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“Too bad. Well, you can come trade in blood next time, then.”

He steps back, knowing he’s already pushing me too far.

Jo limps through the crowd. He sees Luna and, for a moment, she pauses. I hold my breath, hoping and praying.

I know why she leaves.

She wants out. She wants pretty things. Luna hates this life.

So she pretends she can’t see him and allows Benson to hand her into the car.

He turns back to me, stumbling into me and gripping my wrist hard enough to bruise.

“Obey me and give me what I want or it’s going to get much, much worse.”

I grit my teeth, refusing to allow the pain to leak out. He holds for three heartbeats and then lets me go.

There’s nothing I can do as he leaves with my baby sister. Any move against him would hurt the people around me, and Luna…she chose this.

I have to protect the people who can’t protect themselves.

But it leaves me shattered, and, when he’s gone, I walk away from everyone, leaving the party and going to a place where no one will find me.

My nest.

Chapter twenty-six

Edric

“Where is she?”

Cindy chews her bottom lip and looks away. “She’ll come back, don’t worry.”

“You’re not going to tell me?” I ask the forlorn crowd in a snarl that has them nervously shuffling.

I hate that they don’t trust me.

No one will meet my eyes. The party has been packed up, and when we got here, the whispers of what happened had me ready to tear my car apart.

We’ve heard what happened a dozen times in the last two hours. But no one can or will tell us where she is, and it’s driving me into a homicidal state.

Bailey is just as bad.

The four of us are living, breathing, bordering-on-feral alphas who are freaking out about our missing omega, and no one seems to realise the danger they’re in.

We shouldn’t have left, but the opportunity to chase a lead was too good. It was a waste of time, we simply found the information that ruled out Benson as the Crimson Tiger. According to the person we met up with, he was on the other side of the country, visiting a girlfriend.

He’s a piece of shit, but he’s not the piece of shit we’re after. But the trail of that asshole who hurt Mael ends. It’s been weeks, and we can’t find him, we can’t pick up the scent. Where has he vanished to?

Time creeps by, and, at dusk, I’m ready to start torturing Jo when she suddenly appears, walking down the street on her own. Like nothing’s wrong.

I thought I would be furious, but relief is the wave that hits me first, so hard I almost drop to my knees.

I was afraid she was taken, that she’d gone. I don’t even know what I thought. There were so many horrible options, I was just afraid. All I could feel is the pain from the bonds. My omega is aching, and I can’t find her.

It was like when Mael disappeared.

I walk towards her, my anger spiking and falling as I see how rough she looks.