Dane
I’d just sat down at the desk in my home office to begin grading assignments when my cellphone rang. The end of the semester was quickly approaching, so every student with a late assignment was rushing to get caught up and I was constantly buried under an avalanche of paper.
I didn’t recognize the number but tapped the speaker button to answer anyway. “This is Dane Eades.”
“Dane, hi. It’s Jackson Boreal.”
“Jackson, hey.” I set my coffee cup down and leaned back in my chair. “This is a surprise.”
On the other end of the call, our town manager slash den leader’s Omega laughed softly. “Yeah, I’m sure it is. Clark would have contacted you himself, but he was called out on an urgent situation and he’s tying up some loose ends. Do you have time to talk?”
“Of course.”
“In person would be better,” Jackson hedged. “I’ll come to you?”
“Sure,” I agreed. “I’m grading papers, but I’ll leave the door unlocked.”
“Great.” Jackson paused briefly and then lowered his voice, “You, ah, still have that guest room, yes?”
Curious.
“I do,” I confirmed, “and it’s empty.”
With a good twenty minutes or so separating my condo and the hilltop house the Boreals lived in, I settled back into my grading until Jackson arrived.
~*~
“Dane, we’re here.”
“I’ll be right out,” I called back, gripping the edge of the desk as I stood, wincing as pain shot through my bad leg. “There’s coffee in the kitchen.”
In the living room, the reason for the meeting was immediately obvious. Trembling in one of the club chairs was a waif of an Omega with black hair, big blue eyes, and a grim expression.
I lumbered over and carefully lowered myself to kneel in front of him, slowly holding my hand out. “Hi. I’m Dane.”
He hesitated and then shook my hand firmly, his voice barely a whisper when he responded. “I’m Mitchel but I go by Mitch.”
“Nice to meet you, Mitch.” I rose back to my feet with a little difficulty and turned to catch Jackson in a friendly hug. “Nice to see you, man.”
Jackson squeezed me back. “You, too, but I wish it was under different circumstances.”
“And those are?”
“Otto sent out a distress call yesterday, mid-morning,” Jackson murmured.
“Trafficking?” I guessed.
“Not this time,” Jackson sighed. “Not exactly, anyway. Mitchel’s father is the warden at Morgantown.”
I quirked a brow. “Okay?”
“Mitchel saw something he wasn’t supposed to, and his father had him tossed into the general population cafeteria to deal with the problem.”
My jaw dropped. “You’re fucking kidding me. What could you see that he could justify doingthatto his own son?”
Mitchel swallowed hard and spoke again, his voice trembling. “I came home from boarding school a day early and found him having aparty.” The verbal air quotes were obvious. “He said the people they were raping were hookers and were being paid, but they were all just kids.” He snorted in disgust. “And they were terrified. I said I was going to call the cops if he didn’t let them go and he just laughed. When I upped the threat to VBI, his demeanor changed.”
Mitchel sighed and closed his eyes, rubbing his hands over them. “He grabbed me and the next thing I knew, I was tied up in the back of his car and being driven to the prison where he had two of his lackeys shove me in with the prisoners.”
