by Jayce Carter
She laughed at that, at the way he’d have believed she could fight, that she could win, and that she’d damn well do it when he told her to. How could she have thought he didn’t respect her? If anything, he was the one who believed her strong, believed her capable.
“What’s so funny?”
“That you think you frighten me.”
“You saw what I did to your friend. I saw you jumping in your shop the second I walked in there. I know I frighten you.”
Claire lifted her head to face him, wanting him to see her eyes when she spoke. “You don’t know anything. You tear down omegas because you know they’re more than you’ll ever be. You’re just a coward who attacks women you think are easy targets, but that doesn’t make you strong. It doesn’t make you tough.”
He wrapped his fingers around her throat but didn’t squeeze. He wanted her afraid, wanted to see that fear, needed it. It was written across his face. “And what? You think those alphas you fuck are strong? They can’t even keep you in line.”
That was when it really hit her, when the truth spilled from her lips the moment she realized it. “They’re strong enough they don’t need to keep me in line. You destroy omegas because you can’t control them, because you’re afraid of everything. They’re more of an alpha than you’ll ever be.”
His eyes darkened, fury radiating off him in waves. The anger of an alpha had always driven her to begging before, made her want to cower and hide. Now?
It spurred her on.
She finally saw him, saw Tracy’s mate, saw James for what they were. She’d assumed they were powerful, strong, invincible. In the groundless hatred of his gaze, she saw what sat below. Fear. Cowardice. He wasn’t anything and certainly not the beast she’d assumed.
She could hurt him. She could still make it out of this. She could see her men again, could make it right with them, could have the life she’d been too afraid to try for before. She had something worth fighting for.
“I’ll show you just how strong I am, omega.”
Claire bared her teeth on a snarl. “I’ll do the same.”
Chapter Twenty-One
The car wouldn’t drive fast enough. No matter how hard Kaidan stepped on the gas, no matter how the speedometer crept up, it wouldn’t go fast enough.
Kieran sat in the back of the SUV with Joshua and Bryce had taken the passenger seat. Bryce tended to not focus when angry and they’d be worse off if they crashed before reaching their best guess of where Claire could have gone.
Kieran had come through—at least they hoped he had. While he couldn’t track her phone, he’d found an office building set to start work in the next month. Abandoned, but with power and privacy, it seemed a perfect place for Randy to have taken the omegas.
Randy would have access to the building since he was the tech, and it would only take about ten minutes to get to. Far enough no one would hear anything, private enough to not worry about anyone walking in on them.
Please, let Claire be okay.
Kaidan had never prayed. He’d never seen a reason, had always been more likely to step up and make things happen. Prayer seemed useless, just what people did instead of risking action. When he wanted something, he worked to get it. He gave everything he had, worked his hardest, and if he failed? He knew he’d done all he could.
Then again, he’d never felt so powerless before. He’d never been in a place where he could do nothing else, was at the mercy of others. At the mercy of Claire and her choices. At the mercy of Randy and his choices. If Claire died, he had no idea how to continue, but he couldn’t stop it, couldn’t do a damn thing to change the outcome. It all rested out of his hands, out of his control. When he reached Claire, he’d find out what he had to deal with.
Kieran had insisted on coming and with Claire’s life on the line, none of them would have turned down good help. They needed everything they could get, and Kieran could be as dangerous as any of them. Maybe that one extra would turn the tables, would give them an edge.
According to Kieran, the lines of sight were good for Randy, but bad for them. If he happened to be looking out of the windows at the front of the building, he could pick them off before they reached the front door, even without much skill with a gun. It meant having the numbers could help.
Still, from the time frame of Claire leaving, the distance to the office building meant Claire might have been there for an hour. That rattled in his head, banging against his skill. An hour. What had that asshole done to her in an hour?
What had she endured? His omega had suffered too much in her life and the idea of what the sadistic bastard could have done to her wouldn’t go away. Thinking about it didn’t help, only made him feral, but he couldn’t get it out of his head.
His fingers cranked down on the steering wheel, a rare show of temper from him. A deep breath, and he pushed his foot down again.
Please, let Claire be okay.
* * * *
Claire threw herself at Randy, knocking them both back. His grunt and answering growl said he hadn’t expected it.
He’d probably planned on her rolling over, had figured she’d just give in to what he saw as inevitable. Fuck that. If she was going to die, she was going to fight, first.
She hadn’t fought James. She hadn’t fought so many alphas before. She’d been too afraid, too sure she’d lose—but she’d fight now. It mattered now when she had something to lose.
Randy threw her off her much smaller body. He was bigger, stronger, but she was faster. Bulk slowed him and he had plenty of it. He reached for her, but Claire leapt back.
He swung, and she didn’t move fast enough that time. Pain in her jaw said he’d clipped her, the hit fast and hard but not shocking. She’d been hit before. That helped it not pull her under.
Focus.
Claire looked around the room for something, anything. The men had been more careful about their weapons after the last two times, so she’d had nothing to bring. On the floor, a hammer sat near the corner beside a bucket of tools.
Good enough.
The moment of distraction cost her, and Randy moved in close. He reached out to wrap his fingers around her throat, and yanked her forward. Her feet slid from beneath her and the momentum tossed her down, slamming her shoulder into the hard floor. It knocked the breath from her lungs.
“You see? Weak. You like to think you can stand on your own, but I’m going to remind you you’re nothing. It’s why we’re here. Alphas are here to own omegas. It’s the way nature intended. Omegas are born needing us, weak and useless without us. If you only got that, you’d have an easy life.” He flicked open the button of his pants.
Claire reached for something, clutching blindly. The hammer still lay too out of reach so she skirted her hand over the ground for anything she could use. It closed around something rough. A rock? No, too much give. Claire didn’t worry when Randy came closer, when he crawled over her. She swung the item up, striking him in the temple.
The item was a large chunk of broken plaster. It shattered from the impact when she’d rather it caved in his skull. Even so, it rattled him, causing him to shake his head to clear it.
She tried to get her feet between them, to fling him off, but there wasn’t room. He was too heavy to move. Too quickly, he grabbed her by the throat again, lifted her and slammed her back against the floor. Her head hit the ground with a crack, stunning her.
He reached between them, each tooth of his zipper loud in the room despite her sluggish mind.
Except he went still. His body froze, the zipper halting, then he was off her. He rushed to the window, and cast his gaze out over the parking lot. “You told them?”
Claire couldn’t follow his question, her thoughts slow and lazy. She didn’t try to rise, her ears ringing.
Randy offered a snarl before grabbing a rifle leaning by the window, behind a desk so she hadn’t seen it. He knelt by the open window. “Doesn’t matter that you told them. I’ll kill them before they have a cha
nce to get close, and take care of that problem at the same time.”
That got through the fog. When nothing else did, when nothing else mattered, that hit her.
He’s going to kill the men I love.
Bryce might have assumed the building wasn’t the place, given the darkness and the empty parking lot. It was just a guess, after all, just one guess out of what could have been a fucking million options.
They’d almost turned, almost passed on to something else until he spotted something on the street, just down from the building—Claire’s car. The little silver thing she rarely used, the one she hated. It had him drawing in a breath.
They’d picked right.
The others must have come to the same conclusion, as the moment the SUV slowed, the doors opened. Kaidan, Joshua, Bryce and Kieran all exited, weapons in hand. Anyone who saw them wouldn’t stay put, not with the violence cloaking them all.
No sounds came from the building, no signs of life. Were they too late? Would they enter only to find a dead body? Or, perhaps worse, to find nothing. Would she just be gone?
No, he couldn’t think like that, couldn’t let himself fall to despair when he didn’t have answers yet. He pushed forward toward the door, ready to find her, to take apart the asshole who had threatened her.
A shot ran out, and a burning in his thigh said he’d been hit. The leg wanted to buckle, but he caught himself on the SUV before it happened. Fuck.
They fell behind the SUV, another shot striking the car.
“Well, at least we know we’ve got the right place.” Joshua tried to peer around the car, but another bullet drove him back. “Third floor, east side of the building. He’s got terrible aim.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re not leaking.” Bryce glared at the injury, but it wouldn’t keep him still. He could deal with it later, when he had Claire safe and sound, when they were all out of danger. Until then? It was unimportant, just a detail he had to consider as he planned. Nothing but data to plug into the situation. He opened the door of the SUV, grabbing a towel from inside. A tight wrap to help slow bleeding since blood loss could put him down, and he was ready.
Kieran leaned around and returned two quick shots. “Only seems to be Randy. If you guys are quick, I can give you some cover.”
“Can you be quick?” Kaidan nodded toward Bryce’s thigh.
“Yeah, I can.” Even as he said that, he knew the odds. The distance would still take a good twenty seconds to cross at a sprint, and that was more than enough time for Randy to pick off at least one or two of them. Kieran’s cover fire might buy them some time, but it might not buy them enough.
He’d spent his life making choices like that, deciding if things were worth the risk, if the mission was likely to succeed. How many times had people died under those orders? How many times had Kaidan, Joshua and he paid the price for a bad calculation?
If it had been any other mission, he’d have called it off. He’d have regrouped. They were charging someone with a better position, with better lines of sight. He’d have kicked his own ass if he’d let his men go into such a stupid plan.
Still, none of that mattered. This wasn’t just any mission. It wasn’t datapoints and information and plans. His mate was in danger, and the risks didn’t matter. Claire was in there, and if she wasn’t? Well, that fucker wasn’t walking away from this. Everything that mattered to Bryce was inside that building, and nothing was keeping him from it.
“All right. On three. One. Two. Three.”
They took their chances and charged.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The gunshots woke Claire up. Her body hung heavy, her mind slow, but the gunshots got her moving. Her mates were in danger.
That sunk past the pain, past the exhaustion that had taken over. The truth slipped beneath any defense or thought, forcing her body to respond.
Rage like she’d never felt filled her. She’d heard about omega rages, the hushed stories of what an omega could do when someone threatened her mate or children. Some liked to call it insanity or dismiss it, but Claire knew differently.
It was instinct. It was exactly what she was born to be. It was the power alphas like this one were afraid of, why they beat them down, what they tried to beat out of them.
Claire’s lips peeled off her teeth, and she threw herself toward the tools in a clumsy motion, more anger and power than finesse or agility. Her fingers wrapped around the heavy hammer as she turned, rising but not to a full stand, body crouched forward, eyes locked on the man who endangered her mates.
Randy must have noticed at the same time, because the sound of gunshots paused, and he turned. His eyes widened, the first real fear on his face.
Fear of her. Good. She wanted him to die afraid of an omega. She wanted this egotistic coward to die with his last thoughts being of fear. Fear of her, fear of omegas, fear of what he’d tried to say was so weak. After what he’d done to Jackie, what he’d done to others, she wanted him to take that image with him to hell.
He turned the gun toward her as she rushed forward. She knocked backward, and on the outskirts of her mind, she noted pain in her arm. It didn’t matter. She noticed it as she might notice an itch so insignificant it didn’t take more than a moment of thought.
She swung the hammer as she charged, striking him in the knee. A howl left his lips, and he went down beneath her. He cursed, he threw insults, but it all washed past her.
His insults didn’t matter, just noise from prey like a death rattle.
Another gunshot, and this time, the hammer slipped from her hand.
Didn’t matter. She used her nails, her teeth, sinking into the fury that filled her body, into the mindless anger that left no room for anything else. She brought her closed fists down on his face, his chest. Her teeth pulled chunks from his throat as everything went red.
The gunshots stopped, and a howl had them rushing. Had Kieran shot him? Where was Claire? They ran faster into the building, up the flights of stairs, taking two at a time.
A snarl through the closed door at the top of the stairs had Joshua’s steps faltering. Judging sounds was a skill everyone learned, most of them so ingrained in instinct they were a language all their own. That sound? Mindless. Feral. The hair on the back of his neck stood at the fury in it.
They burst into the room, and the sight pulled all three to a stop.
Joshua had only witnessed omega rage once in his life, and it had haunted him ever since. When he’d still been in the military, when they’d stopped in a town to drive out a terrorist stronghold, one man had refused to run like the rest. He’d put a gun to a child’s head demanding safe passage.
The child’s mother, an omega who couldn’t have been more than ninety pounds, had torn the man apart in defense of her child. She’d also injured another three soldiers before they could restrain her, her own injuries ignored as she’d fought to protect her child. It had only been her mate who had drawn her back, who had spoken sweetly to her until she’d calmed.
They’d have run in to face Randy, to face damn near anything without hesitation. A raging Claire had them stilling, though.
Blood covered her hands and ran down her face from her mouth. Bloody bites had been taken from Randy, his body still, red bubbling up from the wounds. Nail marks were raked down his face, along with a nose clearly broken. His knee sat at a wrong angle, his body unrecognizable. Even though he didn’t move, Claire hadn’t stopped her attack, hadn’t stopped the growls and snarls that spilled from her lips.
Kaidan spoke first. “Love.”
Her head twisted, her eyes blank, no recognition in them. Blood smeared her teeth which she flashed as if she had six-inch fangs instead of the blunt little teeth which sat in a perfect line.
Kaidan crouched, waving the others to follow suit. “Hey, love. It’s us.”
Her gaze moved to the bed where another woman whimpered and rolled, arm cuffed and shoulder at an angle that made him guess she’d dislocated it.
“She’s safe, now.”
A tired huff, then Claire returned her gaze to Randy’s body, the tension returning, the growl strengthening.
“No, no, love. Look at me, won’t you? That’s over. He’s gone.”
Joshua tried next. “You did good, sweetheart. You did really good. Why don’t you take a breath and relax? It’s all over.”
She came forward a few slow steps, still crouched, her gait more of a lope, nothing human in it.
She pulled in a breath through her nose as she neared, some of the woman they knew returning with that. At least it did until her gaze dropped to Bryce’s thigh, the blood having leaked through the towel. The growling happened again, and her head turned as if to take another shot at the body.
Instead, Bryce, always the idiot, reached out and caught her hand. He pulled her closer, burying her face against his throat. Hell, even Joshua wouldn’t want her near his throat, not like she was. “Easy, omega,” he whispered into her ear. “I’m fine.”
Her body went stiff, and Joshua prepared to pull her off Bryce, to hopefully keep her from taking his throat out like she had Randy’s. Omegas in a rage could do damage, weren’t thinking. She might think Bryce was someone else, hell, maybe she was still pissed enough about them that she’d see him as an enemy. A tense heartbeat later, she sagged in his grasp.
The moment she did, Joshua and Kaidan scooted closer, hands moving over her, checking for injuries, reassuring themselves she was alive. New bruises sat on her, a bullet wound in her left shoulder and a graze on her right arm, but nothing life-threatening.
Joshua buried his face in her hair, breathed her in and let her ease him.
His mate was alive. Everything else would be fine.
* * * *
“I don’t think I like waking up in hospitals,” Claire muttered, trying to shift in the bed despite the IV in her hand, eye still closed.
“Well, stop getting hurt then.” Joshua’s voice had her smiling despite the aches in her body.
