Cade: The Boundarylands Omegaverse

by Callie Rhodes

  "Anybody want a last cup of tea before the men get back?" Gail called from the porch, holding up two pots. One held traditional hot tea for omegas who were pregnant or nursing, and the other was filled with a little more kick.

  "Too late," a deep voice said. Randall stepped from the trees, followed by the other alphas. "We're already back."

  Gail's smile grew at the sight of her mate coming home. "Don't think that means I'm putting away the bourbon," she said cheekily.

  Randall shook his head, sunlight glinting off his silver hair. "Didn't think it would. Ladies," he said, dipping his head in acknowledgment.

  The alphas circled the blanket, their clothes dusted with sawdust, and Emily jumped up to greet Cade.

  Even after all these months by his side, the thrill that arced through her every time she saw him hadn't faded. She couldn't get enough of the way his golden eyes danced when he looked at her.

  She threw her arms around him, and he lifted her into the air, spinning her around before giving her a hard and hungry kiss.

  "How was it this time?" she asked quietly.

  Cade shrugged. "Better. The brothers still give me shit, but—"

  "But you still deserve it," Zeke said, punching his shoulder as he walked by. "Don't worry, Emily. Your mate will live down his past…eventually."

  "Probably right about the time his own pup starts picking fights at the bar," Aric teased.

  Emily gave Cade an apologetic shrug. She knew that making nice wasn't easy for him, but he did it for her sake, and for that, Emily was deeply grateful.

  "Gail's still got a pot of bourbon on the porch if that would help," she told him.

  "Damn straight, it would." Cade took her hand and led her toward the porch.

  Soon everyone was gathered around the steps of the house, sharing the tea.

  "Still haven't heard any news from the north," Randall said.

  "Is that unusual?" Emily asked.

  She'd spent almost all of her time up north at home with Sloan. Other than the occasional trip to the bar, the only people she ever saw were his close friends. She knew now that those bastards probably weren't representative of the uplands as a whole, but despite all the shit they had talked, they never mentioned the lowlands.

  Cade shrugged, his expression darkening. "The lack of news isn't too unusual. But we trade with them for most of our gas and fuel, and they haven't delivered in months."

  Cold fear twisted deep in Emily's belly. "You mean you haven't received one in three months," she clarified miserably. "Not since Sloan died."

  "Pretty much," Randall said.

  Cade pulled her into his arms. "It's not your fault, love."

  "No, it's not," Randall agreed. "Bad alphas need to be culled from the pack no matter the cost. But we should probably still make the trip up there and check on what's going on, while we still have gas in our tanks to do it."

  Emily looked up at Cade. "Does that mean you're going to join them?"

  "Of course," he said with a faint smile. "If anything goes wrong, old man Randall's gonna need me to back him up."

  Randall laughed. "It would be the first time your fists ever came in handy."

  "Watch who you're calling old man, pup," Gail chided Cade.

  "Cade's right, though," Randall said. "I hope it's nothing, but in case there's bad blood, we'll be glad to have some fighters in the group."

  Emily didn't like the sound of that. "Just promise me you won't go looking for trouble."

  "You know I can't promise you that," Cade said with a wicked grin.

  Hope laughed. "I hate to be the one to break it to you, Emily, but your mate is trouble."

  True enough. "At least promise me that you'll come home in one piece."

  Cade's grin faded as he gazed deep into her eyes. "Now that I can promise, love," he said as he bent to kiss her. "I will always come home to you."

  Welcome to The Boundarylands Omegaverse!

  Thank you for reading CADE, Book 8 in the series. There are so many more hot alphas from the Boundarylands waiting to meet you.

  Keep reading for a sneak peek of the next book in the series, available here: ROMAN (The Boundarylands Omegaverse)

  If you want to spread the word about the Boundarylands, please consider leaving a review. The more reviews a book has the easier it is for new readers to find it.

  And if you’d like to keep in touch and be the first to hear when new books hit the kindle store sign up for my newsletter here: Callie Rhodes Newsletter

  Or follow me on Amazon

  ROMAN: The Boundarylands Omegaverse

  "I've got a bad feeling about this, Dad."

  Phoebe Whitfield tried to corral her racing heartbeat as she leaned forward to get her father's attention. With her younger brother Holden riding shotgun, there was nowhere for her to sit but on the thin mattress in the cramped sleeper compartment behind the cab of the eighteen-wheel tanker that her father and Holden had stolen several hours earlier.

  "Hush," Ed Whitfield whispered over his shoulder as he slowly turned off the winding two-lane road onto a narrow dirt drive—no small feat for a vehicle of that size. "You know these guys can hear everything."

  Phoebe rolled her eyes at her father's words. He made it sound like he was talking about a couple of his old drinking buddies down at the corner bar instead of the pack of massive, brutal alphas who lived in this remote mountainous territory.

  "We got this, Sis," Holden told her, full of brash confidence and warmed by the contents of the flask he and their father had been passing back and forth. "This ain't our first run."

  Maybe not…but Phoebe was willing to bet it was their first hauling a half-empty tank of fuel when they'd been paid to deliver a full one.

  But she knew bringing that up wouldn't do a bit of good. She'd just get hushed again.

  After all, this was the first time she'd actually entered the Pacific Northwest Boundarylands, while the men of her family had been working it for years.

  After a decade spent running black market goods in and out of the Boundarylands, her father considered himself an expert on all things alpha. Holden had joined the operation a few years ago after graduating from high school and was only too happy to back their father up.

  It was true that the two of them knew more than most betas about the alpha world. Unfortunately, that hadn't made them any smarter. There was a reason Ed Whitfield was still a two-bit hustler after all this time, and Holden hadn't exactly graduated at the top of his class.

  But halfwitted or not, they were family, and Phoebe loved them to pieces.

  She'd even done her best to convince Holden to go to community college, maybe even get a certificate in medical transcription as she had.

  But Holden wasn't interested. Like their father, he had a taste for a quick buck. They liked to think of themselves as criminal masterminds when the truth was that their competition knew that it wasn't worth the risk to short-change angry alphas. But a recent fuel shortage in the Boundarylands had convinced the two of them that they'd stumbled on a sure thing.

  From what Phoebe had gleaned from their conversations, as supplies of gas ran low, the alphas had started looking beyond their usual suppliers to fill the gap. Ed and Holden figured it would be just as easy to meet the demand as it was to move untaxed liquor and illegals furs.

  The problem was that the tanker they'd stolen was only half full, even though they were being paid for a full shipment.

  Phoebe had been livid when she'd heard the plan. She'd begged them to reconsider, but they refused to listen to reason.

  "You just don't get it, sis," Holden had told her the night before as he leaned against the chipped, worn tile of their kitchen counter. "This is the score of lifetime."

  "I don't doubt it—since it's also the last con you'll ever pull in your lifetime," she countered.

  "You worry too much, Phoebe," her father snorted, popping open another beer. "The plan is foolproof."

  Of course, it was anything but.


  Phoebe tried to make them see all the ways things could go wrong, but her words fell on deaf ears. Her father and brother were convinced that it would be a piece of cake to pass off a half-empty tanker as a full one, collect payment, and hightail it out of the Boundarylands before their alpha mark figured out he'd been duped.

  But despite what her father and brother thought, Phoebe knew that alphas weren't stupid. They might be big and mean, but Phoebe had heard enough stories from the locals she'd met to know that they were a hell of a lot sharper than her family took them for.

  But no amount of arguing could make them see reason.

  "There's only one hitch," Holden had said as he crushed his empty can and tossed it at the trash can in the corner of the kitchen. He missed, and the can fell to the worn linoleum floor. Sometimes she felt like Snow White taking care of the two laziest dwarves. "We're gonna have to get the hell out of town right after we make the drop. We'll head down to the Central Valley and lay low for a while."

  "What?" Phoebe had asked in shock and dismay.

  "It'll be fine, sis," Holden said. "You keep telling us you can work anywhere."

  Holden hadn't been completely wrong. It wasn't as if Phoebe was in love with living in the tiny excuse for a town on the edge of the Boundarylands. But just like most betas, she longed to move to the big city. These rural backwaters just weren't in her blood.

  "You haven't seen these alphas when they get mad, Phoebe," her dad had said, his expression momentarily serious. "It ain't pretty."

  Phoebe didn't doubt it.

  She had started working as a medical transcriptionist before her mother died, determined never to fall into the family business. But she'd heard plenty about the alphas who lived across the border. They were huge, musclebound creatures who could probably dead-lift this truck without breaking a sweat.

  She prayed to God she never saw one when he was mad.

  "But they can't come over the boundary line," she'd said, mostly to reassure herself.

  "They can't," Holden agreed. "But if they can pay us a small fortune to steal gas, then they can pay someone to come to our house and settle the score."

  "Don't worry," their father said. "That's why we're leaving right after. And I do mean right after. Of course, that means you're going to have to come with us."

  Remembering that conversation now as the tanker rolled along the drive crushing everything in its path, Phoebe wondered if she should have refused—even if it meant leaving her family and heading out on her own.

  But even the thought turned her stomach a little. They might be no good, but they were her family, and now that her mother was gone, Pheobe had a feeling she was the only thing keeping them together.

  Still, she hated the family business and where they plied it. She'd always been as repulsed by the Boundarylands as much as her father and brother were drawn to it—and for good reason.

  Everyone knew how alphas treated women. She heard the whispered horror stories when she went to the tiny market or picked up their mail at the post office. But it was almost as if the male members of her family couldn't wrap their heads around how terrifying it was for her in this place, as if they couldn't understand that women weren't considered equal or even human here.

  In the Boundarylands, women were just another kind of animal to hunt.

  Phoebe closed her eyes and tried to calm her breathing as the tanker's gears groaned on a slow incline, but it didn't do any good. With every bump and jounce, her anxiety only grew.

  By the time the tanker came to a shuddering halt in front of a surprisingly large and tidy cabin at the end of the drive, Phoebe was battling a full-blown panic attack.

  Her father glanced at her as he cut the engine.

  "Just stay quiet and still, and you'll be fine," he advised before snapping the privacy curtain closed.

  But Phoebe suddenly knew that she wouldn't be—knew it down to the marrow of her bones.

  Nothing would ever be fine again.

  Pre-Order ROMAN today

  About the Author

  Ever since she was little, Callie Rhodes’ imagination has been landing her in trouble. From daydreaming about far off worlds in class, to escaping into the made up stories of her mind in the meeting room, she’s been creating tales to take her away from the real world for as long as she can remember. Now she lives among the tall trees of Northern California, and has found a way to make a living off her fantasies.

  The Boundarylands Omegaverse Series

  Book 1: KIAN: Available Now

  Book 2: TY: Available Now

  Book 3: SAMSON: Available Now

  Book 4: MADDOX: Available Now

  Book 5: TROY: Available Now

  Book 6: ZEKE: Available Now

  Book 7: ARIC: Available Now

  Book 8: CADE: Available Now

  Book 9: ROMAN: Available September 22nd, 2020