Page 1 of Two For the Show (Trapped On The Tightrope Duet #2)

I’ve never been a coward. I’m not afraid of what I’m going to find inside Dr. Alex Shields’s trailer.

But that doesn’t make me eager to use my master key to enter the darkened, quiet living space.

I know what I’m going to find. The signs are all there.

Part of me thrums with a stupid, naive optimism that I didn’t think I still possessed.

I thought I was prepared to find it, but it still makes my heart sink when I do.

My Omega is gone.

Quinton, whom I have barely held back until now, pushes past me into her space, and I step aside, unable to form the words that my team needs to hear from me.

They’re not only my team anymore. They’re my pack.

Because even without our Omega here to center us, we’re a pack now. There’s no rolling back a development like that.

Never thought I would have a pack. I’m nearly forty, and I have never once felt the draw to a pack or an Omega before. But here I am, with a crew of circus performers, my employees, linked to me by an Omega that has left us.

“She wouldn’t leave us,” Quinton says desperately, looking around the trailer like maybe she’s hiding from him. “She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t do that to Matteo. To us.”

“Looks like she did.” My voice is subdued, and my chest aches.

She left us.

She’s fucking gone. And there’s nothing I can do to protect myself or my pack from the devastation she will leave in her wake.

“No, I mean it, Jude. Come look. She took her nest.” He grabs my arm and drags me into her bedroom. Alex’s black forest cake scent is thick here, so dense that it makes my head spin. It takes a minute for me to swallow down my trepidation and look at her bed.

He’s right.

She took her nest with her.

The nest we argued over, that all of us contributed to after the one she built with Quinton and Matteo was destroyed.

Not only the linens and pillows, but the clothing we gave her and Dexter’s eyemask. All that is left is a bare mattress and a couple of tea lights.

“She left behind clothes,” Quinton says quietly from behind me.

I turn to see him pulling open the cabinets that are mounted on the wall and gesturing inside.

“She chose to bring her nest and leave behind clothing. When she came to us, she brought clothing but not a nest. This time, she took her nest and left her clothing behind. That means something, boss. I’m sure of it. ”

Maybe it does.

Or maybe it was instinctual to bring it with her now that she’s scent matched to us. Like her Omega wouldn’t let her leave without it.

Does it matter what her motivation was? She’s gone.

And I’m left with a hollow feeling of guilt for the way I questioned her motivations that last time we spoke.

Self-fulfilling prophecy. I accused her of wanting to leave us, and so she did.

Would she have stuck around if she felt safe with us? With me?

Is this all my fault?

The doctor called me the Prime Alpha when she was sick. I don’t deserve that title.

This is my fault.

“We need to tell the others.” I’m impressed that my voice doesn’t crack with emotion as I say it. When I turn to leave the room, Quinton snags me by the arm with a surprising amount of strength for someone with Alpha Rot.

“We need more information first. It’s better to go in with all of the details before we lay this on them.”

I shrug his hand off and shake my head in resignation. “What more information is there? She left us, Quinton. She didn’t even say goodbye.” I lower myself to the edge of her bed, still feeling as if I am breaking an unspoken rule of being in this space despite her nest being gone.

Quinton’s face lights up. “We didn’t look for a note! Maybe she left one for us.” He’s out of the room, and I hear banging and clanging from the kitchen, like he’s digging through drawers and opening cabinets.

If she left a note, it would be in plain sight, not shoved in the back of her silverware drawer. I have to let him look, though, or he’ll never let it go.

After about ten minutes, I hear a quiet, desperate exclamation. “Oh, holy shit. ”

I’m on my feet, out into the living area before the last syllable leaves his lips. “What did you find?” Quinton is shaking, holding a cell phone, and not looking away from it. He doesn’t answer me. “What is it, Q?”

When he finally tears his attention away from the phone, despair crumples his handsome face into something nearly unrecognizable. “She left her cell phone.” He pushes the device into my hand, and when I look down at the screen, my stomach fucking plummets.

Unknown

Tell Rich I said hi.

“One of our own did this?” I growl. “Someone in our fucking troupe told her ex where to find her?” It doesn’t matter if they don’t know her history.

This place has sheltered people through warrants and desperation.

We have provided a home for the homeless, a shelter for those in need of protection.

This is not the first time someone fleeing an abusive situation took up sanctuary under the big top.

It’s just the first time that person was an Omega.

We take care of our own at Cirque de Mordu.

Or, rather, we used to.

It makes me sick that someone I hired and trusted is the reason we no longer have our Omega.

Quinton takes the phone from me and pokes around on the screen. His voice is strangled as he holds it back out to me. “Gets worse.”

Unknown

See you soon, Alex.

It takes everything I have not to throw the phone against the wall.

She’s gone, and someone in my circus is to blame for it. Her ex pack now knows where she’s been, and will no doubt descend upon us with a swiftness to claim the woman they think they own.

It’s a small comfort to know that she didn’t leave because of us. I have no doubt she saw those messages and high-tailed it out of here, her fight or flight instincts overriding everything else and screaming she had to leave.

Why didn’t she come to us and tell us what was going on? We could have protected her from them. We would have done anything to keep her safe.

But am I really surprised she ran without a conversation? I accused her of being flighty, told her I needed to prepare for her to desert us. Why would she come to me with the urge to run and hear me say “I told you so” to her face?

This is my fault.

She wasn’t going to come to me. It’s hard to trust anyone after what happened to her, much less someone like me. Someone who made her feel unwelcome from the moment we met.

“We need to figure out who is responsible for this,” Quinton states plainly. “We’ve got a fucking rat infestation, and I’d love to be the exterminator. They cost me my girl.”

Resolve trickles down my spine, and I nod. I fucked up by not claiming her, not welcoming her with open arms. I’m going to do whatever I have to to get her back here so I can be the type of Alpha she deserves.

The Prime Alpha my pack needs.

“Call a troupe meeting. Everyone. Not just the performers. I want every fucking person under the big top in fifteen minutes. Anyone not there is fired.”

I don’t have long to track down my other pack members before the troupe meeting, but luckily for me, the three of them are in Dario’s trailer. I slam the door open and interrupt their conversation.

“Did you find her?” Dario asks hopefully, his blue eyes bright. “Is she okay?”

“She’s gone.” My voice is stiff. There’s no bitterness because I don’t begrudge her for what she did in leaving us. I’m worried about how it will affect Quinton and his Alpha Rot, and Alex with her Foresaken Omega Syndrome, but that doesn’t mean I hate her for leaving.

I’m not even mad at her.

I am, however, mad at myself for somehow propagating a culture that makes members of my troupe think it’s okay to treat anyone like this, much less an Omega.

It makes me rethink whether I should even be doing this.

I thought I vetted everyone, but clearly I didn’t do it well enough if someone who would do something like this made his way into my circus.

Fuck, after I clean up this mess, I’m going to hire an HR person so I can have someone to double-check my decisions.

Dario is on his feet at my words, and Dexter’s face falls completely blank. Matteo, however, rubs his chest.

“She’s scared,” the Beta says quietly. “I’ve been trying to understand the bond a bit more. Interpreting her emotions is challenging because I have to adjust for how they differ from my own, but I’m fairly certain I understand this one. I think she’s terrified.”

“Yeah, fear makes sense, considering someone here told her fucking pack where to find her.” I can’t control the volume of my voice as the words rip out of me.

“One of my people betrayed us all!” It takes me a moment to remember I’m not in my trailer and I can’t punch a hole through the goddamn wall.

“Whoever these fucking guys are that attacked her, tormented her, need to be found because it’s one of them, and I am not going to let them get by with a simple firing. ”

“What’s your plan, then?” Dexter asks cynically. “Kill the clowns, and when her pack shows up here looking for her, kill them too?”

Dario blinks slowly as he regards his twin. “Why not? It’s the only way she’ll be safe, right? If we get rid of them for good? Otherwise, they’ll all be spectres that will haunt her every move. It may be the only way to guarantee her safety.”

“We’re not murderers,” Dexter spits.

“It’s in our blood.” The tattooed twin shrugs. “That’s what you were suggesting, right, Jude?”

Is that what I was suggesting?

I was in my fair share of bar fights before I got sober, and I’ve copped a couple of assault charges, but I’m reformed.

Aren’t I?

I guess, if push comes to shove, I could defend someone I care about if there was a risk of harm. Like, I can’t say that if I found Alex with one of those shitty Alphas and I saw how they treated her, I wouldn’t tear him limb from limb.

So I guess murder isn’t off the table. But it’s not my first choice.

What a thought to have at three o’clock in the afternoon.