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.
Daniel didn’t bother to hide his surprise at seeing none other than Trent standing there, by their booth, looking similar to how he had before. Same ungodly large physique, same shaven head, same sharp features that seemed permanently carved into a scowl. Sure, he looked a bit more haggard, but that wasn’t really a shocker.
Trent had never taken care of himself well and living alone hadn’t done him any favors. Guilt gnawed at him, but Daniel refused to let it take hold. Anger made that easier.
Maybe it would be a good meeting, though. Maybe they’d see each other and laugh and let go of the past.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
Or maybe not…
Kyle snorted softly, not seeming to take Trent’s downright antagonistic tone to heart. “Last time I checked, you didn’t own this town.”
Trent’s hands drew into fists. “You sure moved away quick enough. Thought that was you conceding this town to me.”
Daniel spoke up, because they didn’t have time for the back and forth. “We’re not here to step on your toes. We’ll be out of your way just as soon as we can.”
Trent narrowed his eyes, the way he always did when figuring something out. He might look stupid—a side effect of his hard-ass attitude and his physique—but he was far from it. “You working?”
Daniel nodded once, sharp. Trent might not be with the FBI anymore, but he sure as hell knew what working meant to people who were.
Trent twisted, and he seemed able to follow their line of sight perfectly. Across the way, Felicity still sat alone by the bar. “She looks like a cop. Since when did they throw newbies out into field work?”
“Since we needed an omega,” Kyle answered.
Trent made a disgruntled noise in return, and it wasn’t as if Daniel could argue the point. The longer they watched Felicity, the more obvious it became she wasn’t ready for the assignment.
Which left them with few options, none of them good.
Without meaning to, Daniel’s gaze went back to the omega they’d seen before, the one in the tight leather pants. She was gathering her things to leave.
Good. She needs to get her ass home and safe.
“Fuck,” Trent muttered and nodded toward the other side of the club.
Three men were eyeing the omega, and Daniel could read that sort of look. It wasn’t anything good. They nodded, as though something had been decided, gazes pinned to her.
“We’re on a job,” Kyle reminded them.
“So you’re going to let her just walk out into whatever they have planned?” Trent asked.
Daniel gritted his teeth. No. That wasn’t going to happen. He used his nearly invisible earpiece to tell the agents in the van outside to keep a closer eye on Felicity.
Not like it matters. She’s drawn no attention.
The omega rose, slinging her purse over her shoulder. She wasn’t wearing heels, but she stumbled around as if she was. The girl was so drunk, he had no idea how she intended to get home. The need to take her aside and lecture her hit him.
Well, they’d probably get the chance. The night was a bust anyway, and he wanted to make sure the woman made it somewhere safe. When they got her into their car, they could make it clear her behavior was high risk, and exactly what could have happened.
Daniel eyed the woman stumbling their way—meaning she’d take the back exit to the parking lot rather than the front to the street. Another bad choice.
She really is a trifecta of horrible decision making, isn’t she?
When Daniel went for the door ahead of her, Kyle on his heels, he was surprised to find Trent following. “This isn’t your problem,” Daniel bit out.
“This is my town, and I don’t much like women being targeted here. So, yeah, I think I’ll stay until I know she’s fine.” Trent wouldn’t budge. Daniel recognized the steel in his voice, the fact that this was one of his hot-button topics.
It was hard to argue. He might not be happy with Trent, but he trusted him more than he did those other three men in the club. What if they headed out, too? What if they came looking for the omega? The last thing Daniel wanted was to end up outnumbered.
Besides, what if they were the scouts they were looking for? An extra set of hands was always useful.
When they walked out into the back parking lot, it was dark, with only one dim light above the door to illuminate anything. Few customers used it, since it was mostly employee parking. A front entrance went to the street, and a side to the parking lot customers used.
The van with the other agents sat in the parking lot of a bakery across the street, but Daniel didn’t worry. Felicity was capable, even if she’d turned out to be terrible bait.
The woman stumbled from the door, laughing and looking as coordinated as a dog on ice skates. She stumbled, pressing a hand to the wall of the building to keep herself upright.
She was pretty—hard to deny that—but in her current state it felt wrong to even notice that. Not to mention that an omega, especially one like this, who seemed determined to become a statistic, was a horrible bet on his part. He’d worked enough cases to know the risks to omegas. Not to mention he had no desire to try to see one through the trauma they always seemed to have.
Nope. I’ll stick to betas, thank you very much.
From the side of the building, around the corner, two of the men who had been eyeing the girl appeared.
Well, this just got worse.