Chapter 14
Leo
I’m a caged animal, prowling back and forth in my cell. All I can see is the red haze. The only light is Addie inside me. I’m trying to rein this in and send reassurance and love down the bond, but his feelings of heartbreak make it impossible.
His fear is worse. The spike of terror I’d felt once I arrived at the police station had me thrashing in my cuffs, feral with rage. What was happening to him? Was Benji hurting him? Touching him? But it receded as quickly as it came, replaced with an even deeper well of sadness.
I need the mental link to open. We’ll be able to hear each other’s thoughts once the bond strengthens, but we’re obviously not there yet.
And without it, all I’m getting are his feelings.
I’m inside him, like he’s in me, as if we were one, but without a mental link I can’t discern what’s causing the feelings. And I can’t talk to him.
I’ve been charged with bonding the property of another alpha.
As if Addie were a fucking plot of land or a car.
It carries a twenty year prison term if convicted.
I don’t know whether I’ve got a case because Addie is my fated mate, but even if I do, I can’t think.
My alpha is roaring at me to get to my omega.
He’s in danger. We’ve just bonded and he needs me.
Without my presence, he’ll be suffering bond withdrawals.
For all I know, I’m dealing with them—it’s hard to feel much amidst the vicious anger coursing through my body—but I’m pretty sure the effects on an alpha wouldn’t be as bad as they are for an omega. They never are.
“Ready to make your call?” the cop who brought me in asks.
I try to blink through the haze of rage. The cop is young, a beta, and he looks bored. Right, he’s a cop in Bell Harbour, he probably sees this kind of violent shit all the time. Though he’d whistled with surprise when Benji told him what I’d done—bitten his omega.
His omega. I’d snarled at him. He didn’t even have the right to breathe the same air as Addie, never mind call him his.
But a phone call? The logical choice is my father—he can no longer command me now that I’m bonded, and he’ll get me a lawyer, money for bail. He’ll also try to stop me from going back to the brothel to get Addie out.
Think, just think. I take a few deep breaths. My father won’t help me. He’ll probably argue against me being released on bail, hire some shitty lawyer and pay him to keep me here. He lied about Addie being bonded—I wouldn’t put it past him.
I know who I’m going to call.
Eight hours later, I’m walking out of the decrepit courthouse building on the edge of The Bell with Terry, my squad leader, on one side, and the exceedingly tall alpha lawyer he’d brought with him, Alicia, on my other, plus the civilian lawyer, Alex, she’d brought with her.
I’d pled not guilty at the arraignment, been granted bail on a ten thousand dollar bond and ordered to hand over my passport. I didn’t have my passport on me, but Alex said the police would collect it from my home. Which meant my father would find out what had happened soon enough.
“Thank you,” I say, and I really fucking mean it.
Terry claps me on the shoulder. “You’ll pay me back.”
“I’ll sell my car,” I say immediately.
Terry just shrugs. “Come on.”
“Don’t do anything stupid,” Alicia says to me as we part ways at the bottom of the steps. “Preliminary hearing is in three weeks. You’ve got a good case given you’re fated.”
Three weeks is too long. Another alpha could be fucking Addie right now—though it doesn’t feel like it.
Addie feels like misery. He’s felt like this since I came out of my alpha rage, save for the moments when he sends bursts of warmth down the bond directly at me, as if he’s trying to calm me. And it’s costing him. I clench my jaw.
I don’t have three fucking weeks.
I nod anyway. She gives me an unimpressed look. She’s a military lawyer, around forty, her navy blue uniform starched and stiff in the afternoon sea breeze. She shakes her head and walks in the opposite direction without another word, Alex keeping pace with her, her grey pantsuit equally rigid.
“Come on.” Terry tugs me down the street.
I’m about to demand he drop me at the brothel, but he stops me.
“I know what you’re thinking, and I need you to stop and actually think for a second,” he says and gestures for me to get into his car.
Once we’re underway, he continues. “You’ve got a chance if you go to trial. Even got a possibility it won’t get that far if they throw it out at the preliminary hearing. Three weeks. You can last three weeks.”
“But he can’t,” I snap. “I’m not doing that to him.”
Terry shoots me a troubled look. He knows exactly what I’m referring to. How many alphas will fuck Addie in that time? And if I have to wait for a trial? It could be years.
And I’m going to feel all of it. Eventually be inside Addie’s head for it. Forget about what that will do to me—send me certifiably insane—what will it do to Addie? It’ll break him. I won’t allow it to happen.
Terry sighs. He indicates for the turnoff to the highway that’ll take us away from The Bell, past our base at Fort Sanguis, and up to the wealthier coastal enclaves in the opposite direction from where Addie and I grew up in Hollow Point. Terry lives in Right Palisades. He’s making the good money.
I’m about to protest when Terry cuts me off.
“Nothing’s going to happen tonight,” he says gruffly. “Come to mine. Clean up. We’ll make a plan.”
I look over at him. He shoots me a sad smile.
Terry’s in his thirties, I think he’s around thirty-six, thirty-seven, and he’s a good leader.
Firm but always fair. He’s the epitome of cool, calm, and collected, like all airmen are—we have to be.
Flying hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of taxpayer equipment and one wrong move away from death at one thousand five hundred miles per hour, you don’t get to be anything less than calm.
But Terry takes that to a whole new level.
I slump in my seat. Addie sends me another pulse of warm light, and I dig deep to send one back. He flutters back at me, a pleased feeling, and I relax further. He’s okay. For now, he’s okay.
“I’ll get a bunch of weapons, go down there, and shoot anyone who stops me,” I tell Terry.
He scoffs. His omega, Kai, is beside him—a handsome guy with pleasant features, sandy hair and brown eyes, a relaxed air about him that matches Terry’s.
He also scoffs lightly. He and Terry share a look, and I know they’re communicating down their bond.
I feel a wistful pang. I need that line of communication with Addie, especially now that I’m feeling so much pain from him.
I’m not in a great state myself—a light tremor, headache, and an ache to touch my mate that rivals my need for air.
I need skin on skin. I need to kiss him.
Enter him. Knot him. The bond needs it. And Addie needs it too.
He’s sick without it. I know he’s trying to keep the worst of it from me by shooting me feelings of well-being, but that makes it worse.
Kai insisted I shower and change into some of Terry’s clothes while he washed mine. I push the pasta he’s made around my plate while we sit at the dining table in their open-plan, Spanish stucco home situated on the cliffs of the Palisades, overlooking the ocean.
I glare at Terry—not Kai, I don’t want Terry to punch me.
“And if it was Kai in there?” I ask him.
He stiffens, the hand he has on the back of Kai’s chair shifting to his neck and squeezing.
“Fair call, Leo,” he murmurs, voice laced with fury.
Kai sighs and gives us both exasperated looks. “Fair or not, it’s a plan that will get you killed. Maybe him too. You need to think strategically. What is it you always say? Don’t forget to fly your plane?”
My phone buzzes on the table. It’ll be my father again. I’ve missed ten calls from him so far and ignored the voicemails. So he knows. Wonderful.
Kai is right about remembering to fly my plane, but I can’t think.
It’s more common than you’d think to lose sight of simply flying the plane when you’re getting shot at or your instruments are blaring at you.
You can zone in on the problem and forget about airspeed, altitude, and next thing you know, a mountain is on the other side of the cloud cover.
But how am I supposed to focus on myself when Addie’s in there and another alpha is going to touch him?
They might not be doing anything tonight, but they will tomorrow.
The gleam in Benji’s eye when he’d talked about fucking a bonded omega, when he said they charge double, that bastard, I’m going to fucking kill him.
“Leo,” Terry snaps.
Right, I’m growling. I snap my mouth closed.
“Jesus,” he says and rubs Kai’s nape. “Here’s the situation. You can’t wait three weeks, I understand that. But you can’t go back there, you’ll be arrested on sight, and that’s best case scenario. If you’re going to get him out, illegally, you need to do it covertly.”
I wave my hand in the get on with it motion. It’s not like he’s telling me anything I don’t know.
“Me and the squad, we’ll go down there, buy some time with him for a few days.”
Another growl rips out of me.
“Not to fuck him, you moron,” Terry says and rolls his eyes. “To stop anyone else from doing it and to get some intel. We can’t get him out, I’m not having the squad arrested over this, but we can help. Legally.”
I nod, reluctantly. I still think heading there right now with a shotgun is my best play, but Terry is right. I could get Addie killed if I do that.
“And …” Terry goes on, lips ticking up. “If necessary, we’ll hire the Reapers.”
For the first time since this all went down, I snort a humourless laugh. The Reapers—Grim Reapers—are a now retired special forces unit that, according to the myths along the grapevine, work for hire on missions in the civilian world.
“I can’t afford the fucking Reapers.” If they’re even real.
Well, I know they were real, their missions are the stuff of legend for a reason, but I don’t know if they really continue to operate.
And if they do—and again, this is according to the rampant gossip on the base—they’d charge a small fortune.
There’s six of them plus their intel operative and their WMD, their working military dog.
The fee would have to cover seven men and probably a juicy steak for the dog.
“It’s an option,” Terry says, face sobering. “That’s all I’m saying. They’ll get him out.” He says it with so much conviction, I wonder what he knows.
My phone rings again.
“You gonna get that?” he asks me.
“No,” I reply shortly. “I’m gonna sell my car to Stephen—he’s always wanted it.”
Stephen’s in the squad, and the guy who’s been my wingman the most. He’s been salivating over my car since I turned up in it right out of basics.
“Pay you back. Then I’m gonna sit with Addie in my …” I gesture at my chest and know he’ll get it.
Terry sighs, his hand tightening on Kai’s nape.
“Maybe try and get some sleep,” Kai says. “Spare’s made up.”
I stop myself from snorting, and excuse myself as Terry says not to worry about the money. “I know you’re good for it.”
I know I am too, but I’m about to blow the chance of getting that bond money back, and I don’t want him to be in debt because of it.