderic was, the low rumble of his voice reached me through the door to the hall that had been left partially open.
My heat had broken overnight, allowing us to finally get some rest, but a part of me wondered if he would be up for more until another deep voice responded.
There was another alpha here.
Clutching the sheet tangled around me, I pulled it up to my chin, eyes darting around for a way to escape.
It was instinct, but had it not been, it still would have been my first response considering what had happened at the start of my cycle.
I didn’t know Roderic beyond the way he stretched me and that he’d given me the option to go to a center, and even though I’d made it through without him biting me, I couldn’t help that my first thought was that the other alpha was here for me.
Roderic could have kept me to himself for the duration of my heat, but planned to sell me to another alpha, or alphas, for all I knew.
Determined not to be ambushed naked in bed, I scooted to the edge farthest from the door and looked around for my clothes.
I couldn’t very well go out in the street wrapped in a blanket crusted with slick and alpha cum, but I couldn’t spot my jeans or tank top under the mess of bedding and pillows thrown around the room.
My memories were fuzzy, but if I had built a nest, we’d demolished it during our rounds of sex.
My inner omega pouted at the way I was thinking of Roderic, but I told the hussy to hush and sit in her corner. I had control again, and I wasn’t leaving my fate up to hope and a good knot.
Giving up on finding my things, I spotted the button down he’d been wearing and snatched it from beneath a pillow. It was better than a sheet, and only faintly smelled of chocolate and black currant.
Knowing any shoes he had would be too big for me, I dashed to the dresser and jerked open the top drawer.
Like most people’s, it contained underwear and socks, although it was far neater than I could claim mine was.
I took out a nicely folded pair of dress socks and slipped them on my feet, pulling them up to my knees.
I looked like a child playing dress up in her father’s clothes, but I could run if I needed to.
The voices continued in a low undercurrent beneath the pounding of my heart.
I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but their tone seemed serious.
If there had been any other way out of the suite I’d have taken it, but as high up as we were, and with no signs of a fire escape beyond the windows, my only option was to sneak down the hall toward their voices and hope I could slip past to the door if my anxiety was right and the stranger was there for me.
The door swung open on silent hinges, and despite holding my breath, I still couldn’t hear them any better. Part of me relaxed a fraction over not hearing more voices, but the skeptical part said there could still be others.
I slid my feet along the floor, treating the carpeted hall as if it were the creaky stairs in my old house.
No one would ever be able to sneak up on me in my room with the way the floorboards squeaked and groaned when weight was applied to them, and the reminder that I wasn’t home, in my nest, had my lower lip trembling.
I may have been past the burning lust of my cycle, but that didn’t mean the hormones were completely done with me, and I had to bite my lip to clear my swimming vision as the voices grew louder.
“They only had two guys there, with a variety of product. Some of it looked like our missing stuff, but there was shit we don’t deal there too.
The beta bitch was so high she didn’t even respond when I pulled the first one off her, but I made sure she was alive before I left. The other two weren’t so lucky.”
My breath caught, eyes going wide as I pressed my back to the wall.
“It was the same at the other location. Two men and a woman, with a variety of supplies. I’ve got intel on another spot, but I have a feeling it won’t be any different.
Taking out these nobodies isn’t getting us any closer to putting an end to the Walkers.
We need real information,” said the new voice.
The picture of the businessman I’d created of Roderic began to melt away as the meaning of their words sank in.
“I questioned the two in the apartment, but they didn’t know anything.
It’s the same every time. Either there’s a bunch of rabble coming together to call themselves the Walkers without any real leadership, which doesn’t make sense with the organized way they encroach on our territory and hit our supplies, or the core of the group is impregnable and keeps the others at a distance.
I keep getting the same few names that we know are just middlemen. ”
“Then the only option is to go for one of them and see if they know more. I don’t want another hit like the one last year, but we can’t sit back and do nothing.
They may only be pecking at us, but the fact that they’ve gotten away with it for so long is making us look incompetent.
We’ve kept quiet about hunting them for long enough.
Being more obvious might make the leaders harder to find, but we’re out of options. ”
Pulling my bottom lip between my teeth as my lungs started to burn, I took a step back towards the bedroom.
I didn’t want to hear any more of their conversation, and I really didn’t want them to know I’d overheard any of it.
Roderic was clearly in deep with something criminal, and I was a nobody to him.
There was no telling what he would do, even if he’d seemed like the type of alpha who could be trusted.
Clearly I’d read him wrong.
“What else happened at the apartments? The cleanup crew said there were injuries on another floor too.”
Roderic’s scoff was clear even in the hallway, and while I knew I should get back to the bedroom before I got caught, I found my feet glued in place.
I’d watched Roderic beat the three alphas who’d attacked me, and while it had been hot at the time and I hadn’t questioned his actions, hearing he’d killed two others on another floor changed things.
“Those assholes deserved worse than they got. They should be thankful the omega they tried to kidnap was watching and so close to heat she was pumping enough pheromones into the air to make every male in the building hard for a week.”
I knew it was wrong, but a fierce flash of something like pride burst in my chest. I still had enough hormones pumping through me to want to go back and geld them for what they’d attempted to do to me, because Roderic was right, they deserved worse than a beating.
Shaking my head at myself, I took another step backwards, pushing away the feral omega inside that said she’d have watched him kill all three and still taken his knot. It was hard to keep priorities straight when my pussy twinged with each shift of my weight and I still smelled of his seed.
“That’s why you’ve been too busy to answer your phone? You found an omega in heat?”
I might have been insulted if it hadn’t been asked with a laugh, but I still curled my lip at the alpha I couldn’t see.
Let him have heat cramps and see if he can handle it without relief.
Snorting, I slipped back through the door into Roderic’s bedroom. I didn’t realize what I’d done until the other room remained silent for too long to be a natural pause in their conversation.
Heart picking up speed again, I glanced around before doing the only thing I could think of.
I stripped as I raced for the bed, tossing myself onto it with a bounce as soft footsteps reached me from the hallway.