The Omega Purebred (Hell's Wolves MC Book 2)

by J. L. Wilder

  But for Hazel, sleep felt miles away. Every time she closed her eyes, fear crept in. Being in the dark made her feel as if she were back in her cell, back with the Savage Rangers, waiting to see what they would do to her next. She ran her fingers absently over her still healing tattoo and wondered what Matthew would say when he saw it. She was willing to bet she would be forced to wear long sleeves for the rest of her life to cover that mark up.

  Maybe I can get a different tattoo. Maybe they’ll be able to turn this design into something else.

  She tossed and turned, trying to disengage her brain and get some rest, but the prediction she’d made to Emmett turned out to be correct. She was too hungry to sleep. She would never be able to shut out the world with her stomach gnawing the way it was.

  “Emmett,” she whispered.

  No response.

  “Emmett,” she said aloud.

  Nothing. He was out cold.

  She got up and quietly made her way to the pile of things on his bedside table. He had dropped his worn looking wallet here, and she picked it up and opened it. She didn’t want to take much from him. Would ten dollars be enough? She carefully slid a bill out and pocketed it. Then she picked up the key to the room and slid that into her other pocket.

  She hesitated at the door. The last time she’d gone outside when she wasn’t supposed to, it had led directly to her being kidnapped.

  But that wouldn’t happen now. The Savage Rangers weren’t here. And besides, Hazel was smarter now than she’d been then. She was more aware of her surroundings. She would be careful.

  She just wanted to see if there was some food in the lobby. That was all. And then she’d come right back.

  From the balcony outside the room, Hazel was able to look out over the parking lot and to ascertain that the coast was clear. Emmett’s motorcycle was still the only vehicle in the parking lot—this motel was clearly having a very slow day. She could see the lobby from here, only a few yards away. She jogged down the stairs and across the lot and pulled open the door.

  The woman at the reception desk looked up as she entered. “Is the room all right?” she asked.

  “The room is great,” Hazel said. “Thank you.”

  “What can I help you with?”

  “I was wondering if...by chance, do you sell food? Or have a vending machine?”

  “I’m sorry,” the receptionist said. “Machine’s broken down. There’s a fast food joint about a mile up the highway, if you’re hungry.”

  But that was farther than Hazel dared go by herself. “You haven’t got anything?” she asked, feeling a bit desperate. “I have ten dollars.”

  The woman frowned doubtfully. “I have a couple of granola bars in my backpack.”

  “I’ll give you ten dollars for them,” Hazel begged.

  “Ma’am, are you all right?” the receptionist asked. “Do you want me to call someone?”

  “I’m fine,” Hazel said. “Just hungry.”

  “That man you’re with...he’s not...he doesn’t have you here against your will or anything?”

  “Emmett? No, no. He’s...” What? What was Emmett to her? “He’s my friend,” she said finally. “We’re on a road trip together.” She supposed you could call it a road trip, at any rate. “It’s just been a while since our last meal, and I don’t know how to drive the motorcycle, so I can’t really go get anything.” She was surprised at how easily the story came to her. It was as if she’d been lying all her life.

  Which, in a way, she supposed she had. Hadn’t her whole life, so far, been a kind of performance? Hadn’t she spent years pretending to the Coywolves that she was fine with the idea of being mated to one of them?

  And that isn’t really what I want.

  It was the first time she’d articulated the thought to herself. It was sort of liberating. It was also sort of like falling. The life she was destined for was a life she didn’t quite want for herself. That was a frightening thing to admit to, even in the privacy of her own mind.

  And besides, what else was there for an omega like her?

  The receptionist seemed to buy what Hazel was saying. “Well, you can have my granola bars, if you’re that hungry,” she said. “I’m probably not going to eat them anyway. But, fair warning, they’ve been in my backpack for a few days.”

  “I don’t care,” Hazel said sincerely. She put the ten-dollar bill down on the counter.

  “No, hey, keep your money,” the receptionist said. “I’m not going to take ten bucks for a couple of old granola bars. You can have them.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure, I’m sure.” The woman bent down below the desk for a moment and came up holding two wrapped bars. “Here. Hope you enjoy ‘em.”

  Hazel pocketed her money and accepted the bars. “Thank you,” she said fervently, and headed out of the lobby and into the open parking lot.

  And stopped.

  Emmett was sprinting across the lot toward her, half manic, moving so quickly that she barely had time for a thought before he reached her side. They found us, was the thought.

  The Savage Rangers.

  Then he had her by the shoulders and was shaking her so hard that she dropped her granola bars into the gravel of the parking lot. “What the hell is the matter with you?” he shouted. “I woke up and you were gone! I thought they’d come and taken you while I was asleep! What are you doing out here?”

  Hazel was shocked into silence. This was an Emmett she had never seen before. He was so angry that he looked as if he might actually explode. The Emmett she knew was a steadying presence on a motorcycle, a cool hand on her forehead when she burned with fever, a guide through the night when she was being pursued by kidnappers. But now, for the first time, she felt an immediate, visceral fear of him. For the first time, she thought he might lose control and hurt her.

  He closed his eyes, released her shoulders, and took several deep breaths.

  “Back inside,” he said shortly. By the clip in his voice, she knew that he was still angry. “Now!”

  She walked past him and back to the room. He followed close behind her.

  Only when they were upstairs with the door shut and locked did he relax. He dropped to a seat on the bed and buried his face in his hands, still breathing heavily for several minutes.

  Hazel didn’t know what to say or how to respond. She took a seat in the center of her own bed. Now that her heart rate was starting to return to normal, questions were beginning to seep in. It had been strange to see Emmett panic like that. Okay, she knew she was worth something to him—he was being paid for her safe return, and she imagined Matthew would probably have offered a substantial reward, given how much money she knew he had. But why would losing a bounty upset Emmett so much? She would have expected ire and frustration, but he had completely lost control.

  Finally, after a long time, he looked up. “What the hell did you think you were doing?” he asked hoarsely.

  “I was hungry,” she said, and found that her own voice came out just barely above a whisper.

  “You were hungry.”

  “I’ve barely eaten anything, Emmett. In ages. You gave me that food I didn’t even like last night, and there was the potato—that was good—but before that I was with the Savage Rangers for days.”

  “I told you I’d get you breakfast in the morning,” he said.

  “For days, Emmett.”

  “You said they were feeding you.”

  “Well, they weren’t feeding me much.”

  “You still can’t leave the hotel room alone. What if they’d been out there?”

  “They weren’t. I checked.”

  “You checked.” He closed his eyes. “Do you think you’re better at checking than they are at hiding?”

  “You said I might be a good tracker.”

  “With training,” I said. “Training that I guarantee you every single one of those Savage Rangers already has. They could easily have bagged you, Hazel. You got lucky. That’s all
.”

  “I just wanted to go to the vending machine,” she whispered.

  “It’s out of order. We saw that on the way in. You didn’t notice?”

  She shook her head mutely.

  “A tracker would have noticed that,” he said, some of the bite going out of his voice.

  “I wasn’t paying attention then—”

  “A tracker is always paying attention.”

  She bowed her head.

  A moment later, there was a soft sound as something landed beside her on the bed. She turned to look and her eyes went wide. “You got the granola bars.”

  “I saw you drop them,” he said. “Where did you get them?”

  “The receptionist gave them to me.”

  Emmett inhaled sharply. “You shouldn’t have talked to her.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because she’ll remember you now,” he said. “If the Savage Rangers come looking, if they start asking questions...before, she would have reported a couple who rented a room for a few hours, and that would maybe seem suspicious. But now, she’ll be able to tell them about a girl who seemed really hungry. And that’s definitely suspicious.”

  “Are we in trouble?” she asked.

  “We were already in trouble,” Emmett said, which didn’t really answer her question.

  “Emmett?”

  “What?”

  “Why were you so afraid out there?”

  “What do you mean? You know why. I thought the Savage Rangers had come and taken you while I was asleep.”

  “I know,” she said. “But if that was what had happened, that would mean they’d obviously decided to leave you alive. I know you want to turn me in so you can collect the reward money, but you seemed...I don’t know. More upset than that.”

  Emmett was quiet for a long moment. He looked as though he was wrestling with the idea of saying something. Hazel didn’t speak, hoping that he’d vocalize whatever was on his mind.

  The truth was that she had liked the idea of Emmett worrying about her. And not just because that meant he cared whether she lived or died—although it was certainly good to think that he cared about that. But there was more to it than just survival.

  Somewhere in the middle of fleeing on foot all evening and on the bike all night, sometime during the process of running from the Savage Rangers, Hazel had realized that she was attracted to Emmett.

  Not that anything could come of that. She belonged to the Coywolves, and she would be mated to a Coywolf. She knew that. If there was a question of them not wanting her with the brand on her arm, she would definitely be ruined for them if she slept with another man.

  But a girl could dream.

  And after all her long years growing up with the Coywolves, knowing she was fated to belong to one of them and feeling absolutely nothing, it felt wonderful to feel something for a man. To know that she was capable of these feelings. To know that they really did exist, and that she would get to have them just once before her fate was sealed.

  Hazel Lang had a crush.

  And, as unlikely as it was, she wanted to believe that he felt something for her too.

  Chapter Eight

  EMMETT

  Being in the motel room with Hazel was beginning to make Emmett itch.

  When he told her he was going outside for a smoke, she looked at him as though he was crazy. “You just flipped out because I went outside,” she reminded him. “Now, you’re going out?”

  “No one is hunting for me,” he told her. “The Savage Rangers haven’t even seen me. They might walk right by me and not even know I’m with you, for all we know.”

  “Or they might not,” she shot back. “They’re tracking my scent. You’re saying you don’t think it’s on you after that motorcycle ride?”

  “Go to bed,” he said. “You got your food. Now, I want you to get some sleep.”

  “What about you, though?”

  “One cigarette. Then I’ll come to bed too.”

  He could tell she didn’t like it, but she nodded.

  He wasn’t a regular smoker, but sometimes, stress could provoke irregular behavior, a fact Emmett knew all too well. Out on the balcony, he lit one up and leaned on his elbows, staring out over the empty parking lot.

  Why had he panicked so intensely when he’d thought he had lost her?

  It wasn’t about the fifteen thousand, that was for sure. He wanted that money, and it would be no end of useful to his pack, but it wasn’t worth losing his cool the way he had. When he’d thought the Savage Rangers had gotten her again, it had felt like the end of the world. Why?

  He didn’t know, but it scared him.

  She’s just a job, he told himself firmly. If all goes to plan, I’ll be handing her over in a day or two, and then I won’t have to worry about whatever that feeling was anymore. But as he thought this, his stomach swooped sickeningly, and an even more unwelcome realization broke over him. He was dreading the day he had to return her to her family. He wasn’t ready to give her up.

  Crazy. You’re crazy.

  Maybe he was. As alpha of the Hell’s Wolves, he had always made it clear to his pack that they were a brotherhood. There was no room for women, no room for love and the possibility of offspring. That was more trouble than anyone needed on the road.

  He finished his cigarette, went back inside, and laid down on his bed. Hazel had fallen asleep. He’d thought she would. It had been a mistake to try to make her sleep without eating first. He should have known she’d be too hungry to relax after several days of being held captive, after that fever she’d been running when he’d first picked her up. Of course, her body needed to refuel. Now that she had, he thought, she’d probably sleep like the dead.

  She lay on her side, curled up slightly as if she had something to protect. The shirt they’d given her was too big, and it had slipped off one of her narrow shoulders, exposing pale, clear skin. She looked so soft—

  Emmett rolled away. What was he thinking? She was a job, not a one-night stand he’d met in a bar. He couldn’t go succumbing to the charms of an omega, of all things! Her family would never take her back if he did that. He’d be out the fifteen thousand dollars she was worth to them, and she would be out a home.

  And yet, he couldn’t deny the sudden urge to go over to where she lay, to lay down beside her and draw her into his arms. He couldn’t deny the need to have her close.

  He had heard the gossip about omegas, that they were irresistible, that they possessed charms fit to break down any mortal shifter man. He had heard barflies chatter about how they had once met omegas who seemed to shine as brightly as the sun. Some shifters spoke of them as if they were magical creatures, as if all sense and reason disappeared from a man when he laid eyes on an omega. These stories had always made Emmett laugh. They weren’t true. He knew better. Hell, he’d seen his share of omegas in the process of finding missing family members and returning them to their packs. Omegas tended to go missing a lot. But he had never felt anything like this.

  He wanted her.

  When Emmett, or any of his pack, wanted a woman, they went to a bar. It was never difficult to find some pretty girl eager for a one-night stand. But this was different. He didn’t want a woman. He wanted her. He knew, without knowing how he knew, that no one else would satisfy the craving currently dominating his mind.

  Could it somehow be the fact that she was an omega? He’d been around them before, it was true, and felt nothing. But maybe there was something special about this omega. Maybe there was something different about her.

  Whatever it was, he was willing to bet that was why the Savage Rangers had wanted her too, and why the Coywolves were paying such a premium to get her back.

  With a sigh of frustration, he rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. He needed to get his head back in the game here. He was separated from his pack, and God only knew whether they were still alive. He was on the run from one of the most vicious wolf packs he’d ever encountered. And he wa
s fighting for the kind of money his pack had never had. If they got this payout, he knew, it would change all their lives forever.

  He couldn’t afford to be distracted by a pretty girl.

  Punching his pillow into a new shape, he rolled over and closed his eyes, determined to forget all about Hazel for a few hours.

  HE AWOKE TO THE SOUND of the shower running. Leaning over to check the clock beside the bed, he saw that he’d slept for about six hours. Shit. That was longer than he’d meant to sleep. If the Savage Rangers had caught their scent, he had given them plenty of time to catch up to them. They would have to get moving again, and quickly.

  Provided they weren’t already cornered.

  He squatted low and slipped out onto the balcony, pressing his back to the stucco wall. Slowly, cautiously, he rose up on his toes and peered over, looking for any sign of the Rangers.

  Nothing. The parking lot was still empty except for his bike. The gravel hadn’t even been touched.

  He let out a sigh of relief and stepped back into the motel room in time to hear the shower turn off. A moment later, Hazel came out of the bathroom with one towel wrapped around her head and another around her body.

  The view left absolutely nothing to the imagination. He could see every curve of her. The towel stopped at the very top of her long thighs, leaving miles of leg on display. He remembered, suddenly, having those thighs wrapped around him as they’d fled on the motorcycle yesterday. It occurred to him suddenly that they would be in the very same position shortly.

  He took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. The Rangers hadn’t caught up with them yet, and that was a lucky break. He’d be damned if he was going to squander it standing around staring at Hazel. “Get dressed,” he said shortly.

  She raised her eyebrows at his tone but said nothing and reached for her clothes. Emmett studied the carpet until he heard the bathroom door close and knew she was once more on the other side of it.