Page 10 of Omega's Triplets

The look Isla gave her bordered on sympathy. “I know what you’re thinking,” she said.

“You don’t.”

“You’re remembering your family, right? Wondering if they’ll be coming to find you?”

Maddy felt as if the breath had been stolen from her throat. It was exactly what she had been wondering, although she would never have dared to articulate the thought, even to herself.

“They won’t come,” Isla said. “I’m sorry. Truly. I wish I could tell you something different.”

“How can you be sure?” Maddy asked, her heart sinking. She hated to let any of the Death Fangs—even Isla—see her this vulnerable, but she had to know. If there was even a chance, even the smallest hope that she could cling to—

But Isla was shaking her head. “I’m sure they don’t know about us,” she said. “The Death Fangs are secretive, Twenty-Two.”

“My name isn’t Twenty-Two.”

Isla ignored that. “We live outside the confines of the law,” she said. “The kind of family you grew up in, they don’t know anything about people like us. Only people living off the grid are going to show up to the auction.”

Dangerous people, Maddy thought. Not civilized people, like the pack she’d come from. Not people with jobs and friends and ordinary lives. People like the Death Fangs. Other criminals.

She drifted into her own thoughts, ignoring Isla as the work continued. If she had been paying attention, she would have registered her whole body being lotioned, her nails being trimmed and painted, and measurements of her figure being taken. But she paid no attention. She stood when she was told to stand and sat when she was told to sit, but her thoughts were miles away.

She couldn’t allow herself to be sold.

She was going to have to try to make an escape.

Chapter Three

Jamie carefully dialedin the combination to the safe where the Hell’s Wolves kept their savings. Every paycheck he brought home meant more money deposited here, but he hadn’t taken the trouble to count it in months. In part, he had to admit, he was afraid of what he might find.

The Death Fangs would be holding their annual omega auction tomorrow, and Jamie, Harley and Mark would be riding all morning and the better part of the afternoon to reach it. If they could manage to buy an omega this year, they could stop setting aside money for it, and that part of Jamie’s income could go back into things like feeding the pack.

The talk of Amy potentially leaving their pack had alarmed him more than he cared to admit. The brothers had found Amy wandering the streets of Boise when she was four years old. They’d been young then, just teenagers themselves, on their own for the first time, but when they’d caught her scent and realized she was a shifter, they’d brought her home to join their pack. They’d found Piper the year after, and Reese a couple of years after that. Having the kids with them made their pack feel like a family, and not just three lone wolves off on their own.

Of course, it was having the kids that had put them in such a bind financially. If they’d only had to worry about the three of them, Jamie’s salary and Harley’s occasional income would probably have been enough. But, he thought, growing their pack had been worth it.

It reminded Jamie of the pack he’d belonged to growing up. Of having a mother and father of his own. Before they had died.

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