Page 1 of Mating Mia (The Alphas’ Perfect Prey #2)

one

. . .

Kane

“ S he’s been gone for too long,” I mutter out loud as I tap my fingers against the table at the restaurant.

Five minutes stretch into ten, now pushing fifteen. My alpha instincts are screaming, a primal warning system that’s never failed me. I’m pretending to study the dessert menu while my inner wolf paces, hackles raised, sensing danger to what’s mine.

I check my watch again, the movement sharp enough to slosh the water in my glass. Ten minutes and eighteen seconds. No woman takes this long to pee, not even a pregnant one who’s eight weeks along.

“She’s fine,” Finn says without looking up from his scotch, reading my thoughts as clearly as if I’d spoken them aloud. “Probably got caught up fixing her makeup or something.”

“Yeah, or maybe she’s having a little morning sickness episode,” Jace adds, spearing the last bite of his steak. “She wants space, and if we keep crowding her, she’ll run away again.”

I grunt in response, my foot now tapping a rapid rhythm against the polished restaurant floor.

The bond between Mia and me feels strange.

It’s not broken, but strained, like a radio signal cutting in and out.

I close my eyes, trying to focus on it, to follow the invisible thread that connects me to my mate.

“Kane,” Finn’s voice cuts through my concentration. “Relax.”

“It’s been too long,” I growl, unable to keep the edge from my voice. “Something isn’t right.”

Jace rolls his eyes, but there’s a hint of concern beneath his casual posture. “Dude, you can’t freak out every time she’s out of your sight for more than five minutes. She’s already accused us of being overprotective.”

“I need to check on her,” I growl, pushing my chair back from the table with enough force to make the couple at the next table turn and stare.

“Kane…” Finn starts, but I’m already away from them, weaving between tables with alpha speed.

The restaurant is crowded tonight, bodies and voices pressing in around me, a hundred scents mingling in the air—perfume, wine, food, sweat. I cut through it all, moving faster than a human would, my focus only on finding Mia.

Reaching the hallway that leads to the restrooms, a waiter gives me a curious look, but I don’t give two fucks.

The women’s bathroom door stands slightly ajar, warm light spilling out onto the dark hallway floor.

I hesitate for a fraction of a second, societal norms warring with primal instinct. Fuck it . I push the door open wide.

“Mia?” I call, my voice echoing against tile and marble. “Baby, are you in here?”

Silence answers me, broken only by the steady drip of a faucet. The bathroom is empty. Three stalls with doors standing open, and not a soul in sight. But her scent is here, honey-sweet and distinctive, mingled with something else that makes my hackles rise instantly.

Another wolf’s scent. One female, one male.

I inhale deeply, parsing the scents with practiced precision. The female smells bitter-sharp, like overbrewed coffee. Hmm, another omega, which is rare and also very alarming. Probably a rogue. And there is a male’s scent, smoky and metallic, with undertones of something rotten.

And beneath it all is the faint trace of fear. Mia’s fear.

A growl builds in my chest, vibrating up my throat as I look around frantically, kicking each stall open. Someone took her. Someone took my pregnant mate.

“Kane?” Jace appears in the doorway, his usual playfulness gone, replaced by alert tension. He scents the air and his eyes immediately narrow, flash amber-gold with anger. “Fuck. Is that…?”

“Another omega,” I confirm, already pushing past him back into the hallway. “And a male. Unknown. They were here with Mia.”

Finn materializes at my side, his quiet intensity sharpened to a lethal point. “How long ago?”

I take another deep breath, analyzing the freshness of the scents.

“Ten minutes, maybe less. The trail leads…” I turn, following my nose. “This way.”

We move as one unit, three alphas on the hunt, following the mingled scents down the hallway past the restrooms to a service door marked: Employees Only .

I don’t bother with the handle. I kick it open with enough force to dent the metal, sending it crashing against the wall inside.

A narrow corridor stretches before us, dimly lit and smelling of cleaning supplies and old grease. The scent trail is stronger here, fresher. We’re close.

“They took her this way,” Finn says, moving ahead of us. “Out the back, most likely.”

We follow the trail to another door at the end of the hallway, this one leading outside. Jace pushes it open, and cool night air rushes in, carrying with it the unmistakable scent of my mate. The smell of Mia’s fear is stronger here.

The door opens onto a small service area behind the restaurant—dumpsters, a few employee cars, a narrow alley leading to the street. The scent trail leads straight through it, toward the main road.

“There was a struggle,” Finn says, crouching to examine scuff marks on the pavement, a smear of something dark that might be blood. “She fought back.”

Someone touched what’s mine. Someone took my mate, carrying my pup. Someone who is going to die slowly, painfully, begging for mercy that will never come.

“Kane,” says Jace, disrupting the red haze of my fury. “Focus. We need a plan.”

I take a deep, shuddering breath, fighting for control. The wolf inside me is howling for blood, for the hunt, for vengeance.

But Jace is right. I need to think clearly if I’m going to get her back.

“They have a vehicle,” Finn says, moving to the mouth of the alley. “The scent trail ends right here at the curb. They loaded her into a car.”

“Which way?” I demand, joining him on the street.

Finn shakes his head, frustration evident in the set of his shoulders. “Can’t tell. Too many other scents, too much exhaust in the air.”

A snarl tears from my throat, primal and dangerous. I want to shift, to let the wolf take over completely, to run through the streets howling for my mate. But that won’t find her any faster. Won’t bring her back to me.

“Finn,” I say, “you need to shift. Your nose is better in wolf form. You can track her scent where we can’t.”

Finn nods once, already stripping off his expensive jacket and shirt. “I’ll need something of hers. Something with a strong scent.”

“Here,” Jace says, pulling a small silk scarf Mia had been wearing earlier from his pocket. “She gave it to me to hold.”

Finn takes it, inhaling deeply to fix her scent in his mind. Moments later, a large black wolf stands in his place, green eyes glowing in the darkness, powerful muscles rippling beneath sleek fur.

“Find her,” I tell him, the alpha command clear in my voice. “Follow her scent as far as you can. Jace and I will get the car and follow.”

The wolf that is Finn dips his head once in acknowledgment, then turns and lopes down the street, nose to the ground, already on the hunt.

I turn to Jace, my face set in hard lines that might terrify a random human walking past. I don’t care. I don’t care about anything right now except finding my mate.

“I’ll get the van ready. Pay the bill,” I order as we stride back through the service entrance, cutting through the kitchen where startled staff jump out of our way.

“On it,” Jace says, already pulling out his wallet.

We push through the restaurant, ignoring the curious stares of other diners as I make my way to the exit without stopping at our table. Outside, I toss the valet my ticket with enough force that he fumbles it.

“Now,” I growl, and the young man scurries off to fetch my car without the usual questions about how our meal was.

While waiting, I pace the sidewalk, every muscle in my body tense with the need for action. The bond between Mia and me still pulses, faint but present. She’s alive. She’s conscious. But she’s afraid, and she’s getting further away with each passing second.

“Who would take her?” Jace asks, joining me after handling the bill. “Another pack?”

“Alphas have been hunting rare omegas for years. And now that she’s pregnant...”

I can’t finish the sentence. Can’t voice the horrifying possibilities swirling in my mind.

An omega carrying an alpha’s pup is valuable beyond measure in our world.

There are those who would kill for such a prize—or worse, keep her captive, force her to breed repeatedly, creating a line of powerful wolves.

Only an omega could carry an alpha’s pup.

The valet returns with my car, and I practically snatch the keys from his hand, tossing him a hundred-dollar bill without waiting for change. Jace slides into the passenger seat, tossing Finn’s folded clothes into the back.

“We’ll find her,” he says as I peel out of the parking lot, tires squealing against the pavement. “We’ll get her back.”

I grip the steering wheel so hard the leather creaks beneath my fingers.

“Oh, we will,” I agree, my voice a low rumble from the rage coursing through me. “And then I’ll tear apart anyone who touched her with my bare hands.”

Jace doesn’t argue. And he doesn’t try to calm me down anymore after realizing our omega is possibly kidnapped.

We catch sight of Finn a few blocks ahead, moving with supernatural speed down the sidewalk, still tracking Mia’s scent. I slow the car to match his pace, rolling down the window to hear if he makes any sounds of discovery.

“Left here,” Jace calls, watching Finn’s movements. “He’s turning onto Central Avenue.”

I make the turn sharply, earning an angry honk from another driver that I completely ignore. Nothing matters right now except following that scent trail, finding my mate, bringing her home where she belongs.

The wolf that is Finn pauses at an intersection, nose working overtime as he circles an area, trying to pick up the trail again. Then he lets out a short, sharp bark and takes off down a side street, moving faster now that he’s got a solid trail.

“They’re heading out of the city,” I realize, watching the direction we’re taking. “Toward the interstate.”

“Makes sense,” Jace says grimly. “Get her away from our territory as fast as possible.”

The thought of Mia being taken further from me, across state lines, maybe even out of the country, sends a fresh wave of panic through me. The bond between us could stretch that far, but it would weaken, making it harder to track her, harder to feel if she’s safe.

“Faster,” I tell Finn through the open window as we follow him through residential streets that gradually give way to more industrial areas. “We can’t let them reach the highway.”

The black wolf responds by lengthening his stride, eating up the pavement with powerful bounds that no natural wolf could maintain. We follow in the car, moving as quickly as we dare through the increasingly empty streets.

“I was going to ask her to marry me,” I admit, the words barely audible. “Had the ring in my pocket tonight. Was going to do it over dessert.”

Jace’s head snaps toward me, surprise evident in his expression. “You were? I thought you said the pack bond was enough, that human ceremonies were unnecessary.”

“They are,” I agree, hands tightening on the steering wheel. “For me. But not for her. She was raised human and values human traditions. I wanted to give her that, to show her I respect her background, her beliefs.”

The ring burns a hole in my pocket now, a reminder of the future I might never get to have. I had it custom-made, a band of white gold with tiny honey-colored stones surrounding a larger diamond.

“You will give it to her,” Jace says firmly, reading the direction of my thoughts. “When we find her. When we bring her home.”

I nod, unable to form words around the lump in my throat. The bond between Mia and me pulses faintly, a reminder that she’s still out there, still alive. Still mine, no matter how far they take her.