Jace

The full beams came on, and the car dipped down into the darkness. It was always wet in the tu

I snorted out a laugh because I wanted to strangle Sloane’s sister myself for not answering the fucking phone, but seeing Ryder lose his shit was gold. At least Sloane’s location had been confirmed, although my spidey sense said I could lead us there anyway.

“We got a clear path?” I asked Dane, who was in the driver’s seat.

“Clear-ish,” he said. “Reports of a higher than average number of roadblocks today, so it might be slow going and I can’t guarantee we won’t come up against resistance, but we’ll get it done.”

The concrete tu

“Switching to short wave radio,” Dane said, flipping a switch on the dash so we could keep in contact with our SUV following behind.

We were going in to get my girl, dressed like we were Alpha Control agents to explain our presence. They always used the biggest, baddest betas they could find, and sometimes we wondered if there were some alphas on the downlow there. Didn’t matter. We’d get in, get out, and the betas? They’d let us in the front door. Without a word, we readied weapons, slipped headsets on, and buckled into Kevlar vests that were kept in readiness under seats. After the wait, I welcomed the action that felt like a fever coursing through my blood. My baby was hurting. Someone had fucking drugged her.

My beast growled, pacing within me. The cage I kept him in was battered and starting to fail. His snarl was as much for me as for the people that would dare to touch our omega.

My mate, he insisted, declaring once and for all what we both knew—Sloane was ours and we were hers, and no amount of ru

Fuck with what was mine, and you would get fucked up twice as hard. And if Snake had poked his nose in this, I was going to end that prick as well.

Sloane

My return to consciousness was a long and painful one.

“Well, well, look what we have here.”

The voice was a heavy, deep purr that seemed to crawl all over my skin. It had none of Jace’s rough rasp, and I hated it. This was an unctuous voice that dripped over me, marking me as his, and his hands, they followed soon after. I shivered when I felt the warm pressure of them around my ankles, pulling my legs apart, prying them when I fought his grip, then came a long exhale.

“Well that’s some grade A omega pussy right there. Look at how fucking swollen she is. That clit, it’s like a little grape, waiting to be plucked, and her slick…” I shivered on the table I was lying on, twisting and turning but not getting very far. My limbs felt like lead, my head spi

I’d seen men like this, that looked you over like you were a side of beef, weighing you up and dissecting you, searching for the weak spots. As a beta, I would never be anything but a thing for them, but as an omega? Less rights, less brains, just an instinct driven little bitch that was destined to spend her life on her knees.

I’d run out on Jace, and never had I regretted that more than I did now, as the alpha with the ice blue eyes stared down between my legs, his tongue flicking out to coat his lips, while he imagined exactly what he was going to do with me.

“What do you want for her?” he asked, feigning a degree of disinterest, but I wasn’t fooled. His alpha pheromones choked me—menthol, basil, and cigarette smoke. I swallowed furiously, trying to clear my throat, but I couldn’t.

“Snake, this is a preview,” an orderly said, trying for decisive but only sounding whiny. “We can’t sell her off to you yet. This one, she’s co

“How. Much?”

Then my body did something that just drove home the shittiness of the situation. I didn’t want this man’s hands on me, didn’t want those freakishly pale eyes staring down at me, piercing me, but the very cunt he’d described so thoroughly? A gush of slick oozed out at the sound of his growl.

It’s an instinctive reaction, I told myself furiously. You know this. Omegas can be raped, just like anyone else. This is sexual assault. He’s touching you without your permission!

That last bit somehow brought my body back under my control. I jerked my knees shut, scrambling off and away from the examining table I’d been lying on, even as my legs threatened to give out. I shoved down the hospital gown I was dressed in, my lips pulled back in a snarl.

“Ohh, baby… That was exactly the wrong thing to do,” Snake said, a slow shit-eating grin spreading across his face. “You wa

“Snake, we can’t do this, not yet. You’ll need to pay more—”

“Name your fucking price. This little bitch ran from me twice now, and my beast? He can’t let that shit slide.” His arm twisted, revealing a long, highly detailed snake tattoo all the way down one arm. “I need her taste in my mouth and my fangs in her flesh.”

I didn’t know why I moved, since there was nowhere to go. Back to the wall, I kept him in my line of sight while I tried to ascertain a way out, but the room appeared to be locked down tight. The orderlies got twitchy, moving towards the door, a hand shifting across the wall to a red button that seemed to be an alarm.

Yes, that, a primitive part of my mind shrieked. Alarms brought people, attention, even fire sprinklers, and I was willing to bet no one here wanted an audience for the shit they were trying to pull. So I did something I really didn’t want to do.

“Leave me alone,” I cried piteously, only partly making this shit up. Real tears pricked my eyes, because fuck this arsehole and fuck the weasel dicks who let him near me. “I don’t want you. I want Jace.”

Ouch. I was trying to goad the alpha, get him angry and stupid, so why did it feel like someone had detonated a bomb behind my sternum? My words had an instant effect, Snake’s gorgeous face becoming monstrous as his lips pulled back in a snarl. Great, now what?

Omegas were supposed to have greater speed and agility, my human biology teacher at high school told me, and I was about to put that to the test.

“You’ll want what I tell you,” Snake snarled and then lunged as a pitiful little squeak escaped me.

But I was ducking out from under his arms and scrambling over to the doors before slamming my hand down on the alarm, when the orderlies went to stop me from leaving.

The place erupted. Sirens wailed, red lights flashed, and best of all, the doors swung open on automatic, obviously in preparation for an evacuation.

“You stupid bitch!” Snake snapped, grabbing for me, but the bed was now in his way and he had to scramble over it.

“We need to get her out of here and into containment, now,” one orderly said to the other, also trying to catch me and getting in Snake’s way. “An omega ru

But I didn’t give a damn about that. With adrenaline pumping through me, giving me speed and strength I wouldn’t have thought possible, I was out of that room and down the hall. The problem was, where to go?