Page 13 of Into the Fire: After

She had wheels.

Harsh static made us both jump as the radio she’d pointed to earlier came to life.

“Base camp to hunters, report in. Any sign of our rabbit yet? Over.”

My stomach churned as thehunterschecked in one by one.

About the rabbit.

My fucking omega. Nothing but prey in their eyes.

Finally, “Hunter four, no signs in the eastern grid. Over.”

“Base camp to hunters, expand to Perimeter D and continue search. Over and out.”

I rubbed my palms over my arms, mind spinning. Or head spinning. Hard to tell the vertigo from the actual world falling to shreds around me.

Nova made no move, as though we’d listened to a lame talk radio segment. Just discussing a bit of light human trafficking over coffee for the morning commute.

What happened to this girl?

It didn’t matter. Time to go.

My eyes scanned the room as surreptitiously as I could manage. “Taryn would never leave you to the wolves,” I said by way of distraction. “Not if she thought she could stop it.”

“Then she’s a better omega than me,” Nova replied without hesitation.

“Yes,” I said as my eyes snagged on a book on the mantel, slightly ajar, like something has been shoved quickly in the middle of it. “Without a doubt.”

I lunged, snatched the book off the ledged and danced out of Nova’s reach as she tried to stop me. I pulled the keyring from the pages and threw the book at her. It bounced off her shoulder as she stretched for my closed fist, held high above my head.

“Just let me leave!” I grunted as I tried to push her off me. Too many days without food had me weak, muscles shaking as she tugged on my arm.

She shook her head. Stray hairs fell over her face, but they couldn’t hide the raw terror in her eyes. “You’ll lead them back here,” she breathed. “And I won’t go back.”

I drove my knee into her gut and ran out the door. I circled the small shack, looking for a car, a motorcycle, whatever the fuckthis key went to. Nothing. She must’ve stashed it somewhere to prevent exactly this scenario.

Before I’d jogged ten yards away, a heart-wrenching shriek tore through the air, stopping me dead. A few nearby birds took angry flight. The echo faded. My uneven breaths shouted into the still air. I looked back the way I’d come.

You don’t care,I lied.

Taryn needs you. Youcan’tcare.

Yet my feet turned back, my steps closing the distance back to the shack and the still wide-open door. Nova was hunched on the ground, hands clasped behind her head the way they used to teach kids in school to do in case of disaster.

“Please,” she sobbed, a thick sniff cutting through her words, “don’t send them back here.”

I swallowed as I sat down beside her and crossed my legs. “What do they do?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“It does to me.” I raised my hand, smoothing it down her back. She flinched like I’d carved her with razor blades. “Please?”

She huffed, sitting up to her knees. This girl was so different from the hardened woman I’d woken to. That woman had been an island. This girl…she was the derelict rowboat on the shore.

“Finding the designation gene is their main gambit,” she said quietly. “But they can’t invest this much time and resources into that alone, not without some other payout.

“Omega hormones shift during heats. Our DNA literallychangestemporarily. And those changes, those specific hormones, they can only get those while we’re in active heat.”