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“Get him out of here,” I mutter to Logan, who gives a sharp nod before clamping a hand on Luca’s shoulder and dragging him away, down the hall and to the room that Sadie had been staying in, before she started sleeping in ours. Her scent will be faint, faded and stale, but it’s better than letting him stand here huffing Claudia’s.
I turn to the woman in question, sweeping my gaze over her, hating that she’s here and Sadie is not. Heartless? Maybe. Doesn’t change the fact that I would give Claudia up in a heartbeat if it meant my omega was here in my arms. “Where did you go?”
Swift moves until his shoulder presses against mine, his head tilted, eyes like chips of cold gold as they watch her, reading every single flicker on her face. Claudia sags, defeat in every line of her body. “I ran. When that man turned his attention to Sadie, he released his alpha command, and I ran. I used the stairs. Got away. I was so scared.”
“Where did you go?” Swift asks, eyes still cold as hell. “Did you go to the police?”
Claudia swallows thickly and shakes her head. “No. No. I know who you guys are. I know what you do. I figured you’d want to deal with this on your own.”
It’s the right move. We do want to deal with this ourselves and it’ll be a helluva lot easier if we don’t have to deal with the police. Not that it would stop me if we did. The assholes who took Sadie would still end up dead. But this is easier.
Still, the penthouse was breached fucking hours ago. Where has this little omega been for all that time?
Swift must be thinking the same thing, because he shifts forward, towering over her with his larger body. “Then where have you been, Claudia? Where did you go?”
She shrugs and won’t meet his eyes. Her scent turns acrid and burnt. “I just ran as far as I could and then turned around and came back.”
“Why?” I ask. “Why would you come back here? To a place you knew is unsafe? Why would you risk coming up in the elevator and announcing your fucking presence? How did you even get the elevator to move?”
She looks up at me, hope limning her blue eyes, like she thinks the reason I’m asking is that I’m worried about her, about her safety. That I’m angry she would put herself in a dangerous situation like this. “I knew you would come back, and I wanted… I needed my alphas.” She whispers the last part, like it’s a secret meant just for us. Her small hand reaches toward me. “Please. Please let me just…” I back out of her way before she can make contact and a whine pulls out of her. “Maddox, please, baby. I don’t know how you can be so cruel to your omega.” Tears slid down her cheeks. “Sadie’s not here. Surely you can tell now that I’m your real omega. Please.”
Swift shifts forward again. One of his hands snaps out and curls around Claudia’s throat. She lets out a little gasp and then melts against him, like she thinks this is the precursor to sex, like he’s going to choke her while he fucks her or something. But I know better. Swift has an omega and he would die before betraying her by putting his dick anywhere near another woman.
Claudia’s lips part on a pant as he dips his head and runs his nose along her neck, in her hair, down her arm to her fingers, that I’m just now realizing have split knuckles. Swift breathes in deep over the skin there, then he tsks. “Claudia,” he murmurs, his voice ice cold. “You’ve been a very, very bad girl.”
The omega shivers, her chest rising and falling rapidly as she pants. “Have I?” she asks breathily. “Are you going to punish me, Swift? Bend me over and make my ass red before you fuck me?”
Swift straightens, his fingers tightening on Claudia’s neck. “Oh, I’m going to punish you alright.”
Claudia, the little idiot, doesn’t realize the danger she’s in. Instead, she’s writhing against him, making needy little sounds as the air around us grows thick with her perfume. The perfume that is so like Sadie’s, but not. I can tell the difference now. And so apparently can Swift.
He holds out Claudia’s hand to me, the one with the blood beading on the knuckles. Without questioning it, I bend and take an inhale of her skin. And everything in my body fucking freezes. I look up at Claudia, who’s looking down at me, confused as fuck.
Another inhale, and my resolve solidifies.
I straighten, look at Swift, and nod. “Do what you have to do.”
Our resident psycho grins at me, just before his fingers tighten, cutting off Claudia’s air. She lets out a wheeze, and her eyes finally reflect what she should have been feeling all along. Fear. Fear of us. The men that she thinks of as her alphas.
Because Claudia’s hand, right over the split knuckles, smells like Sadie.
Swift squeezes Claudia’s neck until her face goes red, then blue, and she passes out. He hums a cheerful tune as he loads her into the elevator and down to his workroom in our garage. He doesn’t use it all that often. In fact, I can count the number of times he has on one fucking hand. One of them being Danielle, Sadie’s mom, and that wasn’t really a torture session. More of a fright fest.
This isn’t going to be like that. No. This session in Swift’s little torture chamber is going to be filled with blood and screams and begging.
“Swift,” I say, as he straps her onto a metal table. “We need her to talk as quickly as possible. You can play with her all you want after we have Sadie back.”
He gives a quick nod. “Of course. Cherrybomb is the most important thing. And then I’ll torture this piece of trash every day for the next fucking year for hurting her.”
I clap him on his shoulder. “Good.”
I watch as Swift does what he does best, prepping the space for what comes once Claudia is awake. He sprays a shitton of descenter into the air and over the omega, then douses a black face mask with a skeleton jaw and mouth on it, in the same thing before looping it over his nostrils.
He offers one to me too. Which I take because if I don’t, if I catch one whiff of distressed omega pheromones, I might do something fucking stupid, like make him stop. And that is the last fucking thing I want to do.
Swift tilts his head when we’re ready, staring at her inert form. “How should we wake her up?”
I don’t have a chance to answer before he’s swiping up a taser and shoving it into her side. Her body arches and twitches, her lids fluttering as she screams. When he pulls away, her eyes open, darting around the room as she tugs at the restraints. She whimpers, but there is no omega whine.
