He pulled away from the tree trunk. He took a step toward the sidewalk. Then another.
“Omega!”
The shout tore through the stillness of the residential street like a gunshot. Distant, perhaps two blocks away, but clear in the night’s silence. A male voice, deep, accustomed to giving orders.
“We know you’re here! There’s nowhere to go!”
Ren’s body reacted before his mind did. His legs moved on their own, the pain in his feet erased by a rush of adrenaline so violent it tasted like metal on his tongue. He broke into a run toward the direction written on the paper, toward the trap or salvation, because the certainty of what he was leaving behind was worse than the unknown.
The rain pelted his face like tiny needles. His bare feet splashed against the wet asphalt, each stride a flash of pain shooting up from the soles of his feet to his knees. Ren turned the corner, skidding on the slippery sidewalk, and slammed into a wall of flesh.
The impact knocked the wind out of him. He bounced backward, the world tilting, and before he could regain his balance, a huge hand grabbed his left arm above the elbow. The fingers dug into his skin with the precision of a mechanical grip.
“Got you, pretty boy.”
The man was broad. Thick neck, square jaw, the dark suit jacket soaked and clinging to shoulders twice as wide as Ren’s. One of the casino security guards. He’d seen him before, standing by the door to the auction room, hands crossed over his chest and the blank expression of someone herding cattle.
“Freeze. Don’t make me—”
Ren spat in his face.
It wasn’t a calculated move. It was pure instinct, disgust, the visceral reaction of a cornered animal that bites before thinking. The spit hit the man just below his right eye, and he blinked, startled, loosening his grip for just a second.
A second was enough.
Something ignited inside Ren. It wasn’t courage. It wasn’t strength. It was something more primitive, a certainty that was born in his gut and rose through his chest until it filled his throat: he wasn’t going back. He would not be Dimitri Reznov’s merchandise. He would not kneel before him as compensation for seven hundred thousand dirty dollars. He’d rather break his knuckles against this man’s jaw. Rather fall and let this man beathim to death here, in the rain, than allow himself to be dragged back to that stage.
He was not going back.
Ren struck him with the heel of his palm on the nose. Direct, sharp, with the technique he’d honed over years in cheap gyms and training sessions his family considered a ridiculous eccentricity for an omega. The cartilage cracked under his hand. The man’s head snapped back, and a stream of dark blood spurted from his nostrils, mixing with the rain.
“Son of a—!”
The grip loosened. Ren didn’t wait. He spun on his left foot, planted his right, and drove his knee into the opponent’s groin with all the weight his sixty-odd-kilogram body could muster. The man doubled over, his mouth open in a silent O, his eyes bulging. The sound that came from his throat was high-pitched, almost feminine, and under any other circumstances it would have been downright comical.
Ren didn’t laugh. He grabbed the man’s head with both hands—the short hair slipping through his wet fingers—and slammed it down against his rising knee. The impact shot through his entire leg. The man fell sideways onto the sidewalk with a soft, wet thud.
He lay there. He didn’t move.
Ren took two steps back. His hands were shaking. The adrenaline turned his blood into hot acid circulating too fast, too strong. He could feel every beat of his heart in his ears, in his wrists, at the base of his throat. He looked at his palms. The right one had blood on it that wasn’t his.
The man groaned. He brought his fingers to his face. He tried to prop himself up on an elbow and slipped.
Ren broke into a run.
This time the terror was different. It was no longer the paralyzing fear of prey fleeing. It was something sharp, lucid, allowing him to register every detail as his legs devoured the distance. The street number on the corner—sixteen—the row of unlit streetlights to his right, the limestone wall separating two properties, the ivy climbing up it. He counted the houses. He looked for numbers on the gates. The rain was plastering his hair to his forehead, and he had to shake it back every few seconds to see.
Behind him, far away but not far enough, more voices. Two. Three. Calling out to each other.
His legs were burning. His feet no longer hurt, which was worse. This meant the nerves stopped sending signals, and the skin tore beyond protest. Tomorrow—if there were a tomorrow—he wouldn’t be able to walk.
Number twenty-four. Twenty-six. Twenty-eight.
The address on the paper was thirty-two.
A mansion like the others. High gray stone walls, a wrought-iron gate with a geometric design that could be Art déco or simply expensive. Behind it, a spacious front garden with trimmed hedges and a gravel path that wound its way to a front door, not visible in the shadows. There were no lights on the facade. None.
Ren stopped in front of the gate. His left hand on the cold metal, his fingers clinging to the bars as he tried to catch his breath. His teeth were chattering, and he was shaking.
