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I look up. A tall alpha female is stomping toward us, brown hair yanked back into a severe ponytail, face twisted with pure rage. She’s built like most alphas, tall and broad-shouldered. But unlike most, this one is radiating an energy that makes my omega want to bare teeth and run at the same time.

I’m not one to second-guess my omega, but which one? Running is nearly impossible. I’m boxed in by pissants on all sides. Plus, there’s the shoe situation.

She’s too locked-in, oblivious to everyone around her. Like she can’t see anything except me and the men surrounding me. I’ve always believed there are three stress responses: Fight, flight, and faint. Lucky me, my omega chooses the third. All my muscles lock tight.

The pissants all freeze, too. Three grown men who spent a quarter of an hour telling me how alphas and betas should take care of their omegas. And they fucking stall out. It makes me hate them even more. It also makes my instinct to run climb higher and somehow my muscles lock up even more.

Dane’s mouth drops open. “What are you— You aren’t supposed to be within a hundred feet of us!”

One hundred feet. There’s a legally safe distance attached to this woman. Fuck.

Cade, the beta, actually looks a little pleased, the slimy fucker.

I think, You can have these pissant alphas and their pissant little beta. They’re all yours. She still hasn’t looked at him, though. Her eyes are only on me.

She doesn’t stop. Doesn’t even falter for a second. She keeps coming, muttering loud enough for the whole block to hear. “He’s mine. I’ve done the work. I waited. He belongs to me.”

I open my mouth to say, “Whoa, lady, he’s all yours. I don’t want him,” but all that comes out is a high-pitched, embarrassing whine.

She’s on me fast. Standing too close. I take a quick step back but it’s too late. She shoves me. Hard. One second I’m standing in my Louboutins trying to de-escalate, the next, the world tilts violently.

Someone somewhere screams. Tires screech. They’re loud, and desperate, and way too close.

Pain explodes through my side and hip, white-hot and blinding. My shoulder slams into something unforgiving. My head cracks against the pavement with a sickening thud. Then everything goes black.

When I come to, the world is a mess of beeping and bright lights. I’m flat on my back. Something is strapped over my face. Voices hover above me. Two males, one female. Everything is moving fast. Too fast.

“I’ve got the bleeding stemmed for now.” One of the males keeps working as he speaks. “But she’s going to need surgery.”

The female leans over me, her face swimming in and out of focus. “Hold on, omega. Stay with us.”

I try to say something, anything, but the words won’t come. The pain is everywhere now, throbbing in time with my heartbeat.

The lights blur. Black again.

fourteen

Beck

"You look like a golden retriever who needs a good run," Saanvi says, not looking up from her charting.

Saanvi Anand has been my scrub nurse for six years. She has approximately zero reverence for me, which I both respect and find deeply tiresome.

"I'm fine," I say. "I can handle a little boredom."

She rolls her eyes. "Can you? I suppose that would explain why you have organized and reorganized my cart in the last hour.”

I don't bother replying. I did reorganize it, then put it all back like she originally had it. I had to do something. This has been, without question, the most boring shift of my career. No traumas. No emergencies. Not so much as someone needing stitches.

She looks up and smirks at me in a way that means she's won and she knows it.

Marco appears around the corner with two coffees and a pained expression that perfectly mirrors my own. He hands one to me without comment.

"Anything?" I say.

"Nothing." He drops into a chair. "I sutured a laceration in the ER an hour ago just to have something to do."

That lucky motherfucker.