Adam slams the van into reverse, and the alpha clinging to the driver's side loses his grip, tumbling backward into the dirt. Tires scream on gravel. Adam spins the wheel, and the van fishtails, the rear end swinging wide, nearly clipping a guard who dives out of the way.
Then we're in drive, lurching forward, bouncing over ruts and rocks, the suspension groaning as Adam guns it toward the tree line.
The logging road appears between the pines. Narrow and rutted and barely wide enough for the van. Adam doesn't slow down. He points us at the gap and floors it, branches scraping along both sides of the vehicle like fingernails on a coffin.
I look down at the omega against my chest. She's curled in a ball, trembling, her eyes squeezed shut, tears tracking through the sweat on her face. Her scent is everywhere now, filling the van, thick and sweet and devastating. Pearsand vanilla and something underneath that makes my chest ache.
Then I see it.
On the left side of her neck, half-hidden beneath a curtain of damp brown hair. Two crescents of broken skin, deep and bruising at the edges, blood dried in dark lines down to her collarbone.
A mating bite.
My stomach drops and my heart rate spikes as I stare at it.
It’s Cliff's bite.
I know his mark the way I know my own hands. It’s on both Perrin and Adam's necks. I've traced those crescents with my fingers more times than I can count. And now they're on this woman. This omega I didn't know existed twenty minutes ago.
He mated her.
Cliff, the most disciplined alpha I've ever known, a man who has never once made a reckless decision in his life, mated this omega.
Something surges through my chest.
It’s not anger. It's more complicated than that.
There's a heat to it. A sharp, possessive thrill that my alpha instincts latch onto before my rational mind can intervene.
An omega. A real, live, precious omega.
And she’s ours.
The thought lights up something wonderfully territorial and hungry in the base of my skull, and for one raw, unguarded second, I’m so excited I can’t breathe.
I want her in our pack, in our den, in our bed.
I want to press my nose to that bite mark and layer my scent over Cliff's until she smells like allof us.
But then I look up in the rearview mirror.
Adam's eyes reflect back at me. They’re wild and scared, and focused on the road. Perrin sits beside him, white-faced, his hand still pressing the lock on his door over and over.
My thrill cools and worry floods in behind it.
Betas aren't like us. They don't run on instinct the way alphas do. They don't get hit with a scent and become lost to primal urges. Betas need time to get used to change. Especially Adam.
He feels everything so deeply.
This could destroy him.
But there’s nothing I can do about it now.
"What about Cliff?" Perrin asks from the front seat, his eyes darting all over the forest in front of us, before turning and looking back at me. "Raff, what about Cliff?"
I stare at the ceiling of the stolen minivan, holding the mated omega I've known for less than five fucking minutes, and say the only thing I can think of.
"Just fucking drive."
