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The alphas all started carrying on at that, posturing and shouting abuse as the barman whipped out his phone, making a call.

“You better get out of here and lie low if you don’t want to be under one of these pricks before the sun sets,” he told me as he waited for the call to go through, frowning when I just stood there. “Go!”

The cheery toot of my car horn jerked me out of whatever spell I was under, tensing my muscles, sending me scurrying away, just as the beta said to.

“C’mon, girlfriend!” Jude shouted from the passenger seat window. “Time to do the walk of shame. Work it! You know you want to. Girl, I taught you how to walk way better than that, I know I did.”

I didn’t strut my way back to the car. I walked the swift robotic steps a mouse did under the heavy gaze of an apex predator, not able to fully breathe until I was back in the car, the wheels screeching as we took off.

“So, how was it?” Em asked, clinging to the side of her seat with wide-eyed glee.

“I…”

I had nothing, no words, not a titbit to give her, and as I saw her face fall, I knew she’d chalk it up to me being a stuffy old stick again. God, if only that were true.

Jace

I’d hung on to my temper for Sloane’s sake, but as soon as the door clicked shut on the three of us, I unleashed hell.

“What the fuck was that about? You guys know better than to act like dicks with a new omega.”

Ryder moved toward a seat at the long table, behind which the wide window offered views across the zone.

It wasn’t pretty like the fancy beta cities.

Here, the buildings were mainly weathered and worn.

There were pockets that looked fine, like the main strip.

Had to be to get the betas in, but the rest?

They were half derelict. Contractors weren’t exactly lining up to enter the zone.

Inked was one of the few places that were on the upmarket side.

Ryder lifted both hands in a snarky version of surrender before he slumped down into a seat and leaned back in the chair, eyeballing Dane and me like he was getting ready for a fucking show.

“I was only looking,” Ryder said casually. “Too soft and sweet for me. You know I like a bit of fire.”

“She’s new to her dynamic, arsehole,” I said.

“Well, I want it on the record that not marking her is a bullshit thing to do. Mark the fucking woman,” Dane said. “Or let one of us do it.”

“No!”

“The fuck is wrong with you?” Dane snarled.

Unlike Ryder, he made no pretence of being relaxed and stood, feet planted wide as he stared me down.

“You’re going to start a fucking riot, and we don’t need this shit coming down on us.

You know what Snake is like—one whiff of an unmarked omega, and he’s going to be all over us like a fucking rash.

She’ll be a virtual prisoner. Fucking mark her already. We both know it’s what you want.”

Ryder chuckled softly. Yeah, he wasn’t getting involved.

“I can’t fucking mark her, arsehole.”

“You and your fucking bullshit. Have you ever asked Ella if this is what she wants for you? Living like a fucking monk?” Dane asked. Stalking across to the table, he dragged out a chair and slammed his arse down.

As I raked a hand through my hair, my eyes went to the door, and I wondered what the fuck was going on out there.

Ma was with her and she would take care of Sloane, but knowing that didn’t stop me from tensing, my beast demanding that I open the damn door and go check that she was all right.

All of this was superfluous to him, the stuff that got in the way of what was important.

Mark, breed, claim.

“It’s five fucking minutes,” Ryder said, reading my mind all too easily. “Ma is with her, so chill, for fuck’s sake. We need to know what the plan is if you’re not going to mark her…which I agree with Dane on, by the way.”

Great, the two of them never agreed on shit, so it was usually me acting as the middleman. Now, I found myself on the wrong end of both their censure. It didn’t help that I knew they were right.

The trouble was I liked the idea of marking her more than I was comfortable with. Mark, claim, breed—it was a slippery fucking slope, and I knew exactly where that led. I saw Ella, tied to that bed by a chain around her ankle, a looming figure about to?—

“Plan?” Ryder encouraged.

Jesus, I needed to get my head on straight.

“Just because I won’t mark her doesn’t mean I can’t protect her. Not every omega needs to be marked.”

Ryder shrugged, and his lips tugged into a smirk. We’d marked every other omega we’d come across to keep them under our protection. I was going against my own prime directive, and he knew why.

“You can feed yourself whatever bullshit you like, but we all know what’s true. She has to have a mark, something to indicate that she belongs to our crew, which you always make us do. Something, anything, because if we don’t, someone else will.”

I sucked a deep breath in, still standing beside the door, still barely rational, and there was the issue.

The marks the omegas in our place wore weren’t mating ones, more temporary indications of where they belonged.

You tried to force them? You’d have the combined might of every alpha, beta, and shit, even the other omegas that belonged to our crew, on your back.

Lucky for them, that meant a lot in the zone.

So marking Sloane as one of us made perfect sense.

So why didn’t I?

MINE! he roared, answering that question.

The reality hit me hard, like a fucking gut punch I hadn’t seen coming. I didn’t trust myself not to turn into a caveman. With her in my arms, my teeth at her neck, my knot buried inside her? There’d be no dispassionate temporary mark left. I’d own her, plain and simple.

She’d be my mate. The first and only omega I’d ever take.

I shifted on my feet, looking at the door. Standing here wasn’t helping anything, especially when I felt like I was being ripped in two, just by being in a different room from her.

“We need a plan,” Ryder said again. “This is our place. Sure, we can stick some more guys on the boundary, no one in or out. We’ve not gotten eyes on Snake for a while. He’s been lying low after that last incident at the centre.”

“Yep, got his arse kicked,” Dane said with a smirk. “But you know what he’s like—that’ll just make him come out gunning for revenge. Bastard has gotten himself a little fucking harem of omegas that he farms out to hungry alphas. You going to even risk that shit?”

I growled in my chest, finally taking a seat at the table.

“It’s hard to keep information locked down,” Dane continued. “Shit always gets out. We all know if she goes back to the Beta Zone, they have ways of getting to them there too.”

“So let’s run by this one more time,” Ryder said casually before I could get a word in. “You’re not claiming her. Are you going to offer her up to anyone else?”

I snarled, my beast throwing himself against the bars inside me and bleeding through. Ryder smiled, slow and cocky, not cowed at all, and that made him mad. But the fact she wasn’t here, curled up on my lap, my nose buried in her throat, followed by my teeth…

“You’re marking her,” Ryder said, shaking his head, the smile fading somewhat. “When you get your head out of your arse, you’ll do it.”

How the fuck did I find myself trapped? Why the fuck did it feel so right, knowing I needed to do this?

I was reasoning with the monster in me. It’d never been like this with an omega.

There was a part of my alpha side rising that I’d never seen, never even known was there.

When I brought her in, when she softened for my purr, turning to me, instinctively seeking my comfort and protection, the only thing that had been missing was me beating my fucking chest and then tearing that bloody dress off, making her mine.

This was a mess. Jesus, save me from myself and my own demons.

My eyes went to the door again.

“So we keep her safe until dickhead here works through his ‘issues,’” Dane said.

“You’re right. Of course, you’re right—I have to mark her.

” I looked down at my hands, flexing my fingers, feeling the need to form fists and fight what ailed me, but there was no fighting this.

“She just needs time,” I said. “She needs time to work out how this goes. I’m not the right man for her, but I’ll do it to keep her safe. ”

“Hate to break it to you,” Ryder said, “but even omegas have a certain free will. What if she wants one of us to do it?” He finished up with a casual shrug.

And didn’t that really wind me up? My teeth ground hard. If Sloane was going to be attached to anyone, that someone would be me.

“And the way she was gazing up at you,” Ryder continued, “I’d say she’s imprinted on you pretty heavily. You might not get away with just a chomp on her wrist.”

Right then, I could picture it, feel it, how it would really go.

Slamming her up against the side of the shower stall and fucking her like a savage.

Watching her put her clothes on, my blood thudding when I just wanted to peel her out of every single piece as it went on.

She was classy. She came from money, prim little schoolmarm, but elegant, same with her jewellery.

So yeah, she was out of my league, a rough alpha from the fucking slums. Nothing about my upbringing made me suitable for Sloane, but I still wanted her.

I would be lying to myself if I said otherwise.

Still, I could do this. I could be rational, give her time to get used to who she was and what she was and all the emotions coursing through her.

Then I would mark her.

“So what’s the plan while we’re all waiting on you to find your balls?” Dane persisted, a belligerent set to his jaw. Only Dane could get away with that. “She can’t leave the place.”

“I get that,” I said.

“And we need to be careful about who comes in and out,” Dane continued.

“If we don’t, then somebody’s gonna tell.

It’s gonna be a case of damage mitigation while you find your nuts.

Anything out of the ordinary, and the workers here will start to talk.

It’s not like we hire people who are in Snake’s back pocket.

Most normal people hate the bastard. They want a job here because it’s a decent establishment, and we pay the fucking wages without harassing them at the same time.

But you know, people talk. They tell a friend who tells his friend that security is suddenly beefed at our bar.

Then that person tells another person who they trust, and they tell another person.

Before you know it, Snake knows all about it.

How long do you think it’s gonna take before he realises something’s going on? ”

“I need some fucking time,” I rumbled.

“Well, then we’re going to have to go with plan B,” Ryder said.

“And what’s plan B?” I asked, surprised that he had anything sensible to add.

“Plan B is full-scale anarchy. Let the chaos begin.” Ryder chuckled, the arsehole.

I rolled my fucking eyes.

A great screech came from the room next door, and everything within me went rigid.

I was up out of my seat and running for the door, eyes skimming the occupants.

Ma had just dropped a tray of drinks over the floor.

The omegas were all cowering on the other side of the table, clinging to one another, eyes wide, like they were all fucking terrified.

Omegas… I passed over them one, two, three… What?

“Where the fuck is she?” I rumbled.

Baby Doll pointed a trembling finger towards the door.

“She left,” Baby said. “She didn’t want to be part of…whatever the hell this is. I wish I’d left with her.”

I just stared at her for a minute, looking into those pretty blue eyes, but rather than seeing someone I’d thought was part of our weird family, I saw a stranger.

That same feeling of alienation, I got it from all the omegas sitting there, but as I grit my teeth, I knew I didn’t have time to deal with that now. Sloane was gone, but where?

“How long ago?” I asked. Behind me, Ryder was running towards the door, punching the button for the elevator. Which I should have already fucking done.

“Five minutes maybe,” one girl said.

“She won’t have gotten outside yet,” Ma said. “Everyone, calm down.”

I looked toward Dane on his mobile talking to someone, muttering, “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

“What,” I demanded. “What the fuck happened?”

The elevator arrived with a ding.

“Outside the zone,” he said. “Out the back and through the fucking gate. There’s a fucking riot down there.”

The elevator journey was an exercise in patience that I hadn’t known I possessed. We exited at the bottom into a wall of four men loading up with weapons.

“Stand down, guys,” Dane said before pulling his cell away from his ear. “She’s left the zone. Got into a car. Someone picked her up at the gates before Snake’s crew could get through.”

He flipped his cell sideways and hit play on a recording.

It was grainy as fuck, but it showed the gate slamming shut, a beta with her, pulling a chain around the closed gate just as a fuck ton of alphas collided with it, nearly buckling the whole structure.

A car pulled up, arms waving frantically to Sloane, then she climbed straight in. Her sister, maybe?

And the guy with her, her liberator? Art, our barman, if I recognised that mop of curly dark hair, locked the chain and then pulled a fucking gun out. He had a key for deliveries, so that part made sense.

“We had an agent for Alpha Control in our midst,” Dane snarled.

Meanwhile, inside the zone, the crowd had turned ugly, alphas driven by their animal instincts by a whiff of omega, the beta calling for backup, it appeared.

“Shit!” Ryder muttered. “That still going down?” Dane fast forwarded to the camera feed. “Nope, looks like they’ve mostly dispersed. What a fucking mess!”

My heart was pounding out of my chest. The need to fuck something or someone up battled with the calm I needed to assess the situation. “You think Snake will try to track her down?” I asked.

“Yes,” Dane said. “Fresh meat and all that. The license plates are grainy on this image, but it might’ve been clearer for anyone on the ground. If Snake had any sense during that frenzy, which he may not, he’d have clocked her plate. You need to call her and warn her.”

“Call?”

“He doesn’t have her number,” Ryder said.

“I don’t have her number,” I agreed through gritted teeth. It hadn’t been a priority when I was… “Check her ID she came in with.”

“But I’ve got something almost as good,” Ryder continued. “Her sister’s number.”