It’s not a sharp, mindless drive to fuck, but something different. It’s a bone-deep certainty that the woman on my shoulder is mine to protect. That if anyone touches her, or even looks at her wrong, I will tear them apart with my bare hands.
I round a corner and nearly barrel into a cluster of nurses hauling supply bins between tents. They scatter with a yelp, bins clattering to the ground, and I cut right, weaving between two large tents with generators humming outside. The flaps are tied shut, and the air around them is thick with that dull, flattened sweetness I clocked earlier.
Nurses scatter out of our path, pressing against tent walls, their eyes wide. Someone shouts something behind us, but the words are swallowed by the blood pounding in my ears.
"Left!" Perrin gasps from behind me. "Cut left. We’re parked on the other side of the tree line."
I do as he says, pulling Adam with me.
The tree line rises ahead of us, thick pines pressingtogether, and beyond them, somewhere in the shade and the dirt, is our SUV.
The omega’s fingers dig into my back and a fresh wave of that sweet, broken scent bleeds through her skin and into mine.
Hold on,I tell myself.Fucking hold on.
We're almost out.
The tree line is fifty yards away when two guards step out from between the tents, weapons raised, blocking the path.
"Stop! On the ground! Now!"
My body cuts right, my boots sliding on the dry dirt, and the only direction that's open is the one I don't want.
Straight into the main camp. The alpha side.
"Shit, shit, shit." Perrin's voice is right behind me, breathless and terrified, and I hear him cut with me.
The concrete barriers loom ahead. They’re at least five feet of solid cement separating the omega quarter from the alpha side.
Adam pulls free, and clears them first, planting one hand on the top and vaulting over in a single clean motion. He lands on the other side, spins, and reaches back like he's ready to pull us through a burning building.
I don't vault. I can't. Not with the omega on my shoulder.
I turn sideways and throw one leg over, dragging us both across the top, the rough concrete scraping against my hip. The omega whimpers against my back. Then I'm over, boots hitting dirt, and I look back right in time to see Perrin hauling himself across. His face red and his jaw clenched, but he makes it. Both feet on the ground. Adam grabs his brother’s arm to steady him, and Perrin nods once. He's good.
We're on the alpha side now.
The auction side of the Morder stretches in front of me, crowded and loud and crawling with alphas. Folding chairs arranged in uneven rows. A makeshift outdoor bar built from plywood and sawhorses. A bonfire burning in a steel drum, sparks drifting into the evening air. Music thumping from a speaker mounted on a pole.
And alphas…
They’re everywhere. Hundreds of them. Standing in clusters, sitting on stools, drinking, talking, waiting for the show.
I force myself to walk.
Every nerve in my body is screaming at me to run, but running will draw attention. So instead, I take measured steps, like I've got somewhere to be but I'm in no rush to get there. A guy carrying a sick friend out of a party.
Nothing to see.
Adam and Perrin fall in beside me, matching my pace. Adam on my left, Perrin on my right. Neither of them speaks. I can feel the tension radiating off both of them, but they keep their heads down and their strides even.
But the omega’s scent is growing. I can feel it now, filling my nose and coating my tongue.
The slick soaking through her scrubs is warm against my shoulder, spreading down my chest, and with every stride her pheromones are bleeding through the chemical mask faster.
The overripe pears and vanilla that were barely a whisper thirty seconds ago are thickening into something real, something alive, trailing behind us like smoke from a fire.
And the first alpha turns his head.
