Page 107 of Savage Surrender

“Your family has been very worried.”

I don’t answer. The back of the shop narrows between shelves of towels and boxes waiting to be unpacked. I remember the delivery alley from the first time we came through, the narrow strip running behind this row of stores. The gray door is behind a curtain covered in sea turtles.

He follows my eyes, and his smile drops, so I run.

The curtain catches on my shoulder. I tear free, hit the bar on the gray door, and burst into hard sunlight. The alley smells like hot brick, old fryer oil, and garbage waiting for pickup. I don’t make it to the alley mouth before one thick arm crushes my ribs and another locks over my stomach. He lifts me clean off the ground. The phone nearly flies out of my hand, and I clamp down on it while his chest presses hard against my back.

“Got you,” he says, laughing into my hair.

His beard scrapes my temple when he buries his face in my hair and breathes me in. Up close, he smells bitter and smoky, and my stomach rolls. His forearm tightens beneath my breasts until my next breath won’t come all the way in.

“You feel good in my arms, Omega.” His mouth brushes the shell of my ear. “This will be fun.”

My right hand’s pinned against my hip, inches from the knife in my pocket. I let my body sag. He hikes me higher against him, and I work two fingers into my pocket. The handle catches against the fabric as he starts turning me toward the alley mouth.

“The others are going to⁠—”

I wrench the knife free and drive it backward into his thigh.

He screams right against my ear and drops me. I land on both feet, twisting before he can grab me again. The knife comes out wet and red. He stares at it, then at me, one hand clamped over the dark stain spreading down his pants.

“We had to bury our sons because of you, you fucking bitch.”

The golf cart shoots across the alley entrance. I throw myself sideways. My shoulder hits the ground hard enough to scrape skin through my shirt. The phone flies from my left hand, strikes the brick, skids beneath the front wheel, and disappears with a brittle crunch.

I’m relieved when the broken screen still glows beneath the tire, cracked all the way across, but then it goes dark.

The cart starts backing up with a soft electric whine. I’m back on my feet before it finishes, the bloody knife tight in my hand as I run for the boardwalk before they can close the alley again.

The boardwalk is loud under my feet. My shoulder burns every time my left arm swings, but the alley is already behind me and the house is somewhere ahead, through the trees and back along the beach.

The soft whine of the golf cart follows me around the first turn.

It can’t fit on the boardwalk, but they don’t need it to. Narrow lanes cut through the trees every few hundred feet, and the cart keeps disappearing behind walls of brush only to come back louder on the other side. Someone shouts to my left. Another voice answers from behind me. They’re spreading out again.

Did they get my message? I only have to keep moving until they find me, but my legs don’t seem impressed by this plan. The ache between my thighs has sharpened into something hot and heavy, and sweat runs beneath my shirt as I take the next turn too fast. I’m struggling to calm myself down and my scent reeks of distress, but it’s basically a calling card to irate alphas.

The electric whine cuts out, and I push myself to run harder.

The path bends around a live oak, and the golf cart glides across the next intersection ahead of me. The man in the hunting cap is driving. The one I stabbed is folded into the passenger seat with both hands clamped over his thigh, his face gray beneath the sunburn.

He sees me and starts trying to get out before the cart has stopped.

I go over the side of the boardwalk.

Palmetto fronds scrape my face and arms. My foot sinks past the ankle in loose sand, and the sudden drop pitches me onto one knee. I crawl deeper beneath the leaves before forcing myself back up.

“She’s off the path.”

No shit.

Blood warms my shin. Sand sticks to it immediately, grinding into the torn skin as I shove between two trunks. The space is too narrow for their shoulders. It barely has room for mine, but that doesn’t stop a hand from catching the back of my shirt.

The collar bites into my throat. I twist, bringing the knife up between us, and slash at whatever I can reach.

The man jerks away with a curse. A red line opens across the back of his hand.

“Keep touching me,” I tell him. “See what happens.”