“Christ, she really took a chunk out of you,” Nico whistled as we barreled down the winding roads and away from the compound that was now swarmed with the FBI. “Does that hurt?”
I glanced in the rearview mirror, trying to gauge what the alpha was thinking about the bite, but Elio’s face was locked down and neutral as he cradled Luscinia close to his chest.
She hadn’t regained consciousness after our initial rescue yet, and while I didn’t know what the fuck that mad scientist had been doing to her for the past two days, I knew it couldn’t have been good.
I pressed the gas pedal down to the floor, speeding toward the city and the hospital that I knew would turn a blind eye to our kind bringing in an injured beta.
If she evenwasa beta anymore.
Her scent was differentfrom the usual sweet, faded melon that it used to be. It filled the car, confusing my instincts as I tried to breathe in and out of my mouth to keep my cool.
My inner-alpha couldn’t seem to decide if she was an alpha or an omega—the urge to pull her to me and protect her intermixed with the desire to dominate the pheromones that were leaking off of her body in waves.
My grip on the steering wheel tightened as I harshly pushed my instincts to the back of my mind.
She’s a beta,I reaffirmed in my mind before finally giving in and cracking all of the car windows to get some air moving in the car.
“She smells funny,” Ranieri said from the passenger seat next to me, his green eyes nearly obscured by his dark pupils. “Likegoodfunny.”
Ranieri reached into the backseat for Cini’s face, but stopped when Elio’s growl filled the cab of the SUV—the universal alpha sign forback the fuck off.
“Easy there, El,” I said, speaking for the first time since we had gotten into the car.
I never spoke much unless I had something to say. That much had been drilled into me by my adoptive fathers. Travis, Howard, and Dale were old school and tended to operate by the age old wisdom of children were to be seen and not heard.
My beginning was different from the rest of my pack. I wasn’t the son of one of Amante’s inner circle—hell, my birth parents were barely associated with the family at all. The only reason I had risen as far as I had was thanks to Howard. He had seen something in me at eight years old and had taken me in.
It wasn’t all sunshine and roses, though. I had been brought in for a specific purpose. The trio of men sent a shiver down even the bravest men’s spines and my role was to learn from them,and eventually, support Alesso in the same way. They had taught me what felt like a million ways to torture humans and all the while do it silently.
So, if I was speaking out loud, the guys knew it was usually important.
Elio blinked at me in the rearview mirror, the aggression in his gaze fading almost as quickly as it had gathered.
“Sorry,” he apologized somewhat sheepishly as his gaze drifted down to Cini’s sleeping face. “I don’t know what came over me.”
“What do you think they did to her?” Nicolo asked, hesitantly reaching out to brush a finger down her cheek, his eyes cautiously on Elio in case the alpha growled at him too, but he remained silent.
“I don’t know,” he finally said with a heavy sigh. “But judging by the bruising on her arms and how strange she smells, it can’t be anything good.”
Anger filled me so potently that I nearly felt dizzy with it as I thought about the three days she had been missing. It was something that should have never happened in the first place. She should have been safe.
Cini had been a sacred presence to all four of us, the last remnant that Alesso had left behind after he died and our reason for gritting our teeth and following Amante Sr.’s orders without question. Alesso had cared for his sister in place of an absent father and a dead mother, and we couldn’t help but fall into step behind him as well.
She was our princess, plain and simple. Everything we did was so that she would, eventually, have a better life. So she would be free.
And yet here we were, rescuing her from being fucking kidnapped after a crazy scientist did gods knew what.
None of us were stupid. We knew what it would take to infiltrate the Amante mansion and we knew it wasn’t easy. Hell it was nearly impossible.
There had been several times over the past five years that we had been tempted to say fuck it and just take Cini from the mansion that had been her home and her prison since she had been born.
But Amante Sr. was a paranoid asshole and the logistics were hell, so we’d let Elio convince us that going about it his way was the better idea.
It didn’t feel like the better idea right about now, seeing as I was pretty sure that the only way for Volkov’s men to get onto Amante property was if the boss himself let them in, meaning that Amante had sold his daughter. I just didn’t know for what yet.
The edge of the city limits came into view as the dense forest around us shifted and changed. Soon, we were driving past the well-lit streets of the suburbs that surrounded the city.
A sense of relief filled me as we started to get closer to the hospital and closer to getting Cini help.
