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I sighed, aware that I’d been doing quite a lot of sighing lately.

“Hi,” I told him. “Sorry about that. Look—Emma’s crashed in my room right now. But we were talking earlier, and the three of us really need to have a discussion about what comes next when it comes to this trafficking mess. You can’t keep us barricaded here like fairytale princesses locked in a tower forever, and... well... we want to help.”

THIRTY-FIVE

Gabriel

EVEN WITH A DAMNED hole in my shoulder and my arm in a sling, the omegas were slowly driving me insane. I steadied Elijah, trying not to stare at the damp curl of his hair or acknowledge the faint scent of sex beneath the cover of soap and lotion—a scent that made me utterly certain he’d just had a solitary wank in the shower.

I made myself step back. Made myself listen to his words.

We want to help.

He was right that the pair couldn’t stay in hiding here forever, rattling around a huge old half-renovated wreck of a mansion. But whenever I pictured them leaving it, I had visions of gunfire, or faceless men dragging them into a van and driving off, never to be seen again.

I blinked away the unwanted images. “You’re right. We do need a plan. Unfortunately, I don’t have one yet. Not beyond pursuing the new legal avenues opened by the trafficking contracts.”

Elijah leaned back, his shoulders bumping against the wall. He nodded and dragged a hand down his face, stretching the taut skin. “Yeah. I get that.” He let his hand fall, meeting my eyes directly. “So, do I understand this right? The main problem is that the contract doesn’t connect the Huntwells to any of this?”

Familiar frustration rose. “That’s the long and the short of it,” I told him. “Let’s say I can take down Casick and whoever else is helping him insideThe Secret Boudoir. If Tommy Huntwell is ultimately the one behind the trafficking scheme, what’s to stop him finding a new lackey to do the dirty work for him? And meanwhile, he’s the one who’s after you and Emma.” I frowned, my shoulder twinging painfully. “Or possibly after me.”

“Or possibly all of us.” Elijah sounded tired, and I couldn’t blame him. Only idiots like me actively signed up for this kind of madness. He’d just been caught in the crossfire.

I changed mental tack. “When you say you two want to help, did you have something specific in mind?”

He gave a faint, one-shouldered shrug. “Maybe. I wondered what would happen if Emma and I went public about what was done to us. Drag it out into the light.”

I considered that. It wasn’t an angle I’d thought about before.

“Em wasn’t sure if that would blow up your court case, though,” Elijah went on. “Would it?”

“Not... necessarily,” I said slowly. “Not the one against Casick and his cronies, anyway. But libel laws in the UK are quite a bit different than in America. You can’t go out and write an op-ed about how Tommy Huntwell is a crime syndicate kingpin who tried to have you sex-trafficked without hard evidence. Not unless you enjoy being sued.”

“Fly us back to New York, and we’ll write the op-eds there instead,” Elijah muttered.

“I can’t protect you in New York,” I said.

He seemed to deflate at that. “Yeah.” After a moment, he rallied. “So, what exactly do you need to connect the dots to Huntwell? What kind of evidence?”

Now it was my turn to rub at my face, familiar exhaustion tugging at me. “Signed documents. Traceable payments. Directwitness testimony. All the things he’s far too smart to let us have, basically.”