Page 118 of Knot Going Down

“Oh,” Glenn says, watching me. “You like that one better?”

“They’re both mine,” I growl, voice sharp with a note of alpha command. “You touch them again, and I swear?—”

Ava shivers at my words, and I lock eyes with her. “You’re both mine,” I repeat, more gently this time.

Glenn barks a laugh. “Touching.”

He presses the gun harder into Ava’s head, forcing her chin to tilt as he leans in. His nose brushes the slope of her neck.

“Get. Your. Hands. Off. Her.” The bark rips from my throat with enough force to shake the air.

But Glenn just blinks, slow and unimpressed, unaffected.

Most people fold when I bark like that. Glenn doesn't even twitch.

He grins. “Too bad she’s not an omega. Might’ve been able to make a deal.”

Relief that he doesn’t know rises in my chest—twisted and awful, but real. Ava refused the scent blockers and suppressants we picked up in Bermuda, but she must be wearing some kind of scent neutralizer, and it’s working. That’s one point in our favor. If a man like Glenn finds out she’s an omega… I shudder.

“I’d never make a trade like that.” I push my chin up, standing as tall as I can with two guys pinning me against the wall.

“No, but I might,” Ava says.

She looks straight at me, eyes locked. And then her scenterupts.

It floods the room, rich and sweet and unmistakably omega.

Blackberries. Graham cracker crust. Cream and silk and sin.

It hits me like a freight train.

It hits everyone else too.

Glenn jolts back slightly, eyes widening with something like greed, like recognition, like hunger.

There’s no fear in her scent. She smells like danger wrapped in dessert.

Ava Hawthorne isn’t prey.

She’s the storm that swallows the room whole.

58

AVA

Iaman omega. And I’m not going down without a fight.

The omega in me isn’t docile or demure. She’s feral. Snarling. She wants blood for what they’ve done—for hurting Declan and Knox, for touching Lucas, for even breathing near Emily.

Glenn Plansky is already a corpse. He just doesn’t know it yet.

I wasn’t sure I could override the scent neutralizer I slathered on before we left Emily’s. Wasn’t sure I could perfume on command, let alone strong enough to grab every alpha in the room by the throat. But it turns out…

It’s not that hard.

All I had to do was think about my pack.

Tangled together, sated and unhurt. Declan’s hands. Knox’s mouth. Emily’s lips. Lucas’s laugh. Safe and sound. Celebrating this guy’s demise with naked limbs and bites and bonds.