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***
No food or water arrived that night.
No clothing or a source of heat.
Lying where she’d once had a nest, ancient linoleum under her body, Wren spent the night in icy cold.
Teeth chattering, mud freezing until she might crumble it off with her hands, she faced the kind of chill that killed.
Had she been warmer, she might have sensed grievous danger.
Had her joints not been locked in stiffness, she might have made it out.
But the ground had already been shaking long before her chattering teeth realized it was not just her body that rumbled.
The home she knew was destined to sink, was already descending into a torrent of mud. It oozed through the bars on her windows, ran in a river through her buckled front door.
And buried her no matter how she flailed and fought the tide.
Sucked under, encapsulated, Wren was caught in the drift.
Her pale arms flailing in the onslaught was the last view of his mouse Caspian saw before his cameras cut out, the Alpha screaming for his men to muster and dig her out.
But it was too late.
Several floors of Wren’s sinking building had been claimed by the mud before they arrived.
And she was gone.
Chapter 11
Chest expanding, the human leather of his coat stretched and creaking with each great pant, Caspian shot daggers at the sunken shit heap. Thirty-four floors still stood, Dale City’s engineers bracing the building far above the stink of the Warrens… while simultaneously doing nothing for those who had lost their homes in the mud.
Warrens rats were beneath their notice.
Just as they were beneath Caspian’s.
All but one, at least.
Every inhale was laced with sharpness, every exhale burdened with an angry growl. No one neared him save Toby, who clawed at his shaved head, mattering beneath his breath as he manically paced.
The Third Alpha had already torn long gashes into his scalp, clawed his veined forearms to shreds—self-mutilation keeping him level enough to shoot his First Alpha a hateful glare.
“Twenty-four hours you said. A whole fucking day with no food or water. No blanket—punishment for being the perfect Omega who loved her brood. Had you not interfered, I would have been here with her, boss! She wouldn’t have died!”
“Watch your tone.” The warning had been spoken lowly, but it seemed the hundreds on the scene froze.
Toby, nostrils flaring, showed his teeth. “You murdered our mate.”
The barest of flinches. Knuckles cracking, Caspian looked away from the bubbling mud for the first time since arrival and set the full weight of his displeasure upon the seething Third.
Mindlessly picking at an oozing cut, Toby narrowed his eyes. “And now she’ll never know estrous. I’ll never fully bond her. And you… the ghost of your marking my sunshine will always ping in your chest. You’re half-bonded to a dead Omega. Only way to wipe her clean from your corpse is to fully bond another. And when you do, I’ll see her drowned in mud.”
Kieran stepped between them. “You know how he gets, sir. Pay Toby no mind. A day or two and he’ll remember his place.”
There were eyes on them, eyes that would report to rival gangs. To government. To his own men. They could not show dissension. But later… Toby was a dead man. “Leave.”
“Try and move me, and you’ll have a show on your hands that will echo through the city for fucking years.” And his Third meant every word, digging his feet into the soggy ground and bracing to be charged. “I’m not leaving until they pull her body out.”
Her body…
The thought of a limp, lifeless mouse hanging from a worker’s arms like a rag, stole Caspian’s next breath. She’d be blue under all that mud. Stiff.
How much water would it take to wash her clean?
Odd feelings accompanied such thoughts like barbed wire corded through his belly, squeezing as it cut deep. Vomit came to Caspian’s mouth, swallowed back down by an act of pure willpower.
“They won’t find her, sir.” Kieran crossed his arm over his chest, looking to the building. “To dig down that far… she’s buried with her children. I think that’s what she’d want.”
Brow cocked, Caspian turned his glare to the handsome one. “What?”
Was his Second growing fucking red-faced?
“I asked you a question, Kieran.”
“The kids she found.” Clearing his throat, the Second pointed to a patch of mud now littered with massive debris. “The ones who died. A dozen, maybe more, are buried there.”
Reeking of jealousy, Toby shoved forward. Inches from the Second, his finger kissing the trigger to the firearm hanging from his shoulder, he demanded. “She doesn’t talk to you. You can’t read her hand signs. How do you know that?”
“The dying kid in the hospital told me.” The answer came on a hiss, a bristling Second unflinching before the manic Third.
Kieran was lying, Caspian could always tell. And had Toby been in his right mind, he too would have seen the tick that betrayed their pack-mate.
