Page 117 of Knot Your Average Beta

I can almost hear his voice in my head. You’re okay, Cherrybomb. You’re okay. We’re coming for you. We’ll always come for you. You’re fucking ours.

I send back the reassurance that I’m okay for now, that I trust them to help me. And just in case I don’t get out of this alive, I send him all the love in my heart for him, for them. I hope like hell he’ll share it with the others.

I keep the bond open as I lift my head and look around. The room I’m in has no windows. Not surprising since I’ve been kidnapped. The walls are dark gray with white trim. I’m strapped to a medical chair that reminds me of one of those ones at a dentist’s office. That can be upright or reclined based on what the dental hygienist needs.

There’s a bright light overhead, a rolling stool and a metal rolling tray with medical instruments on it. There’s no door in my line of sight.

I twist my head, trying to see behind me, but the back of the chair is too tall and I’m strapped in too tight. Still, there must be a door there. I got in here somehow, right?

I push away thoughts of the door, and instead focus on the binds on my wrists. Thick leather with metal buckles. Tight enough that it’s cutting into my skin, but not my circulation. I pull and twist, but the leather doesn’t loosen and the only thing I accomplish is making my skin red and irritated, scraped raw.

Okay, I’m not going to just yank my hands free, but I might be able to undo the buckle. I slide down the chair as much as I can, tilting my body to the right, to get my teeth on the leather, to pull it free. The skin on my left wrist cracks and splits as I pull against it. I’m almost there. I can practically feel the leather in my mouth when I hear the door behind me open.

Fuck. No.

I shift, straightening up in the chair as best as I can, trying to pretend like I’m not trying to escape even though it’s ridiculous. Of course, I would try to escape when I’ve been kidnapped and strapped down. Anyone in their right mind would.

I squint against the bright light as footsteps click toward me, and then Claudia rounds the chair. Her blue eyes widen, like she hadn’t expected to find me here. “Sadie!”

I sag against the chair, relief flowing through me. She escaped somehow and now she’ll help me get out, too. Surely, even she can’t be so petty as to leave me in the hands of our abductors. “Claudia. Quick. Untie me.” She flicks her gaze to the door uncertainly, tears filling her eyes. “Please, Claudia, don’t leave me here.”

“Why shouldn’t I?” she asks, her voice wet with tears. “Why shouldn’t I leave you here? You stole my pack from me.”

I don’t want to argue with her, not right now, not while I’m tied up, and she’s free and I have no clue what the assholes who took us want us for. I’ve heard of omegas being kidnapped and sold into what amounts to sex slavery. Either to a pack as their private omega or to flesh houses where alphas can find out what it’s like to fuck an omega without the hassle of caring for one.

I can only imagine what Claudia and I would fetch as a matching set. Two women with the same scent. What a fucking novelty.

Or it could be one of the Falcone Pack’s enemies. Who the hell knows what they plan to do to the two omegas living in their pent house?

“Claudia, please. Whatever you think about me, about our situations, you can’t just leave me here. Please.”

She leans over me, getting her face right into mine. “But I think that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Leave you here and go find my mates. Tell them you’re lost to them for good. They’ll have to pick me then, right? They won’t have any other option.”

I frown. “Now is really not the time to discuss this. Please, Claudia.”

She leans closer until her minty fresh breath wafts over my face. “You can beg until you’re blue in the face, Sadie, but it won’t change what’s happening here.” It’s at this point that I realize her pupils are clear, her gaze isn’t hazy, she has none of the wooziness that I’m fighting. Her words aren’t slurring and she seems steady on her feet.

But most damning of all? She’s free and I’m tied up.

I might have been abducted, but Claudia certainly wasn’t.

“You did this,” I whisper. Swift must be feeling something from me, because I get a spike of emotions on his side of the bond, a tug demanding that I give him an update. “You helped that alpha get into the penthouse. You helped him take me.”

She grins and pats my cheek condescending. “There you go. You got it. I’m surprised it took you that long, honestly. I thought you were smarter than that.”

Tears fill my eyes as I realize she will not be my salvation. I turn my attention to the connection with Swift and think, Claudia. Don’t trust Claudia, at him as hard as I can, over and over. Because I know, whatever happens to me here, she will return to them. She’ll try to weasel her way into my pack, to take my place.

“You let him break my bond with Luca.”

She beams at me. “I did. He probably thinks you’re dead, which will make the entire pack think that, too. It’ll make it easier for me in the long run.”

I grit my teeth at her glee. Of course, she would be happy about breaking my bond. She hated that Luca bit me, hated that he never even looked at her, never responded the way an unbonded alpha would to any omega.

“Why would you do this? I know you want a pack, Claudia. I get that, but… orchestrating a kidnapping to get me out of the way?”

She straightens up, glaring down at me with so much hatred in her eyes it’s a struggle not to shrink away from her.

“Do you have any idea how hard I had to work?” Claudia says, arms folded under her generous breasts. “Do you think becoming an omega is easy? Cause it’s really fucking not. I was in the doctor’s office more than you were.” She leans over me, her hands braced on the back of the chair. “I underwent surgery after surgery to look like this, to get that perfect omega figure. Hours under the scalpel, weeks in recovery.”

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