Page 65 of Knot for Sale

Reaction, I wanted to tell him.It’s always like this once the danger is past. Unfortunately, I wasn’t at all sure I could get the words out straight, so I contented myself with reaching over and taking one of his shaking hands.

Mine was shaking, too.

We stayed like that until Curran showed up, maybe ninety minutes later.

“Hey, you two. Time for us to get out of here.” His whiskey-rough voice was gentle. “They’ve released Onyx, and the crypto genius is checking himself out against medical advice.” He paused. “I owe both of you an apology. I told you we’d hold off the hired goons, and we failed. We put you both in danger.”

I blinked at him, uncomprehending.

Elijah was quicker on the uptake. “It was six against two, Curran.”

The alpha huffed out a breath, his kind hazel eyes landing on me. “Six against three, as it turned out. I saw you take that bloke down before I could get to him, Emma.”

Elijah stared at me. “You... what?”

“Punched him in the b-balls,” I mumbled, dropping my eyes.

“And you got us help, Elijah,” Curran went on. “Otherwise, that might’ve been even uglier. Anyway, the police are satisfied for now, after receiving a pointed phone call from a rather well-known international law firm. There are cars coming to take us to a hotel near the airport, and this time they won’t be full of more hired guns.”

Thankfully, the cars were not, in fact, full of more hired guns. And the hotel room wasn’t just a hotel room. It was a five-star penthouse suite. Because money.

We’d split up for the trip here, Onyx riding with Elijah and me while Curran babysat Gabriel with his heavily bandaged and immobilized arm. The bullet had torn through his bicep, nicking an artery but not severing it. For a beta or an omega, it would still have been a serious injury. For an alpha, it was less so. Onyx had required stitches but had ditched the sling as soon as we got in the car, and the nasty slice didn’t seem to be hindering them all that much.

We trekked to the hotel elevator after checking in, neatly uniformed bellhops following behind with luggage carts. Curran, I noticed, seemed to be watching Elijah and me very closely.

“Right, both of you,” he said, once the door was firmly closed and locked behind the last bellhop. “Two things. First, you’re both on the verge of a trauma shutdown. So, you’re taking warm showers, eating something, and then we’re piling into the penthouse nest that this hotel seems to be so proud of. Second, I’d really appreciate if someone would tell me when you were planning on letting me and Onyx know that the five of us are a fucking scent match. Because that seems like information it would have been good for us to have.”

THIRTY

Emma

I’D BEEN HANDLING things. Honestly, I had. Yes, I was feeling shaky and weird, because that was simply how omegas were hardwired. Deal with the crisis, stay alive, then shut down emotionally and physically afterward until the stress hormones reset.

I was an expert in hiding the second part of that equation. I’d needed to be, while I was passing as a beta.I’d had this under control, damn it.

Curran’s words cut through me, sharper than the goon’s switchblade. He knew about the scent match. His dampeners must have worn off. Had Onyx’s worn off, too? Panic clawed through me, because I couldn’t keep pretending this thing wasn’t real when everyone and their damned dog seemed hell-bent on throwing it in my face.

“Shit,” Elijah whispered, and sat down heavily on the nearest horizontal surface—which happened to be a tasteful blue and silver striped sofa.

My heart was thrumming in a frantic, thready rhythm. It was too much—the final straw in a hellacious day. An invisible steel band tightened around my ribs. I couldn’t breathe. Red fog swirled around my peripheral vision.