There’s a squeal of excitement that has me glancing over my shoulder. Isadora is free of her bonds, and she’s thrown herself at Forsythe, bouncing on her toes as she beams up at him. Grieves is already on his way over to us, his dark grey eyes focused on the omega in Piers’s arms. He lets out a displeased growl before carefully lifting her hand closest to us, revealing the skin of her wrist rubbed raw from the ropes that she’d struggled against.
Grieves bends and presses a soft kiss over her abused flesh and then gently lays it back over her stomach, before lifting his eyes to glare at the production staff. The look on his face promises agony for every one of them who stood by and let Ren hurt herself.
Our omega must see it too because she’s quick to snake her hand around his, holding him in place with nothing more than the grip of her little fingers around his.
“It’s okay, bruiser,” she murmurs to him, fast and low. “I did it to myself. It's not their fault.”
Thayer makes a noise like he disagrees and I do too.
Forsythe joins us along with Isadora who rolls her eyes at the four of us hovering over Ren. “Oh, she’s fine, gentlemen. Quite the little actress, I must say.” Then she looks up at the producers, bold as brass. “You’ll edit that, won’t you? So thatI’m released first? Afterall the way they released Florence wasn’t exactly… within the bounds of the rules, was it?” She looks back at the omega in Piers’s arms, poison seeping into her expression. “In fact, maybe we should put her back in the cage and have them try again? You know to keep it fair.”
Five rumbling growls greet that suggestion.
Piers glares at her and then everyone else in the vicinity. “Fucking try it.”
Florence, my brave girl, keeps her chin lifted even as her shoulders curl the slightest bit. She ignores Isadora entirely and looks at Forsythe. “You should help the others. They’ve been locked up for hours too.”
Hours.She was locked up for hours, panicking. It's a wonder she didn’t pass out.
Our prime stares at her hard, a wrinkle between his brows. His brown eyes flick down to her scraped wrists, then drag up to her chest, where her breaths are steady now, then back to those beautiful kaleidoscope eyes of hers, red rimmed with tears. “You’re sure?”
Isadora huffs in annoyance, but we all take a cue from Florence and ignore her. “I’m sure,” she says. Then as if to prove her point, she reaches down and pats the hand Piers has curled under her knees. He gets her meaning and lets her legs drop, holding her steady until she shifts the tiniest bit away from him, standing on her own two feet.
“This is hardly the worst thing I’ve been through,” she says in an offhand way, meant to ease our worries, but all it does is make all of us stiffen, low growls rumbling from our chests. Who the hell hurt our omega? And how?
I think back to how she didn’t want me touching her legs. Think about her fear of being tied down. Her aversion to alpha barks. And I want to tear the whole world apart.
The viciousness of it startles me. In general, I’m a lover, not a fighter. Bloody knuckles and alpha dominance is better suited to Forsythe and Grieves. I’m happiest when things are light and bright, when I can help make others happy too.
But now I’m gripped with the unmistakable alpha urge to find and destroy whoever hurt Florence Karlin, and then stand between her and whoever else might harm her. The problem is, I have a feeling the people who are going to harm her the most are my pack. Me.
And isn’t that a kick in the bollocks?
“Piers,” Forsythe says, a command in our beta’s name.
“I’ve got her,” he agrees, wrapping an arm tight around Florence, holding her slight trembling frame against her body.
Our prime runs his eyes over Ren, as loath to leave her as the rest of us. But he’s also the reason we have to leave, why we have to finish out this stupid task, and be big strong alphas for the cameras, when what we really want is to be big strong alphas for Florence.
Still, she’ll be in good hands with our beta. Piers will take care of her, keep her calm and relaxed, make sure she drinks and eats something. He’s free to treat her the way the rest of us wish we could.
Gritting my teeth, I pull myself away from my omega. Shifting to face the rest of the cages. Assessing if any of the others are in as bad a shape as Florence was. They aren’t, but Petal and Tristan are still feeling the effects of having Ren so close to them while she panicked.
I jerk my chin at them, Tristan isn’t anywhere near the top of our list, and Petal we’re only keeping around because she and Florence have a struck up a friendship, but I’ll be damned if I let them suffer just because we don’t feel romantically toward them in any sort of way.
“Go,” I hear my little pixie urge. “I’m fine. I promise.”
“Have someone look at her wrists,” Grieves orders Piers.
“And make sure she gets some water and something to eat,” Thayer adds.
“Don’t- don’t let her out of your sight,” Sythe mutters.
I should add something. I want to. But at the same time, making these demands of Piers is like telling him we don’t trust him to take care of our girl. He would have done all of that without us ordering him to. So I just look over my shoulder and meet his eyes first. He gives me a small smile and the barest of nods before I look at Ren one more time.
“Go,” she mouths at me.
And, even though it goes against every instinct, I do.
