Chapter 3
OWEN
The collar catches against my throat every time I swallow.
For ninety minutes, the bond has been dead air. Nothing from Bianca but static, like someone tuned my head to an empty frequency and broke off the dial.
Tristan sits with his head against the wall and his eyes closed. One hand clamps around the opposite wrist, keeping both of them pinned in his lap. Freddie paces across the foyer, back and forth over the same strip of expensive rug, wearing a path into it like a caged animal.
I stay still because the alternative is breaking everything in the room.
Where the fuck is she?
Every answer my brain gives me leads back to Montgomery. He took her somewhere to run another experiment. They drugged Weller so he couldn’t protect her. They’re hurting her, and I’m trapped here with a collar around my neck, unable to do a fucking thing.
A growl builds until my chest hurts. I grab the nearest lamp and smash it against the floor. Porcelain explodes across the marble.
Tristan opens his eyes. Four pale fingerprints remain pressed into his wrist after he lets go. Freddie can pace, and Tristan can sit there pretending to be civilized. My nervous energy has teeth.
At least the cut on Freddie’s cheek has stopped bleeding. One of those fuckhead guards hit him when they forced us into the SUV. Then warmth presses into the bond, and my head snaps up. Tristan and Freddie feel it at the same time. All three of us move to the window overlooking the drive.
We wait there without speaking. The connection strengthens by the second, pulling tight inside my chest. Bianca is close. She’s alive, and she’s furious. An SUV turns into the driveway.
Weller climbs out first, followed by Bianca. She’s locked down so hard her anger has become its own kind of stillness, but she’s standing. She’s whole. I drag in my first complete breath in ninety minutes.
Weller’s hands are zip-tied in front of him, black plastic cutting into his wrists. His suit is wrinkled, and his mouth is pressed into the hard line that means his control is one bad moment from snapping. The front door opens, and she’s here.
Her scent hits me - warm and sweet beneath all that anger - and makes me dizzy with a need to be close. We crowd, everyone talking over each other and trying to touch her.
Bianca’s gaze moves across the new collars around Freddie’s and Tristan’s throats, then finds their injuries. Her eyes widen. “What did they do to you?” Her voice is low, deadly. My girl definitely wants to fuck someone up.
She’s so fucking hot, and I’m enough of an asshole to think it while she’s staring at the blood one of the guards drew from us.
“We’re fine,” Tristan says.
“You’re not.”
Freddie grabs her hand. “Where were you? Did anyone hurt you?”
“Last-minute call,” Weller says roughly. He keeps his eyes on Bianca. Good. If he looks at me, I might put him through the wall before Hale reaches for the remote. “We took a detour to her parents’ house.”
That’s when I notice Ellis behind him. The guard’s neck is mottled red, and the look he’s drilling into the back of Weller’s head promises revenge. Her parents’ house.
For ninety minutes, I had her back in the nowhere she vanished into for five years, and Weller knew where she was.
“Right,” I say.
“Check them,” Hale orders.
He hasn’t raised his voice once since the park.
He doesn’t need to. Silver buzz cut, empty eyes, collar remote hanging from his belt like a sidearm.
Every threat is already there. Two guards pull on latex gloves and close in.
They search Weller first, patting him down for anything that might help us escape.
One checks the phone in his pocket, sees it was issued by his father, and puts it back. The thing is worse than useless.
Then the other guard puts his hands on Bianca. Her arms. Her waist. Her hips. On what’s mine. A sound starts low in my throat, and I let it grow. “Back the fuck off.”
Freddie, Tristan, and Weller’s entire bodies lock down.
Hale rests his thumb on the remote. “One more word.”
“Owen.” Bianca snaps my name and catches my gaze. “Relax. I’m fine. He’s doing his job.” She holds my stare with a little too much care. “I’m fine. Calm down. All of you.”
The guard finishes and steps away. Bianca releases a slow breath. Then Ellis shoves Weller.
With his hands tied, Weller can’t catch himself. His shoulder hits first. His bound hands scrape uselessly across the floor, and his mouth opens on a sound he refuses to make. Ellis is already crouching beside him with a collar in his fist when Bianca loses her fucking mind.
She’s on his back before I can move - small, fast, and feral. Her legs lock around his ribs, one arm closes over his throat, and her teeth sink into his ear. Ellis shrieks. Blood wells between her teeth. He spins and tries to throw her, but she clings to him like something with claws.
The other guards drag her off. Bianca twists between them, kicking hard enough to catch one in the shin. I take one step. Hale’s thumb stays on the remote, and my heel skids when I force myself to stop. The sound is fucking humiliating. If they hurt her, that remote won’t save any of them.
“You’re next, you little bitch.” Ellis cups his bleeding ear.
“Touch her, and I will kill you,” Freddie says before the rest of us can.
Another guard steps in. Brendan. Young, bored, and carrying the energy of a man who’d use a clipboard to issue a parking ticket during a murder.
“No collars on the omega,” he recites. “Dr. Montgomery has given explicit instructions not to collar her. Physical restraint could be harmful while she’s being prepared for reproduction. ”
Bianca rolls her eyes. “Right. Because the rest of this is so nurturing. I can feel the fertility flowing through me.”
Ellis turns back to Weller and fastens the collar around his throat.
The click hits the back of my teeth like another bite.
Someone finally cuts the zip ties. Weller pushes himself off the floor with one hand, keeping the other arm locked against his ribs.
He swears when the shoulder shifts. Four collars now instead of three.
“We can’t collar you,” Hale tells Bianca, “but we can separate you from them. That’s well within protocol. You don’t need to be together until it’s time.”
The rage inside me turns to ice.
No. No. No.
“In fact, I’ll discuss it with Dr. Montgomery.” Hale touches two fingers to his earpiece and turns away as if the decision has already been made. “For now, enjoy the reunion.”
“You do that, asshole,” Bianca says.
Jesus, woman. I love her fire, but if they use it to keep us apart, I will lose my fucking mind.
We guide her toward our wing before she gives him another reason.
Hit me, collar me, put me on the floor - I can take it.
But if they move her somewhere I can’t see her, feel her, or reach her, I’m back inside the same nightmare.
Years of wondering where she was. Years of nothing where the bond should have been.
I’ve already lost her enough for one lifetime.
The guards leave, and we try to put ourselves back together. Bianca’s hand is clenched around something, but I don’t ask what she stole. Not with the cameras watching.
Bianca
Tristan presses a wet cloth to my cheek and wipes away the guard’s blood like I’m a child who fell on the playground. “Hold still, sweetheart.”
I step out of his reach and head for the fireplace.
“Bianca.” Freddie follows with his palms raised, his voice like he’s bartering with a tiger. “Baby, sit down. Let us look at you.”
The iron poker hangs beside the grate. Its handle is cool and solid, the weight perfect when I wrap my hand around it.
All four alphas are collared. The guards just threatened to take me away from them.
When I blink, Mom is still sitting on the couch with mascara beneath her eyes, saying a few semesters.
A fun fling. She didn’t consent to what Montgomery did.
She still lied to me. I hugged her before I left, and I’m still so fucking angry I could bite through another ear.
I walk toward the hallway leading to our bedrooms - the rooms where Montgomery watches us sleep and fuck and fall apart.
The first camera is mounted above the doorframe, a tiny black eye blinking red.
I swing the poker like I’m driving a nail through its skull.
Plastic shatters and skips across the floor.
The sound is so satisfying that I immediately want to do it again.
Their hesitation ripples through the bond.
The guards just threatened to separate us, and destroying the cameras might hand them an excuse.
But if they want to take me, they will. Being obedient hasn’t protected us yet.
“We’re not fucking hamsters.” I spent the entire drive screaming those words inside my head. “We’re not fucking pets.”
I destroy the next camera, then another.
One sits too high, and the poker buries itself in the drywall beneath it.
Plaster crumbles onto the floor. The living-room camera is within reach.
I smash that one and take out the smoke detector in case a lens is hidden inside.
A fire is not currently high on my list of problems.
“Bianca, stop.” Weller catches my arm. I spin with the poker raised, and he releases me.
“Stop? Why? So I can sit on the couch while you handle everything behind my back?” My voice cracks, which only makes me angrier.
“He watched me grow up. He watched me suffer. He watched me kill. He has every data point anyone could collect on me. He stole years we should’ve been together. You want me to stop?”
“That’s not what I meant. We don’t want them to take?—”
“Then help me. If you won’t help, move. I’ll handle it.”
Owen reaches up, hooks his fingers through the ceiling vent, and tears down the entire grille. A camera drops onto the floor. “There’s another by the thermostat,” he says.