Page 60 of Their Alpha

My stomach twisted at the thought of my siblings. Leaving them behind when I’d known they were vulnerable was one of the hardest decisions I’d had to make when I left.

“I can get in touch with them,” I said, mostly certain it was true. “I can help them get out.”

“They don’t want to get out,” Goode said, reaching for an olive from the charcuterie board. “They want you to come back and visit them. Just a visit. They know you would rather be a fallen creature than safe at home.”

I was reasonably certain he was making things up to lure me into letting my guard down, but I desperately missed my siblings, all of them.

“Malachi wants you to come home,” Goode said, resting his hip against the table. “So much that he came with me.”

My eyes popped wide. “You’re lying,” I said. “You came alone.”

“I didn’t,” Goode said. “Malachi fell asleep on the way here. Your guardians didn’t give me a chance to go back to the car to wake him up. Actually, I’m surprised he hasn’t awakened on his own and come into the house to find you.” He glanced over his shoulder at the door, then back at me. “Then again, he’s probably terrified. Waking up in the backseat of a car in the middle of a storm when you don’t know where you are would be enough to keep me in the car. He's probably terrified right now.”

He was lying. I knew he was lying. Justice Goode was a big, fat, horrible liar.

But if there was even a slight chance that Malachi was really here, if Goode had kidnapped him and brought him here by force, I needed to know. Maybe Goode had tied him up and gagged him and Malachi was trying to get free. My brother needed my help.

I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was a stupid thing to do, but I had to take the risk. I stared at Goode for a moment, then I made a break for the front door. If I ran, maybe he would be too slow to catch me.

I was dead wrong about that. I made it through the living room, out the door, and down the porch steps into the wind and rain before Goode caught up to me.

“You always were a gullible simpleton,” Goode sneered, making a grab for me.

I shouted and wheeled back, running from him. A tiny part of me still believed, maybe even hoped, that Malachi really was in the car, but sense told me if I got anywhere near that car, Goode would find a way to shove meinside and drive off with me. If he did that, I was certain I’d never see Fletcher or Artemis again.

I didn’t know what else to do, though. There was nowhere else to go, no neighbors or safety nearby. Even if I ran down the drive, the main road was half a mile away, and the chances of someone being out on a night like this were slim.

So I did the only thing I could think to do, I broke to the side and started running around the house. Fletcher and Artemis were in the kitchen. I could reach them through the back door.

“Oh no you don’t!” Goode called after me, swiping the air in an attempt to grab me.

I was half a second faster than him, but I knew I couldn’t outrun him for long. I slipped and slid on the overly long grass as I headed around the side of the house, my lungs instantly burning as I put all my energy into escaping.

Goode was stronger and faster than me, though. He must have known what I intended, because he raced up to me, positioning himself between me and the house.

I stopped suddenly with the intention of sprinting back the way I’d come, but I slipped in the wet grass instead. The only thing that kept me from sprawling was pure luck. Goode slipped in his effort to reach back and catch me, which was the only way I was able to avoid capture.

I raced on again, calling out, “Fletcher! Artemis!” I had no idea if they could hear me above the din of the pounding rain, though. I needed to get to the back of the house and the kitchen porch at all costs.

I got closer, but Goode was up and on my heels within seconds. Again, he blocked me from the house, forcing meto veer in the other direction. I had no choice but to run farther from the house and the men I loved.

I wailed into the rain, fear getting the better of my attempts at bravery. Everything within me shouted that I should hunker into a ball to protect the new life growing within me. Maybe if I let Goode take me and he discovered I was pregnant with Artemis’s child, he would cast me aside and this whole thing would be over.

That thought was blasted right out of my head as Goode got close enough to grab my shirt.

“No! No, get off me!” I shouted, writhing and twisting wildly as I stumbled toward the edge of the cliff. I could just barely hear the crashing of the waves against the rocks below over the rain. “Let me go!”

“Never!” Goode shouted in return. “You’re my omega, mine! I’ll teach you not to run away from me ever again. By the time I’m through with you, you’ll be begging for the release of death, and since you’ve let another man touch you, I might just oblige.”

I shouted wordlessly and squirmed for all I was worth to get away.

The exact opposite happened. Goode clamped an arm around my waist and lifted me off my feet so that I was pedaling and thrashing in the air.

I cried out in terror, but then something completely unexpected happened. The world seemed to disappear from under me and I went tumbling into the darkness. Goode’s grip around my waist loosened, then he lost me entirely as we hit something hard and cold.

“Gideon!” I heard Fletcher’s desperate cry somewhere above me.

I was convinced I’d died and was sinking into Hell.Everything seemed to be shifting and sliding around me as rain and mud pushed down on me.

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