Chapter Eleven

Her home felt cold. Mia had built a small fire to try to warm it up, but nothing helped.

Much like she’d been unbearably warm during her heat, she now couldn’t seem to raise her temperature at all.

Maybe it was just being alone. She hadn’t seen the alphas again, not after they’d left the office. Mia had been taken to the precinct by one of the police, since she didn’t have a car there, and they’d driven themselves.

Hart had offered to take her, but she’d declined, not even looking him in the eye. Later, she’d had another officer take her home rather than risk seeing any of the alphas.

So now she was back in the home she’d lived in for years, the place she loved, and the place that just didn’t feel right anymore. Everything seemed empty.

She never had gotten her things from the office, but it was now officially time to write them off. The entire thing with Mack felt like the universe telling her to cut ties.

A knock at the door made her jump. Stop that, she cursed at herself. She would not be some frightened mouse.

Not to mention, she knew exactly who it was, who it had to be.

Sure enough, when she opened the door, there stood Shepard, Dax and Hart. Shepard had a different shirt on, but otherwise, they looked the same.

They always looked the same, like a constant in her life she could always rely on.

She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering still.

Hart’s gaze traced over her. Without a word, he stepped into her house and wrapped an arm around her, guiding her back toward the fireplace. “You’re shivering,” he scolded as if she were doing it on purpose.

“It’s cold.”

“It’s not. You’re still recovering.”

“From what?”

Hart sat on the floor, pulling her down with him so she sat with her back against him, facing the fire. Dax sat to her left, Shepard to her right.

Shepard lowered himself more carefully, though.

“Omega rage,” Hart explained.

She furrowed her eyebrows. “That’s a myth.”

“You almost bit my hand off when I tried to pull you away from Shepard,” Dax said, with no anger in his voice. “I could almost swear on a bloody stump that it’s no myth.”

“It is a huge surge in adrenaline, after which there’s a drop. That’s why you’re cold.”

“And that’s why you’re here? Just because I’m cold?”

“Because having us close will help you recover more easily. The rage happened because your mates were endangered, so having us around will help you reacclimate.”

Mates. The word seemed more threatening than Mack’s gun had been. “You are not my mates,” she sputtered.

Shepard turned his head toward her, his eyebrow lifted. “You may not want to hear it, but you wouldn’t have gone into a rage like that if it weren’t true. Don’t get me wrong—I like the idea of you turning feral on my behalf. It’s sort of charming in a ‘might tear your throat out’ sort of way.” Even his smirk didn’t soften the words any.

My mates? She tried to reconcile that idea with her life, with her history, with what she wanted.

And no matter how much she thought about it, no matter what she told herself, she came to one horrible conclusion.

They were entirely right.

Even if they hadn’t acted on it before, even if she’d pretended it wasn’t true, she’d been bonded to them for a very long time. Resisting it hadn’t made it go away.

She stretched her legs out to warm her feet, annoyed by Hart having been right. Once she’d breathed in their scents, some of that shaky, cold sensation had started to diminish.

“I appreciate you coming to check on me, but I’m fine,” she said instead of addressing the whole mates thing. “You aren’t obligated to be here or to take care of me.”

Silence met her, with only the crackle of the logs in the flames to fill the room.

“You aren’t an obligation, Mia.” Hart’s chest rumbled against her back as he spoke.

“Of course I am. You serviced me during my heat because you had to, because you felt responsible for me.”

Shepard snorted. “Oh, honey, that was all pleasure. I don’t fuck anyone just because I’m obligated.”

Mia cut him a sharp look, one that didn’t seem to chastise him at all. “I’ve turned away enough of your groupies to know how things work. You don’t sleep with the same woman twice. I knew that going in. It’s fine.”

“And that’s why you were cleaning out your desk? That’s why you ran from us again?” Hart asked, his voice the same careful tone he used when cross-examining someone in court, when he was going in for the kill.

“I couldn’t sit there and keep working for you three. I couldn’t see myself dealing with more of your random women. I’d rather walk away before you send me packing. I’m not blaming you for living your life however you want, but I couldn’t keep it up. Not after I’ve—” She snapped her lips shut.

Don’t say that, you idiot!

“After you what?” Dax asked.

“Nothing.”

Shepard caught her chin so she could look at him. “I took a bullet for you. Least you can do is be honest.”

Leave it to Shepard to be willing to use an act of heroism to guilt-trip me. “You were wearing a vest,” she pointed out.

Shepard lifted up his shirt to show a large, ugly bruise over his left pec, which explained why he was moving slowly. “The vest kept me alive. That doesn’t mean I didn’t get hurt. So, come on, answer.”

Mia sighed softly. What did it matter if she told the truth? The quicker she admitted everything, the quicker they’d run off. They’d realize she wasn’t just easy fun, that she would be far more work, and they’d skip out so she didn’t have to fight them.

“I could deal with you before, with those other women, because you didn’t know what I was. That meant I could pretend there couldn’t be anything. Now, though?” She took a deep breath before leaping off the other side. “You’re right. You are my mates, and I can’t do that anymore. I can’t pretend I don’t care anymore. That isn’t your problem or your fault. I knew who and what you were before I ever started working for you, so I don’t blame you. I just can’t do that—”

Dax ended her tirade by leaning in and kissing her. His lips were demanding against hers, the way he always was. Spontaneous and impossible to contain. And Mia, the idiot she was, kissed him back. Even though she knew it would only hurt more when they walked out, she couldn’t not kiss him.

When he pulled away, she dropped her gaze. “You can’t do this. You can’t keep showing me what I can’t have.”

Hart grasped her hips and made her turn until she faced him, until she sat with her legs crossed right in front of him and the fire warmed her back. Then he waited, the same impossible patience he always had, until she lifted her gaze to him.

“You really believe what you just said, don’t you?”

“That you all are horrible womanizers who don’t ever take the same woman twice? Of course, I do. I’ve seen it.”

Hart dragged his thumb across her jawline. “We’ve done that because the woman we’ve wanted for the last six years hasn’t shown us any interest. So, yes, we’ve found others, but when none of them could hold our attention, we saw no reason for repeats. We were looking for distractions that never worked.”

His words grew the softest glimmer of hope inside her, one she wanted to dash before it could grow into something dangerous. Hope was always too dangerous. “You’re just saying that because I’m an omega, because you’re afraid you knocked me up.”

Dax snorted. “We wanted you when we thought you were a beta.”

She shook her head, refusing to believe it. They were telling her what she wanted to hear, but that was rarely the truth.

Shepard slid his fingers through her hair, and it made her look at him. “Mia, we went to that office knowing what we were facing for you. I took a bullet for you and I’d do it again. I mean, I hope I won’t have to, but still. You aren’t just some random woman to us, and you haven’t been since the first day you walked into that interview.”

“You just want me to feel better about what happened, but I know you. You don’t sleep with the same woman twice.”

Hart let out a soft laugh, the rare sound rough. “Is that all it will take to convince you?” He caught her behind her neck and pulled her in for the sort of kiss that would make her rethink everything, the kind that would leave her panting and needy by the end. He crowded her until she lay back on the soft rug, spread out before the fire.

If she thought the fire warmed her, it was nothing compared to the heat of Hart’s body.

When he broke the kiss, he offered a smile that made her wish he did that more often, like a private gift just between the two of them.

“What does this mean? I don’t know what you want,” she said, pleading without saying it that they stop playing games.

“I want you, Mia. I have since you walked into my life six years ago,” Hart said.

Dax was spread out to her left, and he ran his fingers up her side, dancing over the lower curve of her breast. “You know I’m not one for being subtle. I want you in my bed—preferably naked—every single night.”

That left her with looking to her right, where Shepard was, that eyebrow of his lifted. “I think I made myself pretty clear.” He pointed at his chest. “The whole taking-a-bullet-for-you thing should have been enough of a declaration.”

“Are you never going to let me live that down?”

“At least not until the bruises go away. Never let a good piece of blackmail go to waste.”

Hart brought her gaze back to his. “So we’ve made it clear. We want you. We wanted you before we knew you were an omega. The only thing that has changed since learning that is I understand why you resisted. Now that that’s behind us, now that we know what you really are, the question is—what do you want?”

Mia looked up into Hart’s eyes, into the honey color that seemed to melt and swirl. Such an easy answer, an obvious one, and yet she felt as though she had to cross a chasm to get the words out. “I want you, too,” she whispered. “But I’m still afraid none of this is real.”

Hart’s expression didn’t fall. If anything, he looked amused. “Well, I think we can help with that.” He reached between them and popped open the button of her pants.

At her expression, Dax laughed and instead of teasing the curve of her breast, he cupped the entire thing in his palm and rubbed his thumb over the nipple. “You keep saying we don’t fuck the same woman twice. Guess it’s time to prove to you that you aren’t like other women.”

Dax’s honesty, the way he couldn’t even hope to hide what he was thinking or feeling from her, made it impossible not to fall for him. He made her feel safe because it was never a question with him.

“Maybe after we have you again, you’ll realize just how much we want you,” Hart whispered as he moved back to tug her pants down her legs. He was strong, like a pillar she always knew she could lean against. No matter what happened, no matter how overwhelmed she was, one look into his eyes would help her find solid ground.

Shepard leaned in and stole a kiss, releasing a groan of pain that didn’t sound fake from the movement. He might joke about it, but he had risked himself for her, and she knew without a doubt he’d do it again without hesitation.

She loved them. All three of them. She’d been a fool to ever think she didn’t, to fight against it, to take six years to accept something that had been obvious from day one.

So Mia stopped fighting. She stopped hiding. She lifted her hips as Hart pulled her underwear off and set her hand over the bruising on Shepard’s chest, the place where he could have been killed, the spot where it had become impossible to deny her feelings anymore.

He pulled away, and she expected something sappy, something like what Hart and Dax had said.

Instead, he offered her that breathtaking smirk that reminded her she’d never stop falling for the three of them. After a wink, he looked over at the other alphas. “She’s one stubborn woman. Pretty sure it’ll take more than twice to convince her.”

Hart spread her thighs and settled between them. “Good thing we don’t have any other plans for a while.”

“We have a meeting Monday,” Dax pointed out as he pulled her shirt up to expose her breasts since she wore no bra. “Do you think we’ll be done by then?”

“That’s three days from now,” Mia argued, though her words lost their heat when Hart swiped his tongue up her core.

“You’re right,” Shepard said. “Better reschedule it.” He leaned in and darted his tongue over the hardened peak of her nipple. “Because I plan to stay here until you understand exactly how much we need you. If that takes a whole week? Well, I’ve suffered worse things for you.”

And just like that, Mia let go of her worries. Trusting the alphas was scary, but the idea of losing them was worse.

It might have taken them six years, and she might have fought it, but she as she lay there between the three men she loved, she couldn’t have been happier that they’d found out her secrets.

This was worth all the risks.

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The Omega’s Alphas:

Trained by the Alphas Jayce Carter

Excerpt

The gazes pinned to Alison made her want to lift her lip and snarl. Instead, she shimmied her hips again to the cheers of drunken, horny men.

This isn’t exactly where I planned on my life taking me.

Then again, when had plans ever taken her anywhere she really wanted to go? Alison floated from one emergency to another like some attention-deficit avenging angel.

That life suited her, though. No distractions. Nothing to tie her down. Just her and her sometimes warped sense of justice.

And the who knows how many men currently staring at me.

She lifted her hands and toyed with her curly blonde hair, knowing it would lift her shirt and show off a strip of skin between the top and her tight leather pants.

“Come on, baby, show us something good!” one of the men called out.

Alison offered him a mocking smile, playing the line between tease and whore, while reminding herself to keep her eyes on the prize.

She wanted to entice. To lure someone into a chase. To do that, she needed the faceless men to covet her, to want to not only have her, but break her.

It was a difficult line to walk, but she had no other choice.

She’d tracked down every lead she had, every shady contact and blackmailable asshole she could find, turned over anything she could follow up on and called in all her favors for what little information existed—her friend Anne had been abducted by local scouts looking for omegas to sell off. It was the only thing that made any sense, but the time to find her was running out.

That thought threw off her rhythm, but she disguised it as an alcohol-fueled slip before she crawled off the table and sauntered toward the back area of the bar where she had her things.

The music pounded in her veins, so loud she felt as though her heart followed its pace. This was the third night she’d pulled this stunt, and still to no avail. Plenty of offers for quickies in the bathroom, a few who’d suggested paying her for the night and one man who had even wanted to become her ‘sugar-daddy’. She’d turned them all down.

She would have even if she didn’t have a job to do. The last thing she needed was to get involved with anyone, let alone the drunken filth at a place like this, the men who thought she was the floozy dancing on the bar top, the ones who saw her as some wild, slutty woman in need of their firm hand.

I’d cut their hand off if they tried.

If they spent five minutes with her—the real her—they’d realize their mistake.

This was a game she was playing. It had started with the tight pants, with the shirt that read OMEGA: BETAS NEED KNOT APPLY, and had continued with the face she knew was a trap.

Her wild, curly hair, her full lips—those things had always made her look young and innocent. A gift from her mother, she supposed, from what she could remember. Not that it mattered. While she didn’t care about looking pretty, she wouldn’t deny that her features had helped her more than once. Men turned complacent when there was a pretty face across from them. They started thinking with their dick, and that always helped Alison.

She opened her water, listening for the click to show the seal was intact, before gulping down nearly half the bottle in one go. Her normal exercise routine didn’t involve things like dancing, and she’d woken the morning after each time with a deep ache in her muscles.

Tomorrow would be no different.

“You look good out there.” The man who spoke stood just beside her table.

One inhalation let her know—alpha. It required a person getting rather close for her to tell, what with all the bodies packed in so closely in the club, but once she found that sickly-sweet smell, it couldn’t be denied.

It was always like tasting fake sugar to her. Something she wanted to like, something she should enjoy…and yet something that she knew to be artificial. One taste and she’d regret it.

Which is why I’ve stayed the fuck away from alphas all my life.

“Thanks,” she said, sliding back into her ‘I’m a bad girl who needs a strong man to put me in my place’ persona. “I just love dancing.”

“I can tell. This place is a little loud for a good conversation. Want to head out? Find somewhere quiet?”

She fought the urge to roll her eyes. Why did men always try such stupid tactics? Instead, she curled her painted red lips into a smirk. “Thanks, but I don’t go home with strange men—at least not on the first night.”

He returned the smile, then nodded. “Sure thing. Well, maybe next time?”

When he walked away, Alison’s smile dropped. They normally didn’t give up that easily. Maybe he wasn’t as certain he could close the deal as others?

Or is it something more…

Was he the one she was looking for? Could he have been one of the scouts using this club as their hunting ground? She could say the one looking for her, but she didn’t care for putting herself in the prey category.

Alison was not prey. She was a predator through and through.

All she had to do was lure something in by playing the drunken, defenseless omega, and when the asshole tried to pounce?

Alison would show her teeth.

Kyle tried to ignore the omega swaying to the music on the bar, the one with the curly blonde hair and no sense of self-preservation.

He wasn’t a victim blamer, but after all he’d seen, there were times he wanted to grab a few women and make them look at what happened to those who weren’t careful enough. He wished they lived in a world where that wasn’t true—he’d lived his life trying to make that world—but a person could only see so many crime scenes of murdered omegas before they had to accept the reality.

In their world, a woman alone, drunk and making a spectacle of herself was at very high risk.

Don’t think about it. You have other things to worry about tonight.

“Anything interesting?” Daniel took a sip of his drink—a dark glass to disguise the fact that the cup held water rather than liquor. Funny, because Daniel still looked out of place. No matter what the man did, he always looked like someone’s best friend. Short, soft brown hair and earnest, almost honey-colored eyes kept him from fitting in somewhere like this.

How the two had become best friends was the sort of mystery people couldn’t solve. Daniel was kind but a worrier. Kyle? He tended to make a joke of everything, never taking life too seriously. Daniel looked like a cop and Kyle like someone Daniel might arrest.

Opposites attracted, though, and they’d been friends for so long, he couldn’t recall much of a life without the man who was more than a brother to him.

Kyle shook his head. “Nothing yet. A few familiar faces, but that’s it.”

Daniel huffed before leaning back in the booth. “Felicity isn’t going to make much of an impact with Blondey up there doing her one-woman show.”

“Maybe the scouts would rather take an easier prize.” Kyle let his gaze shift to the woman at the bar—long black hair, dark eyes, high cheekbones. Felicity was, without a doubt, pretty.

“I don’t like her here,” Daniel offered for what had to be the millionth time.

“I don’t like it either, but we don’t get to make all the rules. Besides, do you have a better idea than bait?”

A soft growl was Daniel’s response at first. “We’re supposed to be keeping omegas safe, not dangling them in front of the bad guys like carrots.”

Kyle wanted to argue, but he’d been about as comfortable with the entire plan. Despite him and Daniel running the task force who searched for the slavery ring, they still had bosses, and those bosses had thought some undercover work—in this case having Felicity pose as a flirty omega to entice a scout—was the best in for them.

Catch the scouts when they moved in, then leverage that to find the information they needed.

And all of it in time.

Kyle rubbed his eyes, the lack of sleep getting to him.

How was he supposed to sleep when all he could think of was the fucking calendar? He’d see the days passing, the weeks, and that huge box circled in red two months away.

The final slave auction.

The last chance to take down the people he’d chased for years, the last chance to get those in charge, the ones who would have the names of the slaves already sold, who could help them recover so many omegas who had gone missing over the years.

But to do it, they had to find an in. They knew the date, but the location would only be revealed to buyers and scouts with merchandise.

Which left them exactly nowhere. Just grasping at straws, which had a young, inexperienced FBI agent like Felicity wearing a short skirt and corset top, hoping like hell someone took the bait before they ran out of time.

Because time was not on their side.

Trent lifted his lip and snarled softly at the men that surrounded him in the club. They all stunk of sweat and lust and made his temper worse than usual.

He hated places like this.

He’d much prefer to be home with a good show on and a pizza than out here, with the loud music and drunken idiots.

Unfortunately, home wasn’t an option right then. Instead, he’d been forced to go out in order to pick up a delinquent minor who thought heading to a place like this was a good idea.

Trent rolled his shoulder as he tried to ease the tension that held all his muscles rigid. He pictured little Kat, the fifteen-year-old daughter of one of his clients. The girl, like all teens, thought she knew everything. What she thought most of all was that she was dearly in love with an idiot, predatory twenty-five-year-old, the same one who had wanted her to meet him at this club.

Her mother had called Trent in a panic, and Trent, being the nice guy he was, had agreed to go get her. Her uncle was just outside, ready to bring her back after Trent had found her.

It seemed her uncle, while being a caring and loving father figure, might not fare well against the sorts of people who frequented this place.

Which was fine with Trent. He didn’t mind playing the scary one or convincing people to do as he said, because he looked like the type of person who’d slit someone’s throat without blinking.

Sure enough, in the corner, Trent spotted the girl. She wasn’t smiling, her eyes large and wary, as though she’d realized what a huge mistake this had been.

Poor girl. People ought to learn things from others instead of having to live through the lessons themselves.

Trent had lived through his fair share of them, so he knew what the fuck he was talking about.

He walked over, and the relief on her face when she spotted him about made up for ruining his night. Hell, at least she thought of him as a good thing.

“I’m so sorry,” she started to say before her asshole ‘boyfriend’ held his hand up to her face to silence her.

“Quiet, Kat. Who is this asshole?” The man who was way too old to have anything to do with a fifteen-year-old eyed Trent as if he might be willing to take him on.

That was when Trent saw it, the way he could always spot it. The man was an alpha. Kat was a beta as far as they knew—she hadn’t had a heat, but she was still young enough that she could—but the man? Alpha through and through. He was the worst sort, too, the kind who thought that because of his designation he should be given shit, that he deserved whatever he wanted, no matter what anyone else said.

“Her mom asked me to get her home,” Trent responded, not giving the man an inch of space. He sure as hell didn’t cower to twenty-five-year-old self-important pricks.

“Yeah, well, she isn’t ready to go home. When we’re done with her, we’ll send her on back.” The man cast a suggestive look Kat’s way then laughed with his buddies, as if that were the funniest thing he’d ever heard anyone say.

Well, guess I’m not walking out of here without bloodying something on this asshole. Kat letting out the saddest little whimper and curling her shoulders in solidified it.

It reminded him of when he’d met Kat’s mother, of how the woman had stepped into his gym, her shoulders curling in just the same way, a shaking little thing who was terrified of the world.

Kat had played in the gym while Trent had trained her mother, when they’d spent week after week, then month after month working on self-defense. Now, at fifteen, Kat had started lessons as well.

Still, he hated to see that same fear.

“Look, asshole,” Trent said. Even using something passive-aggressive like ‘buddy’ didn’t seem right. Nope, he wanted no question about exactly what he thought of the fucker. “Kat’s coming home, now.”

“And if I say no?” The man grinned wide, his entitled bullshit spread out across his face.

“Well, then I’m thinking I’ll make it so that pretty face isn’t too pretty anymore. Then? I’ll make sure the police know you’re picking up fifteen-year-olds, because last I checked, that’s statutory rape.”

He snickered, setting a hand on the back of Kat’s neck and pulling her in close to him. “She wouldn’t turn me in, would you, sweetheart?”

Kat pressed against his chest, but it didn’t budge him. “I want to go home,” she said in a voice that lacked the strength it should have had.

“Don’t be like that. We haven’t even started having fun. Bet you I can get you moaning in no time.” The man leaned in to kiss her.

Trent drew his hand into a fist, ready to nail the fucker and teach him in no uncertain terms what ‘no’ meant.

Instead, Kat moved. She did it so quickly, as though by muscle memory. She stomped down on the man’s foot, which made him step backward and loosen his grip. Next, she brought her knee up into his groin, rewarded with his howl, and finally set her hand on the back of his head to yank him down into her rising knee.

The crunch of his nose might have been the best thing Trent had heard in a long damn time, though the wail the fucker let out when she’d gotten his goods had been up there.

Still, before anyone got any stupid ideas, Trent put his hand out. Kat grasped it so he could pull her to his side, then pressed her behind him.

“That fucking bitch,” spat the man as he stood, blood pouring down his face. He took a step forward, as though he planned to do something, but one look at Trent seemed to make him reconsider.

The man might think he was tough when it came to a fifteen-year-old-girl, but facing off against a fully grown alpha like Trent was an entirely different matter.

Trent had spent his life being the alpha people watched carefully. Standing at a touch over six and a half feet and with the sort of physique he’d built up through a hell of a lot of work, he was used to making people nervous. Add to it his shaved head and sharp features—well, Trent was good at intimidating people. Some thin pup barely out of his teenage years wasn’t much of a challenge, and it seemed they both knew it.

“Whatever,” the man muttered, taking a step backward. “The bitch isn’t pretty enough to be worth the effort anyway.”

Trent huffed a soft laugh at the lie. Why did men always try to use that? They sure as fuck thought the girl was pretty enough if they had a chance. They thought she was worth chasing after, but the moment they got turned down, she became ugly.

Kat went willingly, and the hand-off to her uncle didn’t have any issues. It seemed she’d had her taste of trouble and had realized maybe it wasn’t worth it. She gave Trent a hug and a muffled thank-you spoken against his chest. He hugged her back, awkward as ever, and told her how proud he was of her for using what he’d taught her.

As they drove away, he grinned. She’ll be just fine.

There was nothing better than watching a girl go from a scared thing and grow into a person who knew what they were capable of. He’d watched it—helped it happen—with so many women over the years.

He shook free the thought.

He needed to head back in, to settle things with the owner, smooth over any bad feelings. The last thing he wanted was cops showing up at Kat’s place because the asshole in the club tried to press charges just to ruin her life. He seemed the type to do it, too.

Trent made his way through the crowded club, toward the back where the staff door sat. Just before making it there, though, he caught sight of the last thing he ever expected to see.

In the back booth, just beside the door, two alphas sat. He didn’t tell that by the way they sat, by their demeanor. Instead, it was because he knew them—or had known them.

The two alphas who had been more than brothers to him for so long, the ones he hadn’t seen in eight years.

Knew I should have stayed home.

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About the Author Jayce Carter lives in Southern California with her husband and two spawns. She originally wanted to take over the world but realized that would require wearing pants. This led her to choosing writing, a completely pants-free occupation. She has a fear of heights yet rock climbs for fun and enjoys making up excuses for not going out and socializing.

Jayce loves to hear from readers. You can find her contact information, website details and author profile page at