“Butcher has her.” He roars, tearing through his fresh clothes and straight into his wolf form, snarling as he gets caught up in the t-shirt before tearing it away with sharp teeth. Through the pack bond, I feel the little pulses of guilt, of pain, and know he’s blaming himself at least as much as I am, and it’s all I can do to ruffle my hand between his ears.
“We need to figure out where he’s taken her… I have a feeling we should probably check across the road and speak to that bitch of an Alpha that kept our girl, don’t you?” I feel his probing questions and a feral grin take over my face as I look down at him, “No, no, you stay just how you are, bud, we’re going in swinging this time.”
Atlas
The Omega auction warehouse is no cheerier than the last time we ended up here, and my wolf whines as I pad through next to Fury. He’s put some stupid collar on me, something that I’m fairly certain came from his or Clay’s toy cupboard, and clipped one of the lead ropes he keeps in his car for the horses. Whilst I’m well acquainted with the usual mob at the bar, and they’re all good in dealing with Skipper there. Out here, striding next to my pack Alpha, paws the size of dinner plates pressing the warm concrete and the top of my head level with his chest, I’m a force to be reckoned with. Hackles prickling, Fury tugs the leash a couple of times to catch my attention, side-eying me with a look that tells me to behave. I don’t want to fucking behave, I want to find our Omega before those sick fucks try and sell her again, or worse.What if she goes into heat proper now that she’s been taken?Or what if someone tries to bond her without… Fury's hand snaps around my muzzle, pulling my gaze up to his with stern blue eyes. Flickering between my eyes, I can see the war in him raging as much as it’s tearing through my heart and soul. He wants Skye back, too, but his control is so much better than mine. It’s embarrassing, really, an Alpha like me that can’t even keep my damn emotions under control and having to be grabbed by my Cardinal just to stop the wretched storm of shit going through my brain.
“Easy, Atty, I promise, we’ll get her back if it’s the last thing I do, okay? She comes home, or we burn down the fucking world.” And like that, I can feel the wave of his power wash my worries to the side. I wonder if his shoulders ache as much as my namesake’s from the weight he carries on them, keeping us rowdy Alphas and Beta under control. Bobbing my head in a subtle nod, I get a scratch behind my ear before he stands up and walks again. There’s a guard at the auction house, one that I don’t remember seeing in the mess of the auction last time, though I was a little distracted by the stunning woman in the red dress, her scent flooding my brain until every neuron fired only for her.Fuck,I think I fell in love with her right there. She won’t be taken again, and I’ll spend the rest of my life kissing her awake in the morning, and spreading her out on the couch and—Yelping, I skitter to the side, yanking my paw from under Fury's foot and hobble after him. Definitely not the time to be getting hard, and definitely not the form either. Bones pull themselves back together slowly after he managed to crush at least one toe, and it hurts like a bitch, but he’s always been good at keeping me on task.
“Auctions run on Mondays, sir. Afraid I can’t let you in there.” The big guard stands up a little straighter. He’s maybe six and a half feet, an inch or two below me, and an inch taller than Fury, but my Cardinal doesn’t even blink as the guy sizes him up. Too many people underestimate Fury; he’s muscled, but not bulky like a lot of Alphas, and the collar tattoo tends to give the impression that he’s a little submissive, oh, how wrong they are. Sitting my furry ass down, my tail wags against the ground, and I watch them both. The guard gives me a quick glance, then back to Fury, before he freezes and his head creeps around like he’s in a horror movie. “Is that a fucking wolf? Is that even legal?”
“He’s a farm dog, mixed breed. Think his dad is part honey badger or something.” Fury’s voice is so carefully controlled,and I can see the temptation flitting past to floor the bouncer whilst he’s distracted by me. Not worth it, though, that’ll only get the rest of the goon squad called, and we both know from Skye that some of them are the worst kind of people, abusing Omegas for their own amusement. We really don’t want to bring whatever security company she has down on our heads, or maybe mercenaries. That would be the end of Amberwood. Fury squares up, and it catches the guard's attention again, though he doesn’t seem to know where to look, knowing that if he throws a punch at Fury, I’ll probably protect my master. “We’re with the Amberwood pack. We bought an Omega a few weeks ago that I believe your boss is quite… Upset to lose. We are hoping to speak to her.”
Smooth.Very smooth, and goon number one lets his mask slip for just a second, pulling a walkie from his belt and calling for a second goon to take us to Anna. She’s the bitch Alpha who had muzzled Skye the first time we met her, and almost certainly hurt her at some point, and she’d been in the bar tonight too. A growl trickles out between my teeth, and there’s a noticeable twitch of fingers towards a holster, but Fury steps in front of me, apologizing with his hands up. The other man seems suspicious, but relaxes minutely, opening the door when his walkie buzzes, revealing a more slender guard who scowls at us both.
“Mutt outside,” He grunts, holding the door open.
“Afraid not, he’s got separation anxiety. Don’t want him pissing everywhere or biting someone. He’s soft as a brush, promise, and he’ll be real quiet whilst I talk to your boss.”
With another grunt, we’re shuffled in through the door, the hallways lit only by emergency floor lighting, whilst there’s no public entry. The place feels so much more like a prison now, the satins and velvets tucked away, nobody offering champagne and leading us to our seats and handing out menus of Omegas for us to peruse over a finger of whiskey. The more I thinkabout it, the worse it gets, really, and I wonder how these places function all across the country.Are they all as manipulative as this one?I’ll ask Fury later on when I can actually talk to him. Cameras whir as we walk, and I have a suspicion that our target is already well aware of our intrusion into her territory. I can smell her strawberries and cream scent, and it forces me to sneeze several times in rapid succession, trying to clear my nose. How some Alphas like sweet scents is beyond me, I can practically feel my teeth and sinuses rotting away with every inhale, swiping a paw over my nose and sneezing again. My Cardinal snorts, rubbing the bridge of his nose and scrubbing his hand across his mustache, breathing through his mouth as we walk. Claws clicking on the sterile floor, the next scent catches me and almost takes me out at the knees—Omega fear. There’s no distinguishable scent, but the sourness and raw pain in the air are throat-closing.
“Fuck,” Fury breathes, looking down at me. I nod back at him, wuffing softly. Turning down another corridor, the scent fades out, forced from the air by the industrial scrubbers that seem to decorate here, and the strawberry is sharper. The guard stops us, rapping his knuckles on the door.
“Uhh, Anna, I have some guests here to see you, said they’re from the… Amber something pack.”
“Amberwood,” Fury calls through the door, “We need to talk to you about our Omega, I think you know why.”
Scowling again, the guard looks between Fury and the still-closed door, the thoughts obviously connecting, and before he’s even reached for his gun, I’ve pounced, teeth closing around his throat. Hot blood sprays across my face, staining the gray and white hairs around my muzzle, and I feel my canines pierce the artery as a particularly powerful jet of blood sprays and his last breaths bubble through him. Fury’s long groan is coupled with his head dropping back onto his shoulders.
“I really, really wish we didn’t have to do that. But…” He looks thoughtful for a moment, pulling his phone from his pocket and calling someone. Ice chills me as I hear the name he calls. “King, how you doing, pal?”
There’s a deep Australian accent on the other end of the phone, a voice that would send most men shuddering and running for the hills. Fury keeps us well away from him when possible, and I only know the bare details… Something about some giant of a man breaking into the vet surgery when Fury was on overnight, holding a shotgun to my Cardinal whilst he fished bullets out of the other Alpha. Since then, Fury has had to call on him a few times and has vanished during the night when he’s been called in for a return favor.
“Yeah, yeah, I know, I promise it’s important though. I’m in the Omega auction center in Citrine city, and there’s, uhhhh, a body.” He’s quiet for a few moments, “it might or might not be a wolf bite wound, and there might be several cameras, and also an unaware Alpha on the other side of the door that I’m about to put in the same position.” Something hits the other side of the door, and there’s cursing on the phone too, alongside an angry female voice. Clearly, King’s company is just as pissed about being shifted from their activities. “Did I mention there’s a load of Omegas in distress here? I just know how soft and squishy you get about that.” Smiling brightly, Fury gives me an affirmative nod and hangs up. Returning his nod with a curious head tilt, I wonder what he’s got us into, calling King into this. Nothing good can come of this, and we both know it as we plow through the door to the office, with a terrified female Alpha cowering at the other end of the room.
“Get away from me, what did you do to Reg?!” She screams, tossing a stapler at me that I bounce to dodge, lifting my lip and snarling at her, throwing a bark that makes her flinch. There’s so much fear in her scent, a raw sourness that disrupts Alphapheromones even worse than Omegas. It catches in the back of your throat and sticks there like tar. I don’t remember ever scenting something so rotten in my life.
Tilting my head, I give her the canine version of a grin, but the effect is somewhat lost considering I’ve got remnants of her guard's neck stuck between my incisors and most of his blood supply staining my fur too. Shrieking again, she looks for something to grab on the desk, but the keyboard doesn't fly far, yanking on the cord in the back of the computer and falling uselessly a few feet from her. Humming starts, a tuneless song as Fury steps towards her, crouching just out of grabbing distance of the terrified Alpha. “Anna, right? I’m sure you remember us. You certainly threatened us enough times and sent your little guard dog after us, didn’t you? That was a little stupid.” Our Cardinal is lethal like this, and it reminds me why, despite his usual laid-back and pretty playful attitude, he holds the rank of lead Alpha for a very good reason. Since I was one of the newer pack members, I’d never really seen him in action first-hand, but Lucas and Theo had told me enough times that when his protective Alpha mode kicked in, he’d kill anybody who threatened his pack, or scare them shitless. This feels like the latter, but with King already on his way for body cleanup, it kind of feels like both options are on the table. “Butcher learned his lesson about coming for my pack. I don’t think he’ll be trying to kidnap our Omega again any time soon.”
“Butcher?!” Anna laughs, a bitter sound as her green eyes narrow, the sneer morphing her face into an ugly, venomous caricature of itself. “Butcher is the middleman. He was hired by someone else to come pick up your prissy little bitch, someone who didn’t pass the Omega auctions background checks. That’s what he does, you know? He gets paid by all the nasty little Alphas that go bump in the night, the ones that aren’t allowed on OPC territory because they’ve done more than a little drugs,or some meaningless jail time. He was interested in her, inSkye,kept asking stupid fucking questions about her. Your rank, little bitch is going to someone willing to pay an awful lot for the privilege of using her.”
I can’t help it, I shift, storming forward to wrap my fingers around her throat, lifting her to my height whilst her feet kick out uselessly at my shins. There’s a change in her then, from fear, to understanding, to something I can only call evil, and the corners of her lips twitch upwards. “That explains so much.” She chokes around my hand, but I don’t ease up, leaning into her face and baring my teeth, still coated in blood, “You’re just another pack of mutts looking for someone to sniff your ass in the woods, aren’t you?”
She knows. There is no surprise like we’d expect with a human who wasn’t aware of the supernatural hiding just under their nose. No, someone clued her in, told her what they were looking for specifically. She either went out of her way to import shifters into her auction house, or stumbled on our girl and moved her here, away from her life… The pieces all start slotting into place. Sickness wells up in my gut at the same time as Fury’s scent shifts, his ethanol-stink clouding up the room as he joins me next to her, shoulders squared as he snarls.
“Where is our fucking Omega.”
Anna grins, spitting at him and clawing at my wrist as I hold her, putting pressure on the sides of her neck until her breath rasps and I can feel the fearful fluttering of her heart beneath my grasp, “She’s… The buyer was fed up waiting, and Butcher kept fucking it up, then disappeared, so they came to get her themselves. Some other feral fleabag pack. No… No no no…” Her eyes shoot open, gazing at something behind us as she starts fighting me in earnest.
I can smell him, the new Alpha in the room, but I can’t pin his scent at all; there’s nothing comparable that I could ever putinto words. He smells like raw power, like the scorching heat of the sun, and the coldest chill that freezes your breath on the way out. He smells like the crackling air of a storm, but a dusty, abandoned home. It’s a cataclysmic eruption to my senses, and I gulp, dropping the female Alpha to the ground and almost skittering backwards to get out of his way. I won’t say I’m a dominant Alpha, fuck no, my Omega can boss me around all she likes and I’ll never put up a fight, but this is more than dominance… This is like the entire world shifting on its axis to pay attention to this Alpha. Fuck, I hope he doesn’t have an Omega.
“King,” Fury greets without turning to see the arrival. He doesn’t seem as bothered about his aura as I do, but he’s got some level of protection with his own power. “Thanks for coming.”
My wolf is intrigued, partially from the draw of the power, and partially because he’s registering as a shifter, something big and dangerous, but nothing we’ve come across. His hand dwarfs Fury's as the two men shake, then the much larger beast of an Alpha looks at Anna. His eyes are an odd chartreuse, his pupils slitted as his blocky face remains completely emotionless. Glancing at me, he nods his head in greeting, but I just take another step back, watching the tiniest dimple in his cheek, so outrageously out of place on someone like him that I take another step. No wonder Fury never introduced us to him, he’s fucking terrifying, and he probably knows a hundred ways to kill me and hide the fucking body too. Goddess above, I am glad he is on our side. “Atlas,” I nod back, the most I can manage for a greeting before that overwhelming power bows my head and forces a submissiveness from me that feels almost helpless.
“Hmmm.” The big man purrs, looking back at the woman again. “You’ve been very naughty, haven't you? Illegally selling Omegas to packs that should be nowhere near them. Comenow, little human, let’s get you somewhere that we can have a… discussion. Fury, my men will clean up in here; they had some disagreements with the rest of the guards on the way here.” I do not like the way he said that. Turning his odd eyes on us again, he grips the back of Anna’s neck in one massive hand, pushing her ahead of him, whilst gesturing for us to follow, and like a good little puppy, I do.
As we walk out into the hallway, and the scent of stressed Omega floods me again, I stay well behind the other three, keeping my eyes rooted firmly to the back of my Cardinal’s head as men dressed in black tactical gear to either side of me scoop bodies into bags. Something splashes underfoot, and I have to force the bile back down and keep my concentration firmly in front of me, which is exactly when I notice King freeze, his entire body going taut like he’s been shot full of a thousand volts. Shoulders rising with a deep inhale, he curses deep under his breath as his head snaps to the side, pushing Anna down one of the corridors with jail cells lining the sterile walls, where the heaviest stench of Omega is pouring from. King turns to us, heavy brows furrowed and a scowl marring his face. Closing his eyes and releasing the same breath, he shoves the other Alpha ahead of him. A full silent conversation passes between him and Fury, and my Cardinal gives him a solemn smile that feels strained and hopeful at the same time, “Go,” He tells our helper, “Make sure they’re safe.”
