He’d known there was no way out.
He’d sensed how much the bond was affecting me.
He’d gleaned how much she meant to me.
And he hadn’t said anything, not made a fuss, not protested. Had stepped up to the role I need of him. To agree, yet watch out for me.
Yeah, he is one smart motherfucker, and I am never going to let him know that. I am never going to share with him how much his actions and that of Sol’s in following us, no questions asked, have made me feel like the lowest heel ever. I had only questioned, resisted, pushed them at every turn. Yet they are loyal to me.
Loyalty. An alien concept, that I still refuse to accept. Unlike her. The only thing I believe in is her.
I am going to get to her and claim her all over again, but it isn’t for the reasons Ethan thinks. It isn’t because I can’t live without her. Not because every cell in my body throbs for her, not because the mating bond yanks me forward, showing me the way, unerring in its direction as it leads me through the twisting alleys, onto the broken expressways of a once proud city, and away from London… Where is she? A few miles of driving, and I smell the sea. She is headed to Dover? Why? Is she planning to leave this city? Take a ship somewhere?
My heart stutters.
My guts twist.
I press my foot on the accelerator, and the vehicle leaps ahead, almost colliding with a slow-moving caravan. I swerve around it and keep going, knowing it is going to take Ethan and Sol longer to catch up in whatever mode of transport they have decided on. Nothing is as fast as my custom-made truck, my one insistence…almost a compulsion, this need for speed and control. And dominance. Everything that had come together in one perfect pattern when I had claimed her. I hadn’t thought then. I had ridden that rush, that feeling when I was inside her when her soft core had clamped its moist heat around me, tugged me in… It had been like coming home.
“Fuck.” I slam the wheel with my fist and step on the accelerator. The tires squeal, and the hated countryside streams by, still green despite the fact that the rains have been failing over the years and the weather has gotten more erratic. Too hot one day, snow the other, an unpredictability that has reduced lifespans and altered genes, all in one generation. Enough for humans to be divided into alphas, betas, and the rarer omegas.
Enough for me to realize that I was meant to be the strongest alpha of them all, from the time I had taken on the beasts who had tried to rape my mother and killed them. Then sealed my future when I had taken over as General of the city.
Enough to be sure that I have to get to this omega before she does something she will regret. I will make her regret it. And I am looking forward to it.
I plan to wrap those glistening strands of her hair around my fist, yank back her head to reveal the expanse of her neck, then sink my teeth into the claiming mark to reaffirm my ownership.
The mating bond screeches with need, and fear pours down it. The heaviness in my chest is so big, so cold, I know she is in danger. I need to get to her.
My chest thrusts forward, and my breath comes in pants. The force inside me grows larger, pushing out, shoving against my rib cage. It propels me forward. To keep going and get to her before it's too late.
I veer off the road, onto the muddy path leading uphill, then that, too, fades. I keep going, through the mud and faded grass, onto the flat plateau that soars up to a cliff.
The wheels churn, and the truck's tires strain for purchase. I brake to a stop and jump out of the vehicle, not caring that the truck begins to roll back. I can’t retrace my steps. I don’t care about what I’ve left behind. My heart stutters, stops, then ratchets up in speed. The mating cord urges me on, farther, faster, keep going. Now.
I reach the first peak and then I see her.
Poised ahead, at the top of the second peak of the cliff right ahead. Around her the white chalky surface gleams a dull creamy silver. So like her skin…no, her skin is softer, richer, smoother.
Waves of fear pour down the mating bond, so intense, so strong, that they threaten to overwhelm my senses. My breath comes in heaving pants.
Sweat pours down into my eyes. Still I push forward. When I am not ten feet from her, she turns.
Her long hair gleams with hidden golden highlights, red in the fading sunshine. Suddenly I can’t wait to discover everything about her. Her secrets. Her lies. Her truths. Her fears and innermost desires. I want it all.
She angles her head at me. “You shouldn’t have come.”
“I couldn’t stay away.” I slow my steps.
“You should leave.”
“Not without you.” I come to a halt not five feet from her.
“Go.” She raises her chin.
I chuckle, and there’s nothing happy about the sound. It’s twisted, yearning, full of fear and anger. At her. At me. At this damn city that brought me to this place. Facing the woman who is becoming more important to me by the second, who I’d taken without mercy, who I haven’t yet broken, who I know I am going to own, and not only because she is my mate…well, maybe that, too, but really, it’s because I want to.
Because no one can stop me.
She throws her head back and laughs.
No one except her.
My heart stutters.
I know what she is going to do, even before she takes a step back.
Even before she has swiveled to face the open sea.
“No!” I leap toward her, close the distance between us, and grab her hand.
My fingers touch her skin and slide off.
Then she is falling, falling.
I keep going and dive off over the edge of the cliff.
To find out what happens next read CLAIMED BY THE ALPHA, KNOTTED OMEGA 2, HERE
Read an excerpt...
Lucy
When I come to, it’s to the sense of heat enfolding me. I burrow into the warmth, the hard planes of the chest that shift under my cheek. The scent of fresh rainwater on parched earth fills my nose.
That alluring, growing need curls in my belly and my core trembles. Every instinct tells me I am safe.
Safe?
I try to move and find there is a heavy arm around my waist, its weight both brutal and soft.
The friction of his skin over mine sends a tremor of heat down my spine.
Slick pools between my legs. My stomach cramps, and the mating bond in my chest pulses with life. Heat. Life. Energy. My scalp stings, my fingers and toes tingle.
Every part of me prickles like it’s coming back to life. Like I have been asleep for a long time. Like I’d never jumped off the cliff and straight into that blue-green water, hitting the waves, going through and—my eyelids snap open.
I am surrounded by his smooth, honey-brown skin, which is broken by the scars on his throat, the wounds I had marked him with. They bleed into the tattoos on his chest.
I reach out and trace my fingers over those swirls and curves, those colors that are as stark as the monster I’d thought him to be, as poignant as the lost boy I had glimpsed in his eyes in the seconds before I’d jumped off the cliff and into the sea below.
Why had I done that?
Willfully sent myself to a possible death, while deep inside I’d known it wasn’t going to happen that way? That I’d just started living. I’d just met him, and I wasn’t going to let go of him or the future I’d glimpsed.
Had I been testing myself? To see if I was as brave, as fearless as I’d thought myself to be? To test him to see if he’d come after me? And he had.