Chapter 13
Adrian
Bonded . I’m fucking bonded. The last wave of my heat is fading, and I’m curled in Leo’s arms, knotted on our sides.
I still can’t believe it. Leo’s inside me, an ocean of endless love and warmth, of protection.
The fierceness of the latter startles me.
He doesn’t just love me, he sees himself as the wall between me and the world—he’ll do anything for me.
It’s thrilling. It’s terrifying.
If Benji finds out, he’ll inform William Whitman. Leo will be arrested. Or beaten. Killed. Leo says he can get us out of here, but how? We stink of a bond. We need to get through the building to the exit with no one seeing us, then drive as fast and far as we can without getting arrested.
What was I thinking, letting him do this?
“Hey, hey,” Leo says, stirring behind me. “Relax, it’s going to be okay.”
He keeps saying that, but I don’t see how.
“I’ve got a plan,” he murmurs. He kisses up my throat, bites the lobe of my ear gently and then whispers, “Do you trust me?”
“Always,” I say without hesitation because that’s always been true. My fear for him is a living thing and it won’t abate until we’re free, but I’ve always trusted him.
“Here,” Leo says and reaches back for the cut-up fruit Cammie dropped outside the door.
I could smell it was him. Tristan normally takes care of my needs during heat, but it was Cammie, which was weird.
Maybe he wants to get an idea of what’s in store for him.
I don’t know how to tell him that this is nothing like what he’s going to experience.
Leo places the slice of watermelon against my lips. I take it in my mouth and lick his fingers. He groans. “Killing me, baby. Fucking killing me.”
I smile slyly. He’s just so easy to mess with now that I know he’s basically a walking hard-on for me. And well, I’m no better, so I feel okay laughing at him.
My heat has broken. I don’t know how long it’s been—three days, four?—but I do know Cammie’s job now is to get Benji. He’ll come and make sure the alpha leaves. Some alphas get attached. They think this was more than it is. A real connection, not an omega they paid.
I almost laugh hysterically at the thought. Leo isn’t thinking this is more than what it was, he knows it’s more. It’s everything.
Leo looks over at me, raising his eyebrows in question.
Right, he can feel that I’m manic, but not the why.
He’s buttoning his pants. A seriousness came over him when the last of my heat drifted out of my scent.
I can picture it now, Leo in the Air Force—my playful, soft Leo shifting gears to all business.
“You ready?” he asks as he sits on the edge of the bed and gets his boots on.
I spread my arms at myself—jeans, T-shirt, Leo’s hoodie, sneakers, my back pocket stuffed with my cash purse—this is all I have. I can get more of Leo’s clothes for my nest because I’ll have Leo. I still can’t believe it.
Leo nods, his smile gruff. “Good.”
He gets up, stands in front of me. I know he can feel my panic. His hand slides behind my head and tilts my face up. All I can feel from him is certainty. Maybe there’s fear, but he’s burying it under courage. Everything about him says he’s not leaving here without me.
He can’t physically leave me now anyway, we’ve bonded. I need to be around him while it settles, and he needs that from me. No matter what happens, we can’t be separated.
When he leans down to kiss me, it’s with all the time in the world—a slow kiss, a thorough kiss, a kiss that says we’ll be doing this forever.
“Come on,” he murmurs against my lips, sliding his fingers between mine.
I grip his hand and follow as he leads us to the door. It’s quiet beyond the curtain. At six in the morning all the patrons are gone. A small crew of omegas are cleaning the bar and getting ready for breakfast.
We slip down the hall, Leo straight-backed and gait sure.
I clasp his hand tighter, try to steady the pounding of my heart.
Glancing over the railing I see the omegas laying out cutlery, napkins—Celia and June, women in their early forties, they rarely work the nights anymore but have stayed on to cook and clean.
Celia leaves most days to work in a gun shop a few blocks over, an arrangement she’d made with the alpha there and no one seemed to dispute.
She had a son, but he disappeared—I think the alphas here took pity on her.
Well, she had two sons, but the first one presented as an alpha at fourteen and was run off long before I got here.
The second was an omega, which meant he would work here.
He vanished when he went into his first heat, likely kidnapped by a trafficking network.
He’d been a striking boy, startlingly so.
There’s a tiredness about both of them, Celia more so than June, but they’re always cheerful, ready with a hug or a head rub when one of us gets too morose.
Celia glances up as Leo and I make our way down the stairs.
I flush as we make eye contact. She raises her eyebrows, hands suspended with a handful of forks.
I move closer to Leo’s back. A knowing look crosses her features.
June has her back to us as Leo and I move alongside the wall in the main area, and Celia doesn’t say a word.
I know she won’t say anything if anyone ever asks.
I try to smile. She returns it, an understanding thing followed by a wink.
It makes me feel better. It makes me hope.
We make it down the hallway adjacent to the main entrance and head for the exit. My heart is beating so rapidly, I can feel it in my ears. My breathing is erratic and my palms are sweating.
Leo smells calm, so sure of this. He squeezes my hand before pushing the door open.
I brace myself for an alarm, for alphas to jump out at us, but nothing happens.
We’re in the empty carpark on the far side of the brothel, the morning sunshine beautiful as it glimmers on the soft undulations of the water.
The ocean flanks the back of the brothel and stretches to the horizon where the harbour gives way to the sea.
Leo looks over his shoulder at me and smiles, something giddy in it. We did it. We’re free. Leo pulls me beside him, throws an arm around my shoulders and tugs me along, across the carpark, over the street and towards the intersection.
Just as we’re about to turn down a little lane behind a diner, I’m accosted by a familiar scent.
“Leo, no,” I manage to hiss, but it’s too late.
Benji steps in front of us from the lane.
“Well, well, what do we have here?” he asks like he already knows. Like he’s been waiting, like he wanted us to believe we’d made it before crushing that exhilaration in a cruel display of dominance.
Leo tucks me behind him and his scent flares with fury.
“Walk away and I won’t kill you,” Leo seethes.
Benji laughs. I’ve never thought of Benji as an asshole—he’s too simple to be much of an asshole.
But he is a typical alpha, and I’m his possession, not by a bond, but by law.
And an alpha doesn’t let another alpha take something that belongs to them.
There’s no way this doesn’t end in violence. My fear for Leo multiplies.
“Oh, Adrian,” Benji mocks. I can’t see his face since I’m against the wall of the diner and blocked from view by Leo’s back, but I can hear the taunt in his voice.
“You weren’t subtle. You might as well have taken out an announcement with how much your scent broadcast your neediness when he bought you at auction.
Twenty grand is twenty grand, though, isn’t it?
“Now, turn your little ass around, back to your room, and I won’t kill him. How about that? Very generous of me.”
I feel sick. I need to move, to run back to the brothel.
Leo’s fists clench and his rage vibrates down the bond.
“I’ve always wanted to fuck a bonded omega—”
Benji doesn’t finish the sentence—Leo swings, a solid punch that whips Benji’s face to the side, blood spraying the building.
He doesn’t give Benji a second to regroup, he just swings again with his other hand, driving into Benji’s stomach.
“Addie, run,” Leo shouts over his shoulder. He squares back up in front of Benji, who’s wiping the blood from his face with the back of his hand.
“Run, Adrian, and I will torture your alpha before I kill him,” he says.
I’m frozen.
“Actually,” Benji says conversationally as blood pours out of his nose, “I think I’ll tie this baby alpha up and fuck you while he watches.”
He’s taunting Leo, trying to make him lose control.
It works.
Leo lunges, nothing but alpha rage and erratic fists. Benji seizes on it—his hand shoots out, clasping Leo’s throat and slamming him back against the wall. Leo thrashes in his hold. Benji pulls a handgun from his waistband and presses it against Leo’s temple.
I scream. Leo’s eyes dart to mine, the first inkling of fear in the hazel depths; it’s not fear for himself, it’s for me.
Benji spares me a glance. “Back, now. I won’t say it again.”
My eyes are fixed on Leo. He mouths, “Run.”
I’m torn. Adrenaline and fear course through me. I can’t process what to do.
“Don’t hurt him,” I say to Benji, my voice a husk.
Benji smiles at me, his teeth bloody.
“What will you give me not to hurt him?” he asks, his hand tightening around Leo’s throat.
“Anything,” I reply immediately.
Benji’s expression turns thoughtful, a parody because I have no reason to trust what’s about to come out of his mouth and I know that he knows it.
“Did you know it costs double to fuck bonded omegas?” Benji says in a way that chills me. He’s thought about this. He fucking planned this.
Leo growls, pushing against the hold on his throat.
“Yeah, that’s right. I figured you two might find a work around and I’d get myself a nice payday.
Adrian,” he says and stares me down. “You’ll be working for me from now on.
Anything you make, it’s mine. And in exchange, I’ll give this piece of shit to the cops instead of putting a bullet through his temple. ”
“Addie, no,” Leo says, his eyes flashing with anger and real fear for the first time.
“Or I’ll shoot him right now,” Benji says easily.
“Addie,” Leo says, alpha steel entering his tone. He doesn’t get the next word out—an alpha command on the tip of his tongue—because Benji clocks him in the temple with the butt of the gun and Leo doubles over, gripping his head.
“Don’t hurt him! Please! I’ll do it! Just please! Don’t hurt him!”
“Addie, no,” Leo whimpers, but before he can say anything further, Benji hauls him back up, presses the gun under his chin until his head is forced back at a shocking angle.
“I won’t ask again, Adrian.”
“I’m not going until he’s safe,” I whisper. “Please, don’t hurt him.”
Benji rolls his eyes, but he pulls out his phone with the hand that isn’t jammed under Leo’s jaw with a gun, and I listen in horror as he calls the police.
Blood pours down the side of Leo’s face, dripping into his eye. His scent and the feel of him in the bond is a jumble of anger and pain. Of failure.
“Happy?” Benji asks when he ends the call. “Now go before I change my mind.”
I take one last look at Leo. His eye is already swelling from where Benji cracked him on the side of the head. His breathing is harsh and his head is pushed back at a painful angle under the nozzle of the gun. But fury remains in his eyes.
I can’t breathe around that much anger pouring from him in my direction.
Something in the bond softens. It’s a pulse of love, of affection. I pull in a breath. I want to stay and make sure the police really do come. Make sure Benji doesn’t kill Leo as soon as my back is turned. But Leo’s lips lift in the ghost of a smile, a reassuring gesture in the midst of my fear.
Tears slide down my cheeks. Leo floods the bond with a caress. He’s telling me he’s going to be okay.
I nod with as much assurance as I can find for him, turn and stumble away.