Page 132 of Believe it or Knot

A warm hand lands on my back between my shoulder blades and the scent of blueberry lemon cheesecake fills my nostrils, immediately relieving some of the pressure on my chest as my omega slips under my arm and nuzzles into me.

“You need to stop growling at the nice police officer, Gray,” he murmurs, nuzzling into my chest. “He’s only doing his job.” He stops nuzzling me and looks at the man behind the counter. “Though it would be nice if you didn’t imply that omegas are emotionally weaker than the other designations.”

The cop gives Liam this bored look, which I’m pretty sure no one has ever given him since he got famous at twelve.

Liam curls his hand around my arm and tugs me toward the other alphas. “Come here. There’s something you need to see.”

He drags me to the chairs in the waiting room where Gage and Rafe are sitting, hunched over a cellphone with a video playing.

“Motherfucker,” Gage mutters.

Rafe shakes his head and runs a hand down his face. “They can’t actually think they’ll get away with this.”

“With what?” I ask, standing over them as Liam settles next to Rafe.

“They’re saying the girls are radical terrorists. That they broke into the facility and set the place to explode. They’re citing Sadie’s connection to the Falcone pack as evidence.”

“What?” I growl out dangerously. “The police are saying this?”

Rafe gives me a sharp look. “No, Apex is. They released a statement about the explosion at one of their facilities.”

Of course they did. If I was CEO of a heinous company who kidnaps omegas and runs tests on them, the first order of business would be to point in every other direction but the one that leads to me.

Of course, I would never do such a thing to anyone, so any statement I make to the press is truthful. Or as truthful as I can be regarding business.

“What are they saying about us?” I ask. After all, we’re the ones that released the evidence that Ethan provided to the media in a live interview that I’m sure the higher ups of Apex saw.

Gage wiggles his head back and forth. “They aren’t outright calling us liars, but they are implying that we’ve misinterpreted the data.”

Liam snorts. “I doubt they want to go head to head with our pack.”

I hum. “And the Falcone and Werth packs too.”

Rafe scowls down at the phone. “The comments are… harsh.”

“Harsh?” Gage laughs. “They’re making death threats against our girl, saying she doesn’t… she doesn’t deserve to live after what she did to you and now this.”

I swallow thickly and look up, back toward where I know our girl is. Once we realized that Sorrel wasn’t the one to betray us, to lie to us, we’d tortured ourselves by reading the comments in the articles about her, the ones left on her videos, her social media.

I knew it was bad. We all did, but this is worse. So much worse.

“We’ll fix it,” I say with determination. “We’ll make this right. She deserves it.”

“She deserves fucking everything.”

Liam makes a noise of agreement. “So let’s come up with a plan and figure out how to give her the fucking world.”

I take a seat next to Gage and we get down to business. Once we decide on a way forward, we make calls, call in favors, and set things in motion. All the while, our attention is split between what we’re doing and the back of the police station.

As the night wears on, it takes every ounce of my control to not storm into the back and drag her out. Even then, when the clock ticks over to four am, I lunge to my feet, ready to do just that. My alpha needs to see her, needs to have her within touching distance, needs to verify that she’s okay.

The officer behind the counter gives me a wary look, shifting like he’s readying to intervene if he needs to. I pin him with a look that says, fucking try me, asshole.

But then my attention shifts, my awareness grows and I see Sorrel for the first time in hours as she rounds a corner and enters the hall that leads to the waiting room. Leads to us.

My girl looks wrecked. No two ways about it. She’s exhausted, swaying on her feet. Dark circles line her eyes. There’s a bruise on her forehead, and scrapes all over the bits of skin I can see. Someone gave her a Granton PD sweatshirt that’s too big and hangs over her, but her shorts are the dirty and torn ones she was wearing when she was taken.

Fucking taken.

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