Chapter Twenty-One #2
She came forward, knocking Howard down and twisting behind him. She got her bound cuffs around him and used them against his throat, her knee in his back. Sickening gurgling noises left him, but she didn’t let up.
Something struck the side of her face.
She snarled at Galen, amazed he hadn’t shot her. Then again, she was worth a pretty penny.
They should have shot her.
She yanked again, hard enough for a snap from Howard’s neck, for him to go unnaturally lax.
She tried to extract herself from him, but Galen did most of the work when he grabbed her arm and yanked, hard. She was nothing compared to him when it came to weight. Her cheek hurt where he’d hit her, and it took a moment to realize he’d used some sort of stick.
Coward.
He grabbed her around the throat, hauling her against his chest, trying to restrain her. “What should I do with her?”
“Chain her up,” her father snapped, his precious composure gone. “We’ll take care of the pregnancy tonight and train her before we sell her off again.”
A crash outside the room floated by her, like a detail she didn’t give a fuck about. Her father still stood there, the threat, the thing she needed to get rid of.
Everyone else turned their heads toward the window, but she didn’t care what happened down there.
She swung her elbow down and into Galen’s gut, then twisted and kicked him as hard as she could. He flew backward, tripped by Howard’s body, before he crashed into the window.
The cheap single-pane glass was no match, and he toppled down. Screams from downstairs filtered in, but her brain was full of rage and red and something old and primal. It had no room for that.
Only she and her father were left in the room, and the widening of his eyes, the fear there, was the first time she’d gotten to see the real coward beneath all those layers of practiced civility he wore, the ones he used to hide what he really was.
He wasn’t strong. He wasn’t in control. He was a little boy who knew the only way he could get what he wanted was to try to bend others to his will.
Too bad. Whether he’d meant to or not, he’d raised a daughter who wouldn’t bend, and he wasn’t nearly strong enough to break her.
“Alison, let’s talk about this,” he said, as if he could explain away what had happened, what he’d said.
No words came to her. She couldn’t even recall words right then.
“You can go. Leave and never come back. I won’t look for you—I’ll leave you be.”
She didn’t believe him. This sort of man had an ego that couldn’t let something go, and even if he could, she wanted blood for what he’d have done if he had the chance.
She rushed forward, leaping at his chest to knock him backward and onto the floor. She snarled down at his face, wanting nothing more than to feel his flesh between her teeth, than to rip out his throat to make sure he was never a threat again.
Whatever this was, whatever she was, it was the last thing her father would ever see.
Trent stopped short at the doorway. After a body had crashed through a window from the upper floor, he’d known damn well where his mate was.
The rest of the place—a large open building set back in the middle of nowhere—didn’t matter.
With all the alphas who had come, with Kara and Claire and even Tiffany, there weren’t a lot of places for the slavers and the buyers to go.
It was chaos, but that worked in their favor. Those who tried to escape were met with Kieran’s rifle outside, since a bullet to the kneecap sure did slow down those who thought they could run.
None of that mattered, though, as Trent took the stairs with Daniel and Kyle behind him.
But at the top was a sight he was pretty sure was the herald of death.
Alison was above her father, another body unmoving on the ground. Blood dripped from her face, her teeth bared and a growl a grizzly would be proud of rumbling from her chest.
The woman he knew was gone. There was nothing of her in that body.
Omega rage was the sort of thing one wished to never see in their entire life, and he could happily go another forty years without ever seeing it again.
There were times when he had to admit he wasn’t at the top of the food chain, and nothing could remind an alpha of that faster than what Alison had been reduced to.
“Pet,” he said, flinching at how not appropriate that name might have been right then.
Still, it made her turn her head toward him, even as her eyes didn’t seem to recognize him.
“Get her off me,” her father shouted.
“I’d shut up if I were you,” Daniel said. “Because if she decides to tear out your throat right now, well, you better get right with your god because no one will be able to stop it.”
Geoffrey paled more but thankfully shut up.
“Come on, sugar,” Kyle tried. “We’re here now. We brought some friends of yours, too. It’s all over now.”
She swallowed, slowly, but when Geoffrey shifted, her gaze zeroed back in.
Fuck, it was like trying to talk down a snarling wolf who had already tasted his prey.
“No, pet, it’s fine. Don’t worry about him. He can’t do anything, now.” Why they were trying to save him, Trent wasn’t quite sure. The fucker deserved whatever she did to him.
But she wasn’t herself, and the last thing she needed was to live with the guilt of killing her father.
She wrapped a hand around his throat, squeezing for a long, terrifying moment before she moved off him.
He went to rise, but a sharp look from Daniel made him think better about it.
Alison came up slowly, her steps careful, studying Trent like she almost recognized him.
Her cheek was swelling, and her lip had been split. It seemed that was where the blood had come from. All in all, she wasn’t in terrible condition.
When she stood just before him, she inhaled, slowly. Good. Scents are written deeper than anything else. If anything could reach into that rage, could settle her, could draw her out of it, it would be smell.
Sure enough, her eyes fluttered closed and she crossed the last bit of space, wrapping her arms around him.
Blood soaked into his shirt, but he didn’t give a damn. He pulled her against his chest as Kyle and Daniel came closer, both doing the same, running their fingers through her hair, touching every visible inch as if to ensure she was okay.
He breathed her in deeply, unable to believe she was really safe.