Alison threw her shirt into the laundry basket much harder than she needed to, but damnit, she couldn’t help it.
She’d been planning for weeks. She’d had everything in place.
This was supposed to be the night she finally got some real information, the night everything paid off.
Instead, some do-gooder FBI agents had butted in—thinking they were white knights, as all men did—and she’d walked away with nothing.
The scouts had seen her face now, which meant she couldn’t just go out and hope to catch their attention again. If she showed up at the same club, it would be far too suspicious.
She stripped out of her clothing, wanting to wash away the scent of the club, the sweat from her dancing, the smells of the alphas. Maybe after that she’d feel better about it.
Not likely.
The hot water relaxed her, but it didn’t solve the problem. She was still fucked.
She didn’t have a lead. Her one shot had been entirely ruined.
Worse? She couldn’t seem to scrub the alphas who had messed everything up from her mind.
The one who had grabbed her, with his smooth voice and warm body. The one who had tried to grab her, his eyes far too kind. Lastly, the one she’d tangled with the most, the one who had nearly bested her, the large one who had barred the door.
Why had they been so interesting?
Because no matter how much I fight it, I’m an omega at the end of the day, and tough alphas are my weakness.
She snarled softly at herself. No. She was so much more than an omega. She’d worked hard to become more.
There was no way she was going to let herself be distracted by some trio of assholes who had caused her nothing but trouble.
Still, their scents…
She slid her hand down her body, gliding over her skin because of the pouring water. She thought about fighting that need, but she knew better.
Living as long as she had on her own had taught her that ignoring needs didn’t fix anything. She couldn’t ignore a heat and she couldn’t ignore the reaction she had to alphas. All she could do was refuse to give in to it, and that was easier when she wasn’t wound up and horny.
So she let her fingers dip between her thighs, telling herself it had nothing to do with the three men.
But as they filled her head while she brought herself to climax, she knew that was a damn lie.
* * * *
Daniel took a beer from Tiffany, laughing at a joke her mate Marshall had made.
Even on days when frustration ate at him, when he could find no good in his job, he needed only to take a look at Tiffany to remember why he did what he did.
He lost a whole hell of a lot of the cases he took. Often, he showed up at the end, and all he could do was find those who’d left bodies. When he had those images in his head, when they kept him up at night, it took seeing the ones he’d helped save to remind himself there was a point…some of the time.
Tiffany was young—barely more than a kid herself—and Daniel shuddered to think of what the slavery ring he was after would have done if they’d managed to catch and keep her.
Instead of that fate, she was happy. She had three mates who adored her, and last he’d heard, they were looking at opening up a coffee shop. She had a future, a family.
It didn’t take away the sting of his failures, the hurt at the lives he couldn’t save, but it helped him tell himself it was all worth it.
“Kyle seems testier than usual,” Tiffany pointed out, nodding at where Kyle stood on the back porch with Kieran, another of Tiffany’s mates.
“Well, you saw his face.”
“Isn’t getting bruised up part of your job?”
“Sure, but I think when it’s a five-foot-tall omega who does it, his pride gets a bit wounded.”
Tiffany laughed hard enough that she spat some of the water out and had to use her hand to cover her mouth. After that, there was some choking, but when she finally regained her breath, she smirked. “Please tell me she had blue hair.”
Daniel snorted, thinking about the omega thief Tiffany referred to. “If Kara had been involved, she’d have gone for his balls, I’m sure.” The viciousness of that omega was well known, especially now that she and her mates were helping in the slavery ring investigation. It had been their efforts that had gotten them their first inside contact, as trustworthy as any slaver could be when he’d turned only to reduce his eventual sentence. “This omega was different. Shoulder-length curly blonde hair, green eyes.”
Tiffany’s back went straight, and Kane groaned.
“Do you know her?”
“You just saw her last night? You’re sure?” Panic bled through Tiffany’s voice.
Daniel nodded. “Close enough for her to break Kyle’s nose and put down another friend of ours. I got a shot to the ribs, but I’m pretty sure that made me the lucky one.”
“That sounds like Alison all right,” Kane muttered.
Alison. Daniel tried to pair the name with the face, to see if that could have been the girl.
Then again, she was an enigma to him. She had the face of some sweet, mythical creature, like a sea nymph. Of course, she hadn’t looked so innocent when she’d attacked.
Even sexier, though…
“Tell me about this Alison.”
Tiffany pressed her lips together. Right. Omegas always stick together against the big bad alphas.
“I don’t want to cause her any problems,” Daniel said.
“If it’s her, she busted the nose of an FBI agent. I don’t feel like that’s something you’d track her down just to give her a pat on the back for.”
Daniel rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. “We don’t blame her, because she had no reason to trust us. That’s all good.” He’d love to say it was square because they’d both gotten their licks in, but the truth was that he and the other two alphas had had their asses handed to them by that one little girl. And there goes that totally inappropriate erection again…
Daniel clearly had terrible taste in women.
“There are scouts looking for omegas right now, and she needs to understand that. I don’t want to bring her in on charges. I don’t want to get her into trouble. I just want her to understand that this area is dangerous right now, and she needs to be more careful.”
Kane snorted hard. “Right. Alison needs to be careful.”
Daniel gave the other alpha a withering look. “If you have something useful to contribute, go for it.”
“Let’s not bullshit. You seriously think you aren’t throwing off some really aroused scent right now? Don’t pretend like this is some fucking nobility shit.”
Daniel’s jaw popped as he ground his teeth together. “Fine. She was attractive. That’s not why I’m looking for her.” Does a half-truth still count as a lie?
“Doesn’t matter,” Kane said. “Trust me, if anyone is in danger, it’s anyone stupid enough to tangle with her. She doesn’t need your help.”
Daniel’s annoyance slid away with this new tidbit of information. “Who is she? I looked for any records of an omega matching her description. Nothing. I figured anyone running cons—”
“She doesn’t run cons,” Tiffany snapped.
Daniel lifted his hands, palms out, to placate her. “It was just a guess, Tiff. She pretended to be drunk, which seemed an awful lot like a great scam to rob guys. I figured when she realized we weren’t good targets, she bailed.”
Kane shook his head. “If that girl was there, it wasn’t to pick up a few bucks off drunken idiots. She had bigger fish to fry.”
Daniel frowned. She couldn’t be after the slavery ring…
“But you don’t know what she was doing?”
Tiffany rested her elbows on the counter. “She’s been missing for a few months, and no one’s heard from her. I don’t know what she’s planning, but it’s got to be important. She wouldn’t fall out of contact otherwise.”
“What was she doing before?”
“She’s a fucking harpy,” Kane said. “If you think Kara is a headache, she’s nothing compared to Alison. That girl is some avenging angel who fucks up people who screw with omegas.”
Fuck. Daniel growled softly. She had to be after the slavers. He couldn’t think of another damn thing that made any sense.
The door shut as Kyle entered from the patio. “About that omega—”
“Alison. Yeah, I just heard.”
Kyle took a seat beside Daniel. “You know…those scouts saw us nab her.”
“Yeah, I recall having our cover blown.”
Kyle shook his head. “They think we’ve got a slave for the auction.”
That stilled Daniel. It was a horribly brilliant idea but…
He shook his head. “We can’t get a civilian omega involved in this. It’s too dangerous.”
“She’s already involved,” Kyle pointed out. “From the sound of it, she’s dangling herself in front of scouts as bait, except unlike Felicity, she has no back-up. So when someone does snag her, she’ll be entirely on her own. Do you really think she wouldn’t be better off with at least someone watching her?”
Daniel shifted on the stool, wanting so badly to argue. The idea of getting an omega involved in this felt wrong. He hadn’t liked the idea of Felicity even, but she’d at least been a trained agent.
Alison? She might know how to fight, but that didn’t mean she’d understand the risks.
But what other choice do we have?
“Do you know how to get hold of her?” Daniel asked, refusing to commit to the plan just yet.
Tiffany shook her head. “I asked around a few weeks ago, but she’s completely off the map. She was really secretive already, and if she’s doing what it sounds like she’s doing, she probably didn’t want to risk anyone else, thus the no contact.”
“So you don’t know anything?”
“She hasn’t been back to her cabin that I know of—we drove up there a while back and there’s no sign of life. Where else she lives or stays, I really don’t know. She’s always really private.”
Daniel thought back to the cabin, the one he’d asked the alphas about on the day he’d gone up there to get Tiffany. It seemed he’d been circling around this Alison for a while without realizing it.
Daniel and Kyle said their goodbyes and thanked Tiffany, Kane, Marshall and Kieran for the hospitality.
“You know what we have to do,” Kyle said. He was always the practical one, the one willing to admit to things Daniel didn’t like to.
“He’s already too involved.”
“Yeah, but that’s the thing. Those same scouts saw him with us. If we’re really going to do this, we need him. Plus, he knows the area. If anyone can figure out where she is, it’s Trent.”
Daniel tightened his lips into a thin line, hating the entire idea. Trent couldn’t be trusted and in Daniel’s world, that was a hard limit.
Still, he couldn’t come up with a better option.
“Fine,” Daniel snarled. “Because dealing with him once wasn’t quite frustrating enough, let’s go see Trent.”
* * * *
Trent couldn’t believe his ears. If he hadn’t been the sort to avoid drugs and alcohol, he’d have said he had to be high, because there was no way Kyle and Daniel were standing in his gym asking him for a favor.
He crossed his arms, about half-a-second from kicking their asses out. It was what they’d have done if he’d ever showed up at their job.
“You’re kidding me, right?”
Kyle snorted, but his smart-ass action didn’t hold the same derisive attitude he probably wanted it to, because he flinched when it aggravated his nose.
Serves him right.
After a short moment, as if he had to collect himself, Kyle continued. “It’s not my first choice either, but we’re out of options.”
“This how far you’ve fallen? All the preaching about good police work and rules, but you’re willing to rest an entire case on an untrained civilian woman and me?” Trent whistled low. “That’s sad.”
Daniel cast his partner a sharp look, but it was one Trent knew just as well. Shut up and let me handle this. Daniel did that a lot, stepping in as if he could clean up the messes of everyone around him. “This is a serious case, Trent.”
“You think they’re all serious. Does that help you sleep at night? Thinking everything you do is for a good cause?”
“What I do is for a good cause, but I’m serious on this one.”
“Don’t need to hear about it.” Trent turned his back, ready to shut himself in his office until they left. He’d done this with them before. He’d worked with them before. It had all blown up in his face. “I don’t need to go through this bullshit with you two again.”
“We’re going after the last slavery auction in the area,” Kyle said.
That stilled Trent’s feet.
Kyle kept going. “If we don’t catch them now, we won’t. They’re packing up, and the next shot we’ll have? Who knows when that will be. They’ve got a lot of omegas going onto the auction block in eight weeks, judging by all those missing in this area, and even if we catch the assholes behind this years from now, those women? They’ll be gone forever.”
Trent drew his hands into fists, frustration soaking into him. He wanted to keep walking. He wanted to tell them to fuck off, that this wasn’t his problem.
He remembered the last real time they’d talked, when Trent had broken down and told them he was leaving the FBI, when he’d thrown in the towel. He’d needed them then, but what had happened?
They’d taken the move as some sort of insult and kept right on going with their own lives.
But then he thought about the omegas he’d helped, the ones he’d trained up from nothing, and there had been a few who had tasted the life the omegas in that auction would be subjected to.
“I can tell you where she probably works out, given how she fought, but that’s all you’re getting from me.”
Daniel crossed his arms, the scowl looking odd on the alpha’s face. Daniel didn’t scowl as a rule, or at least he never had in their long friendship. “You can’t just turn your back on this. It’s important.”
“I told you before, I’m out. I can’t do this again. It nearly fucking dragged me under last time, and you want me to jump back in? Just pick up and follow because you tell me to? Where the hell have you two been for the last eight years?” The question escaped before he could censor it. Fuck. He sounded like a jaded woman, not a man whose friends had moved on when he didn’t fit into their lives anymore.
He didn’t take the words back, though.
Kyle answered him. “What did you want us to do? You decide one day to quit, to just uproot your entire life. Did you want us to do it, too? To give up everything we wanted because you decided it was too hard? We were more than friends, damn it, and you were the one who decided to change it all. You can’t be pissed when we didn’t follow where you decided to go.”
Trent tore his gaze away, hating how neither of them was wrong. Trent had changed the rules, but fuck, Kyle and Daniel had damn well disappeared, as if Trent wasn’t worth even sticking around for. Years of working together, of living together, of taking women together like some fucking little family and all it had taken was quitting the FBI for them to wash their hands of him?
“It doesn’t really matter, does it? Who cares anymore who did what or why or whose damn fault it all was. It’s eight years too late for those conversations. You guys decided you didn’t need me a long time ago. I see no reason why that should change now.” Trent went to walk past them—to where, he didn’t know, since it was his gym.
Kyle caught his arm. “Remember that last case we had?”
Of course he did. It haunted Trent like his own personal poltergeist, keeping him up at night, springing out of the darkness when he finally thought he was free. It hit him like it always did, right in the gut as he recalled the body of the omega in the hospital room, the woman he couldn’t save. Her blood had seemed so dark against her pale skin. “Yeah, I remember.”
“Well we’re trying to save a lot of women from that same fate. Are you really going to turn your back on that? Can you live with yourself knowing that they might all die, and all for your pride?”
No doubt Kyle knew the answer before he asked. Trent looked like a fucking monster, but he wasn’t one, not by a long shot. “Fine,” he growled out. “Tell me what you need.” He turned and jammed a finger in their direction. “But let’s make this fucking clear. I’m helping for them, not for you. I want you gone as soon as possible.”
“The feeling’s mutual,” Kyle said.
Look at that, we can still agree on something.
* * * *
Alison loved her gym.
Okay, so it wasn’t hers, but she spent so much time there, it felt more like her place than her own apartment.
Only her cabin made her feel better, but she hadn’t been back there in over six months.
You know it’s too dangerous.
If she ended up targeted by the slavers, she wanted there to be no connection to anyone. It was why she’d cut ties, why she’d made sure no one could trace her back to the people she cared about.
Her feet struck the treadmill as she ran, sweat running down her back, soaking into her sports bra.
Her failure the other night, paired with her reaction to those alphas, had her needing to run herself to exhaustion just to deal with it.
When she did this, when she pushed her body to its limits and forced it to adapt, she didn’t feel like such a failure. She didn’t feel weak or useless or anything.
Still, today might have been a bit more than usual. The owner of the gym had cast her a few concerned looks—probably didn’t want her passing out and hitting her head—but she waved off his concern as she guzzled down more water.
The steady thump of her feet against the treadmill belt helped relax her. Music in her headphones drowned out the world around her. It let her sink into the rhythm of her steps, into the simple movements that made her feel free.
At least, it did until her machine stopped. She came forward, catching herself on the console, her eyes flying open. Had she accidently pulled the emergency stop? Had she broken the damned thing?
Nope. Even worse.
The three alphas from the night before stood in front of her.