I whimper as another wave of heat crashes through me, arching my back involuntarily. My nipples are so sensitive they hurt where they brush against the blanket. Every nerve ending is on fire, begging for relief. For a knot. Any knot.
The thought makes bile rise in my throat.
Ren came for me. He was there. He found me.
The image of him strapped to that chair burns behind my eyelids. Bloody. Bruised. But alive. Fighting.
Was. Past tense.
Because now he’s?—
I can’t complete the thought. Can’t face what I know happened after that door closed. The two alphas with their gas masks. Heath’s orders. Cold. Make sure nothing is left.
A sob rises in my chest, but I swallow it down. I won’t give Caldwell the satisfaction of seeing me break.
“Getting worse, isn’t it?” Caldwell observes, leaning forward. The motion wafts his scent toward me—expensive cologne trying to mask something rotten underneath. “The heat. Your first one. And just for me, my sweet thing.”
I turn my face away, pressing my cheek against the cool window. The glass fogs instantly from my overheated skin.
“Look at me when I speak to you, omega.”
The alpha command slides into my brain like a knife, forcing my head to turn despite my resistance. Caldwell smiles, satisfied by my involuntary compliance.
“Better. We’ll need to work on your manners, but there’s time for that. We have all the time in the world now.”
His words make my skin crawl. All the time in the world because no one is coming for me. Because Ren is?—
Another surge of heat, stronger than before. I gasp, my back arching, legs parting without my permission. The blanket slips, exposing me from the waist down.
Caldwell’s eyes darken as he stares at me, at the slick glistening on my inner thighs. He wets his lips, his breath quickening.
“Jesus,” he mutters, shifting in his seat, adjusting himself through his expensive trousers. “I’m a man of patience, omega. But you test my limits.” His jaw clenches, his rod jerking against the tent it’s created in his pants. I want to vomit. “I need a taste.”
“Sir,” the beta driver warns, glancing in the rearview mirror. “Widow said it was best to wait until we reach?—”
“I don’t give a damn what Veyra said,” Caldwell snaps. “I paid for this little slut. She’s mine now.”
He slides from his seat to the floor of the van, kneeling between my spread thighs. His hands—cold, so cold against my burning skin—grip my knees, pushing them wider.
“Just a little taste,” he murmurs, more to himself than to me. “Just to take the edge off.”
Through the haze of heat, revulsion rises in my chest. His touch—it’s wrong. Everything about him is wrong. Not my alpha. Not my pack.
I try to close my legs, but he forces them apart, his strength overwhelming. And I’m weak. The heat makes my legs feel like jelly.
“Stop,” I manage, the word barely audible.
Caldwell ignores me, his gaze fixed between my thighs. “Beautiful,” he breathes. “Pink and perfect and so goddamn wet.”
He lowers his head, and in that moment, clarity cuts through the fog of heat and drugs. This man—this monster—is responsible foreverything. He and Heath. They took me. They have Ren’s blood on their hands.
Ren is dead because of them.
The thought hits me like a punch in the face, crystallizing all my scattered emotions into one white-hot point of rage.
With strength drawn from somewhere deep within me, I jerk my hips away, sliding off the seat and onto the floor of the van. Caldwell’s fingers graze me as I move, gathering some of my slick. He looks surprised for a moment, then annoyed.
“Playing hard to get?” he snorts, bringing his fingers to his mouth. His eyes flutter closed as he tastes me, a groan escaping his throat. “Sweet. I’ve never tasted one quite like you before, and that’s saying something. I’ve had many.” His gaze rakes over me, lingering on my curves. “I knew you’d be juicy. Those extra pounds serve you well.”