Jace

Panic slammed into me out of nowhere. This was all very practiced and organised—take a separated female, close in, and get her high on your scent. They didn’t even need to drop something in a drink, as I’d first suspected, because I was already sinking under their spell. I fumbled for my bag, but my clumsy fingers couldn’t get the catch and I dropped it to the floor. Fuck!

“And you’re assuming that’s you?” a deep voice said—so deep, it made my ear buzz uncomfortably, my hand straying to rub at it. I should be thinking about the taser in my bag, not my damn ear.

I hadn’t wanted to look, to see who’d butted in on this humiliating event, because I knew. Somehow, I knew. I could feel the heat of the fourth man’s body, smell his much fresher scent cutting right through the choking smell of these three arseholes. It took a deep breath and another inspection of the group’s insistent gaze before I turned to acknowledge my rescuer. There he was, bigger, taller, stronger than I’d gauged at the gate, and close, way too close for comfort.

The three arseholes had frightened me. The newcomer I’d first met at the gate had twice their potency all on his own.

“You know the rules, dickheads.” God, that low rumble of a voice… It felt like it vibrated all the way through me. “In my bar, consent first. I didn’t see the lady accept your kind offer of a drink, did I?”

I hadn’t been able to work out how the group stayed standing there, the power, the repressed aggression radiating off the alpha making my head spin, and it wasn’t even directed at me. But it was for me, which made me all the more flustered. Then those deep brown eyes dropped to meet mine, and I was completely and utterly lost.

“Did you want these boys pestering you?”

What the freaking hell?

I’d heard all about an alpha’s bark, their voices reported to have the ability to force compliance in a way that sounded damn near mythical on the evening news, yet now? I had to admit my hubris as my gaze fell to those full lips, hearing the question there but unable to parse the meaning while I was caught under his spell.

I was so fucked.

“What the fuck, Jace? This little beta wants to try on some strange, and we want to be the ones to help her with it. I thought you’d know all about that.”

Wrong thing to say. A little whimper escaped my lips as I saw that body, Jace’s, turn to stone, a wall forming beside me of tensed muscle.

“You’re right—I do.” That was the only warning they got from Jace. He looked over their heads to a couple shadowy figures hanging by the door and gestured them over. “Escort these gentlemen out, not to return.”

“The fuck? Jace—”

“You heard the man,” Jace’s offsiders said, grabbing the three who’d been bugging me and hauling them out the door to the musical sound of their complaints.

Then they were gone, leaving me alone with him. My bag was still on the floor. I stared down at it, wanting to scoot off the stool and collect it, yet terrified because it would bring me closer to him.

A low sigh caught my attention, forcing me to recognise what I really didn’t want to—that there was a huge, very masculine presence by my side and only getting closer. I tried to keep my eyes to myself, which was all very out of character. Say thank you, I thought furiously. Get him a drink. Something, anything, then you can send him on his way. He moved in until the shadow of him fell over me, the heat of his skin radiating. Then he bent over right beside me, almost touching me, to retrieve my fallen bag and hold it out for me to take. I didn’t take it, just stared at it in confusion as I felt the equivalent of a storm batter me.

“You all right, love?”

Fuck, I’d read and heard people talking about ordinary men having this animalistic kind of growl of a voice and always dismissed it as overheated bullshit, but now? My eyes jerked sideways, a congratulatory smile spreading across his face, which should have gotten my back right up. I wasn’t one to accept pats on the head from men, not even men like him.

And he was all fucking man.

This close, I could smell him, a deep, woody, musky scent that filled my lungs, replacing a need for oxygen, my body instantly adjusting to breathing him in instead. It was nothing like the other alphas. I’d caught an enticing hint of this man as I’d passed when he opened the gate, but this was a thousand times more intense.

He frowned slightly, watching my chest heave as I sucked his scent in. I wanted to shrink away from the arseholes, but this alpha, I wanted more of it. I wanted to roll in it and him, wanted to get right up close and taste it from the source.

I shuddered.

And that was when it happened—like the slow prickle of a lazy orgasm, every nerve ending perked up and sighed in one long wave. My muscles went lax and my bones to rubber as I was hit face first with alpha pheromones. That made sense. People bought and sold alpha and omega pheromone extracts on the black market for precisely this reason. It gave us a glimpse of how the other half lived.

But I wasn’t about to take a walk on the omega side, only to return to being a safe little beta.

“Fuck…” he rumbled, his voice sounding like grating granite right now. “What is that?”

He closed the gap between us and put a hand on the bar, caging me in, making me feel bloody tiny suddenly, despite being reasonably tall in my heels. He didn’t touch, didn’t impose anything, just moved so close, my personal bubble was obliterated, leaving only me. Me that trembled, holding myself still, so still, as his nose traced the air around me, breathing me in with slow, shuddering breaths.

I’d thought that this was just the way it went. An alpha hit on you, and his allure smashed into you like a fucking Mack truck, leaving you a quivering little beta morsel as your head swum and your body rioted. I thought that this was what Jude, what Em and Jewel were chasing, because it all became clear, as I fought to keep breathing, just why they were so keen to come here.

I’d never been so fucking turned on in my life. My skin felt too hot, too tight, while my cunt sent out distress signals, clenching down on a horrible nothingness, a whine rising in my throat in response, but it froze when he did. His body stiffened, then shifted infinitesimally closer, so the world was reduced to only him and me. Both hands were on the bar now, on either side of me, my body bowed backwards to avoid touching.

Because I think on some level, I knew.

Despite my body bowing away, there was no threat in him caging me. It was comforting, it felt right.

I was the one who fucked this up, who committed the final sin that damned me completely by reaching out blindly to take my bag, which was still in his hand. As I did, my fingers brushed against his.

“Jesus…” he hissed, just for me.

At that moment, we were hit by lightning, something I’d waited my whole life for and never thought would come.

Most betas woke up in puberty knowing what they were, feeling their betas-ness down to their toes. It was who they were, who they identified as, and it determined everything about them. My ‘reveal’ was weak, shaky, more a question mark than a statement. I’d never told anyone except for my doctor when I was an adult, and when he ran tests, he’d found nothing to suggest I was anything other than yet another beta. Now I, and the alpha before me, felt it, and he sucked my rapidly developing scent in like a dying man.

“Omega…” he purred. My designation, my death sentence.

“No…no!” I whimpered, seemingly unable to make a strident protest anymore. When I raised my fists, pushing against his chest, my bones felt like they were made of rubber, soft and ineffectual.

“Fuck…” He said the word like it personally pained him, while those massive hands formed manacles around my wrists, the thumbs rubbing small circles. “It’s all right, love. Everything will be okay. I’ve got to get you the hell out of this bar, away from every bastard who’s go