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“Miles? What’s wrong? There’s nothing here?—”
A sound rang through the space, like someone was using a compressed air tool, and Miles spun toward us, his eyes wide. His body jerked once and he fell to his knees, holding his shoulder. Shae dropped next to him, reaching for where blood was leaking through his fingers. I was frozen in place, unable to move. Miles reached out with his bloodied hand and gripped the front of Shae's shirt, and when he spoke, the Alpha command in his voice was so strong that neither of us could resist it.
“Run!”
Shae got to their feet with an anguished expression twisting their face as they stumbled, turning to run. I’d spun also, beholden to my Alpha’s bark and forced to leave him there, until I wasn’t.
“Stop, Omega! Freeze.”
Miles’ growl echoed in the cavernous parking area although it was shaky from pain.
“Shae. Get help, now.”
I could see the tears streaming down their face as their bonded Alpha’s command overrode the one holding me hostage and they kept running. Miles must have recognized that he and the hidden Alpha’s warring commands would just force me into a macabre game of Red Light, Green Light, so he’d focused all of his will on freeing Shae. As they looked back, I met their eyes, and mouthed the word, “Go!” to them. We both screamed as the window of a car they’d just passed exploded into shards of glass.
“Get over here, Omega.”
My feet turned in the direction of the command and began to move. Miles collapsed onto his wounded side as I passed by him. He reached out and grabbed hold of my ankle, pulling me to a halt. The scent of whiskey and cigar smoke hit me, and I wanted to wretch. A tall, gaunt-looking Alpha moved out from between the cars. His skin had the kind of pallor that comes from being unwell. He moved stiffly, like he was struggling to walk, and the gun he held up was clenched between bandaged hands. Graves.
“Unless you want a bullet in his head, you will move to me, Omega. You have that bitch Alpha to thank for my shitty aim or he’d be dead already.”
I focused on my bonds with Jade and Theo. Like I suspected, they were furious and probing for the source of my fear. I did the only thing I could and thought of how much I loved them. How perfect they were and how thankful I was for them. Looking down at Miles, I saw his jaw was clenched in pain and fury. I gave him a watery smile and bent to pry his fingers from my ankle. His voice was barely audible, and his breaths were broken.
“Ethan, no.”
I felt the command roll off me—he wasn’t my bonded Alpha and I had made the choice to follow Graves’ command. I couldn’t risk him following through on his threat. As I pulled each finger away, I took a deep breath of Miles’ scent. Though, thanks to all that was happening, it was less reminiscent of beachside days in the sun and more like the air over the ocean before a violent storm makes landfall. It still comforted me, and I wanted to push the lingering odor of stale cigars from my lungs. He squeezed his eyes shut and the hand that had held my ankle now made a fist around nothing.
“Miles.” He opened his eyes at my voice and I swallowed thickly. “I love you. Love all of you.”
Ripping my eyes away from the misery on his face, I turned to the deranged Alpha and began walking. His nose twitched as I got closer and then wrinkled as I reached him. I took a small amount of joy from the knowledge that he found my scent as repulsive as I found his.
“Your pack got my Omega arrested. So, I’m going to make sure that they don’t have theirs, either. Now, move.”
I couldn’t bring myself to look back at Miles and I didn’t fight as Graves shoved me away from my packmate. I just focused on trying to mute the bonds between myself and my Alphas. They were raging through our connections, swarming me with a complex wave of emotions. I thought they might be trying to tell me they were coming, but I knew it would be too late. There was a vicious sound behind me as Miles’ roar echoed through the space.
Graves shoved me again, this time so hard that I lost my footing and was sent sprawling to the ground. Landing on my side, I looked up to see Graves sneering at me as he swung the gun in my direction. He let out a mocking laugh as he looked down at me, then his nostrils flared and his expression changed to disbelief just before an enraged, bleeding Miles barreled into him. The gun discharged again. This time, the suppressed sound of the shot was louder, and fragments of broken concrete hit my cheek signaling how close the bullet had come to ending my life. The gun clattered and slid beneath a car close to them as the two injured Alphas growled and snarled as they tore into one another.
I crab-walked backwards away from them until my back was against a car and watched the brawl, knowing there was nothing I could do. Once again, there were the sensations of Jade and Theo searching through their bonds with me, trying to find what was happening, but I couldn’t focus on anything but Miles. He hammered a punch with his good arm into Graves’ thigh and the other Alpha cried out as his knee buckled. Graves tried to return the hit but, in twisting to try to get to Miles' wounded shoulder, he only put himself in a position for Miles to wrap his good arm around the other Alpha’s throat and get a knee on his back. Miles groaned, bringing the arm of his wounded shoulder up to cross under Graves’ jaw. The tendons in his arms bulged even as Graves clawed at his forearms. Miles’ deep voice was colder than I’d ever heard it as he spoke, so low, that I would have thought I’d imagined it if I hadn’t seen his lips moving.
“You will never again touch what’s mine.”
Graves opened his mouth to respond, or curse us all, or something, but we would never know because, before he could get any sound out, Miles used all his strength to wrench the other Alpha’s head to the side. There was no mistaking the sound of his neck breaking, as it echoed around us, and then he went limp. Miles released his hold on Graves’ body, and it smacked into the concrete. I glimpsed his unnervingly vacant eyes before Miles' grunt of pain pulled my attention away from the corpse of the Alpha that had been the source of so much death and pain.
Miles fell backward, trying to catch himself on his elbow but failing. I scrambled over to him and just barely managed to slide my fingers between his head and the unforgiving ground when he collapsed. His left side was soaked with blood and his deep brown skin had taken on a gray hue that filled me with a kind of fear I’d never experienced before. He was struggling to keep his eyes open and I lightly slapped his cheek until he looked into my eyes.
“You need to stay with me, Miles. Shae is bringing help, and the others are on their way. You’re going to be fine.”
Miles' jaw clenched and he gritted his teeth before sucking in a sharp breath.
“Tell—love them.”
“No, Miles. You’re going to tell them. Shut up so you don’t hurt something else.”
His smile was weak, like he was losing his battle with consciousness. I could hear sirens and then finally there was the sound of many running feet. The relief I felt was all-consuming, I raised my voice and yelled.
“We’re over here!”
“Ethan." Miles croaked and pulled my gaze from where I could hear people coming our way. “L-love you, t-too.”
