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A blush floods my cheeks. I rip off my seatbelt and jump out of the car.

“Alrighty then, let’s get going,” I say.

I’m not prepared to deal with the butterflies fluttering around in my stomach or the way my core clenched at his words.

I walk up the stairs to my mom’s trailer and bang on the door. When it opens and I meet the sunken eyes of my mother, I give her a kind of demented, toothy smile.

“Hey there mom. Long time no see.”

CHAPTER 6

JAX

When I look at Olivia’s momma, it’s hard to believe that it’s actually her. Olivia is drop-dead gorgeous in such an effortless way I just assumed that her mother had to at least have a fraction of that sort of energy.

But no. Her skin is pale and weathered and her eyes are sunken in. They’re devoid of anything remotely close to life.

She also looks like she just finished the world’s longest bender.

But out of everything, the most shocking thing, though, is the black bond-mate scars I see on her neck.

Bond-mate marks only turn black when mate bonds are broken. Given how dark they are, I’m pretty sure it was her fated mate.

I’ve never, in my entire thirty years of life, seen a sign of a broken bond before. That could be cause a lot of people are choosing not to bond and a lot of others just aren’t meeting their fated mates, but still. Doesn’t change how shocking it is to see those black, almost tattoo-like marks on her neck.

It makes something click in my head: the face Olivia’s never mentioned her dad, the jealousy she described her momma having, the fact she was sold and not taken.

I couldn’t wrap my head around how a mom, let alone an omega could do something like that to their kid, which probably says a lot of things about how I was raised, but still.

I guess omegas who lose their bonds can go a little batshit.

Her eyes widen with horror at seeing her daughter, almost like she’s seen a ghost.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” She hisses, baring her yellow teeth.

The tiny bit of sympathy at this sad, old omega losing her fated mate disappears in an instant. I mean, I don’t know why I expected this bitch to say anything different since she was the one to sell her fucking kid to traffickers, but still.

“Surprised to see me?” Olivia says, baring her teeth back. “I wonder why? Oh, was it because you fucking sold me? What did you use the money for, huh? Drugs? By the smell of things, that’s totally what you did. Those heat drugs are a bitch and a half to pay for so you had to sell your fucking daughter?”

That’s when the smell from the house hits me. The overly sweet and chemical smell wafting from the house does smell like an artificial heat.

I mean, it kind of makes sense that she’d try to get her hands on something artificial to start up her heat often if she doesn’t have her bond with her mate anymore.

“Shut the fuck up, you whore!” Her mother yells, her voice raising in volume.

“I dunno if I’m the whore here, Mother dearest. You’re the one selling your kid so you can try to fill that black hole of a soul of yours with alpha dick,” Olivia spits.

“What the hell is going on out here,” a deep voice grumbles.

An alpha with a thick, messy beard and a huge beer belly comes up behind Olivia’s mom and crosses his arms across his chest.

“None of your business,” Olivia snarls at the man, her shoulders getting tense.

I see the stress of facing off against her momma being multiplied by the presence of this alpha. Makes sense considering the bullshit other alphas her Momma’s brought around have put her through.

I step up behind her, making sure she can feel my presence at her back. She’s not in this alone this time.

Her shoulders relax the tiniest bit.