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Chapter Nine

Jace

T ime had stopped, there was only one endless moment of fucking waiting, my hands clenched tight into fists. No one came in or out of my office and there was only this suffocating fucking silence, so maybe that was why I heard her.

I jerked upright, as sure as if someone had shot a thousand volts of electricity through me, because I could hear her as if she were standing in the same room with me.

“Jace…” But I knew she wasn’t. Her voice, my name, it was choked out, as if between gritted teeth, the voice of pain. My omega was hurting—no, in agony.

My omega…

I could feel her consciousness snuffing out like a blown candle and knew who would be doing that.

There was only one organisation in the whole city who’d see an omega and think sedating her into oblivion was the right way to go.

I shoved that thought aside as I got to my feet, striding to the door before throwing it open.

“Get a car ready!” I snarled, at who, I didn’t know. People jumped to their feet though, ready to do my bidding. “We’re going to the Dawn Agency.”

“I hate to throw a spanner in the works,” Ryder said, stalking over to fall in step beside me, “but we’re not the only skin in this game.”

“What’s happened?” I demanded as we hustled down the corridors before pushing out the double emergency doors and taking the stairs down to the underground garage. It was only a couple of floors, and the stairs were quicker than the elevator.

“Snake just went mobile,” Ryder said. “I’ve long had a suspicion that he has contacts in the Dawn Agency. That place is corrupt as fuck, makes Desparion look like a kindergarten picnic. You can feel her?”

“Yep. They’ve got her, Ryder.” I stopped, and it felt like the world stopped with me when I did. I stared at the man I considered my brother, my heart smashing inside my chest. “They’ve drugged her, have to have taken her to the Dawn Agency.”

“Figured as much. The guys have been on high alert since she left. They’re ready to roll.”

We slammed out the next double emergency doors into the wet parking garage, where two blacked out SUVs waited, along with the rest of the team.

“We both know those centres are run by dodgy arseholes who want nothing more than to eliminate alphas and omega from society, take whatever hard-earned cash they have, and funnel it off somewhere,” Ryder said, a familiar rage simmering in his voice.

The SUV doors were flung open, and we piled inside. As the door slammed on us, we rolled out.

“What’s the deal?” Dane demanded from the front, throwing a glance over his shoulder at me.

“She’s been taken,” I said.

“Centre?” he asked.

He didn’t question how I knew. I’d been going nuts ever since Sloane had left. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that we had already begun to bond. I nodded.

“Fuck,” Dane muttered.

Betas, they dealt with the emergence of alphas and omegas in their midst through the Dawn Agency or the Agency for Alpha Control.

If you were smart, you avoided them, and I’d hoped Sloane was.

The Dawn Agency was corrupt as fuck, but at least they offered a pretence of being civilised.

Alpha Control was more about rounding ’em up and throwing ’em into the zone.

Dane and I had battled it out on the streets until we were finally caught and tossed into the zone without a care.

Ryder had come from money, a pretty future mapped out for him before he late-bloomed as an alpha.

So yeah, your life was fucked-up if you didn’t reveal as a beta, and for some, the transition was harder than others

“When was the last time you tried her sister?” I asked Ryder.

“An hour ago,” he said, already fishing in his pocket and dragging out his phone. “Maybe the little brat will be up for talking now.”

He thumbed his phone and hit a button before switching it to speaker mode.

It picked up on the first ring, and a hysterical “Ryder!” came down the line.

“I’m here, Emma,” he said, his voice the calm, smooth one that insisted everything was going to be just fine. I’d seen him use that voice on lowlifes to get information from them right before he coldly put a bullet between their eyes.

Hard to believe Ryder was a born to rule prick who’d once attended a prestigious school.

“They took her!” Emma wailed into the phone. I might have laughed at the notion of Ryder needing to up his game if I hadn’t been so fucking wired myself.

“Who, baby?” Ryder asked. “The centre? Tell me what happened. But first, are you somewhere safe?”

“I—yes. Jude is coming to pick me up. I’m outside.

The apartment is in Sloane’s name, so they have taken possession of it.

There’s security tape over the door! She was going into heat or something.

She was in pain, so we called the Dawn Agency.

” Her words tumbled out faster and faster.

“I thought they would be like, a doctor or something, maybe give her tablets to ease the symptoms, but they gave her an injection and she just went limp. That was when they carried her out into an ambulance, wouldn’t let me go with her.

Told me I would be contacted at some point. ”

She fell into sobbing.

“I didn’t know what to do. She’s always been the strong one. I needed to help her, and now I’ve made everything worse. I’m so frightened for her.”

“It’s going to be fine,” Ryder said. “How far away is Jude?”

“He said five minutes.”

“Okay, you stay on the line until he gets to you. We’re going to get your sister out.”

“You can do that?” Her tears had settled down, and there was a note of hope in her voice.

“Baby, you’d be surprised what we can do.”

“He’s here!”

“Good girl, now go with him. We’re about to lose signal, but keep your phone with you and charged. When I call you, I expect you to answer. We’re going to be having a long chat about your disobedience next time we meet. Don’t make that any worse.”

“Okay.” There was a loud sniff followed by a click as the car door shut. I heard the other guy yelling what the fuck was happening and her shushing him. “But, Ryder, you better get my sister.” She hung up just as we hit the tunnels.

The full beams came on, and the car dipped down into the darkness. It was always wet in the tunnels, and our passage sent a spray up as we bounced and rolled over the rutted ground. “Little fucking brat,” Ryder rumbled at the phone. “Gonna be begging me to give your arse the spanking it needs.”

I snorted out a laugh because I wanted to strangle Sloane’s sister myself for not answering the fucking phone, but seeing Ryder lose his shit was gold. At least Sloane’s location had been confirmed, although my spidey sense said I could lead us there anyway.

“We got a clear path?” I asked Dane, who was in the driver’s seat.

“Clear-ish,” he said. “Reports of a higher than average number of roadblocks today, so it might be slow going and I can’t guarantee we won’t come up against resistance, but we’ll get it done.”

The concrete tunnels that welcomed us were affectionately known as the catacombs—a network of passages that ran like rabbit warrens between Desparion and Beta Zone.

Various beta agencies had tried shutting them down with limited success.

Most of the remaining exits came up in the rough parts of beta turf, and the inhabitants there were happy to keep them open, given the trade and passage was lucrative.

“Switching to short wave radio,” Dane said, flipping a switch on the dash so we could keep in contact with our SUV following behind.

We were going in to get my girl, dressed like we were Alpha Control agents to explain our presence.

They always used the biggest, baddest betas they could find, and sometimes we wondered if there were some alphas on the downlow there.

Didn’t matter. We’d get in, get out, and the betas?

They’d let us in the front door. Without a word, we readied weapons, slipped headsets on, and buckled into Kevlar vests that were kept in readiness under seats.

After the wait, I welcomed the action that felt like a fever coursing through my blood.

My baby was hurting. Someone had fucking drugged her.

My beast growled, pacing within me. The cage I kept him in was battered and starting to fail. His snarl was as much for me as for the people that would dare to touch our omega.

My mate , he insisted, declaring once and for all what we both knew—Sloane was ours and we were hers, and no amount of running would change that.

Fuck with what was mine, and you would get fucked up twice as hard. And if Snake had poked his nose in this, I was going to end that prick as well.

* * *

Sloane

My return to consciousness was a long and painful one.

“Well, well, look what we have here.”

The voice was a heavy, deep purr that seemed to crawl all over my skin.

It had none of Jace’s rough rasp, and I hated it.

This was an unctuous voice that dripped over me, marking me as his, and his hands, they followed soon after.

I shivered when I felt the warm pressure of them around my ankles, pulling my legs apart, prying them when I fought his grip, then came a long exhale.

“Well that’s some grade A omega pussy right there.

Look at how fucking swollen she is. That clit, it’s like a little grape, waiting to be plucked, and her slick…

” I shivered on the table I was lying on, twisting and turning but not getting very far.

My limbs felt like lead, my head spinning so violently, I felt like I was going to be sick, but his voice, it stopped me, kept me pinned to the bed, kept my bile where it belonged, kept my thighs spread, showcasing my stupid omega cunt to him.

I blinked and blinked, forcing my eyes wide, flinching when I did, because there they were.