Page 35 of Claimed By the Psychos

"Doesn't matter if they're good or bad," I tell her, meaning it. "They're not us. That's all that matters."

She nods against my chest, but I can feel her doubt like a living thing between us. The shadows she sees are whispering again.

I hold her tighter, ignoring the pull of stitches and the ache of healing wounds. These alphas might not be monsters, but that doesn't make them safe. Nothing is safe except us, together, against the world.

Just the way it's always been.

Just the way it has to stay.

Chapter

Fourteen

BANE

The security monitors cast their sick blue glow across my face as I lean back in the chair, vertebrae popping like bubble wrap. Three days. Three fucking days of watching the same footage, digging through the same intel, and getting nowhere while my pack falls apart like a house of cards in a hurricane.

The timestamp in the corner reads 3:29 AM. Normal people are sleeping. Normal people don't have their scent-matched omega three doors down, curled up with another man—another alpha—while their own biology screams at them to claim what's theirs.

Fuck normal.

I pull up the Tucson file again, Senator Fairview's bloated face filling the screen. Omega rights opponent. Dead in his hotel room, no evidence, no trail. The kind of clean that takes serious skill or serious luck, and I don't believe in luck anymore.

And the footage from the hotel where he "disappeared" is scrubbed clean. Too clean. Definitely the work of our odd couple.

No links to us, though. No reason to suspect the jobs were linked, which means I know about as much as I did when we brought them here.

"Can't sleep either?"

Elias's voice makes me jolt, coffee sloshing dangerously close to the rim of my mug. He looks like shit—bags under his eyes dark enough to pack for a week-long trip, that usually perfect silver hair sticking up at odd angles.

"When's the last time you slept?" I ask, though I already know the answer. None of us have been sleeping. Not really. Just lying in our beds, staring at ceilings, thinking about her.

"Sleep's overrated." He pulls up a chair, his tablet already open to medical files. "I've been researching."

"Researching what?" I ask, watching him. "Our guests?"

"What else?"

I gesture at the screen where I've got Felix's image pulled up from the Rut Room footage. "Something's off about him."

"He's still refusing treatment," Elias confirms.

"You think he's hiding something."

"I know he is." Elias turns the tablet toward me, showing chemical compounds and medical jargon that makes my head spin. "These are the components found in high-grade suppressants and artificial pheromone treatments. The same cocktail I detected in his blood sample."

I stare at him. "You took a blood sample?"

"From the bandages. I wasn't going to waste the opportunity." He doesn't even look guilty about it.

"So he's using suppressants or pheromones," I say, frowning. "Why? You think he's controlling Juniper?"

The thought fills me with blind rage, even as my possessive instincts find it a compelling theory for why our scent match is following a killer around, doing his bidding.

"I don't know," he admits. "There's no way to say for sure. Not without a better sample to fully isolate the specific compounds. Otherwise, there's too much chemical noise."

I pause to consider this new development.