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“Luca!” A hand connects with my cheek, a sharp slap that has me snarling and blinking all at the same time. “Focus, baby.” Ethan says, already soothing my stinging skin with his palm. “She’s not dead, Luca. She didn’t fucking die. Okay? Sadie is alive.”
“I can still feel her,” Swift says, rubbing his chest. “She’s still here with me.”
I blink at him, and I have to resist the urge to lunge at him. Why does he still feel her when I don’t? It’s stupid and irrational, but I want to rip him apart for still being bonded with Sadie when I no longer am.
Ethan must see the murderous intent in my eyes, because he leans closer until his face is all I can see. “Deep breath, baby, okay? The alpha bit her over your mark.” A growl rumbles from my chest.
“It’ll temporarily break your bond with her,” Logan says from the back seat. He has Ethan’s computer in his hands, watching the screen. “More like disrupt rather than break.”
Swift is still rubbing at his chest. “No one knew about our bond,” he says quietly. “She didn’t want to do it without you guys, but I wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
“Of course you wouldn’t,” Maddox says.
“When?” My voice is hoarse with grief, with tears. I clear my throat and try again. “When did you bite her?”
“Last night,” Swift replies. He hesitates and then says. “She had a heat spike. Just a quick one. I helped her get it under control.”
The rest of us swear. “Fuck. She’s going into heat?” The steering wheel groans under Maddox’s hands. “Our fucking omega is going into heat and you didn’t think to tell us?”
Swift shakes his head. “She knew we wouldn’t have gone today. She wants answers, Dox. Needs them. And if any of you heard she had a fucking heat spike last night, you would have stayed home with her. She was gonna tell you tonight when we got back.”
Maddox is fuming. I’m fucking fuming and I want to tear into Swift for keeping this from us, but I know it won’t help anything. It won’t help Sadie.
We’re about five minutes from the penthouse. But I can already tell we’re going to be too late. I think Maddox can sense it too. “Talk to me, Logan,” he demands.
Our doctor keeps his voice level as he says almost clinically, “he injected her with something. Made her pass out. Claudia ran.” I jerk at the reminder of the other omega staying at the penthouse. I hadn’t even thought about her, hadn’t considered that she might be in danger too. “And now… he’s taking Sadie.”
Taking Sadie. Taking Sadie. Taking Sadie.
Of course he is. That’s what he was there for. It’s too much to hope that he just wanted to break in and fuck with us, break my bond with my mate, and then leave. Of course, that’s not what’s happening. He’s taking her to use against us. Or to just kill. Torture first just to fuck with us.
Though if that were the case, I don’t know why they would cut off my bond with her. Wouldn’t they want me to feel it? What better way to torture an alpha than to make him feel his omega’s pain?
The thought makes my chest go tight and I scramble to feel the bond between us, reaching for it again and again, to no avail. No, Luca. If the plan was to kill her, he’d just have done it at the penthouse. Left her body for us to find.
They want her alive.
But for what?
Chapter 32: In which I experience bondage
My head feels like it’s full of cotton. No, not cotton, something heavier. A lot fucking heavier. Sand. Cement. Pea gravel. The back of my neck is pulling in a way that lets me know I’m going to have a massive crick in my neck when I finally get my head up. But as previously mentioned, my head feels like it’s filled with rocks, so it probably won’t be for a bit, anyway.
My eyes flutter open, and I find myself looking down at my chest, my chin resting on my sternum. The space between my shoulder blades aches in a way that lets me know I’ve been like this for a while, and the skin on my neck pinches painfully.
There’s red on my white t-shirt and it takes me a moment to realize its blood. What the hell?
But then, in a flash, it comes back to me. The alpha grabbing me in the penthouse, the bite of pain, the severing of my bond with Luca. I scramble for it now, trying to find that connection that has been my lifeline for the past few weeks, as much a part of me as my heart in my chest and the blood in my veins.
It’s not fucking there.
A sob rattles in my chest, silent and painful. How did this happen? How did he break my bond? I’d thought that was impossible. It should be impossible, right? Once a bond is created, it can’t be broken, it can only fade if it’s not nurtured. My bond with Luca sure as fuck has been nurtured. So how come I can’t feel him anymore?
My heart clenches painfully. Is he… No. Don’t go there, Sadie. Luca is not dead.
There’s a tentative tug in my chest. One that feels like sunshine and rum, coconut and sunshine. Swift.
Oh, thank fuck. I open the bond with him, and he’s there immediately, flooding me with reassurance, with love and relief, with his fear and his fury. I send him back a confusing mishmash of emotions, ones that don’t even make sense to myself. But he just keeps sending me reassurances.
