Page 59 of Into the Fire: Before

I shook my head. I didn’t know. That was part of what scared me. This wasn’t some crime of convenience, someone breaking into an apartment and finding a beautiful omega waiting. Someone had chosen this apartment. Snuck their way inside, ready to restrain her. My eyes fluttered closed as images of what could’ve happened had I convinced myself I was overreacting and backed away flooded my mind. It turned my stomach.

Brooks came over then, crouching down like Lin, water-lined eyes turned toward Taryn. “Hey, precious,” he whispered, moving in closer. “Can I look at that bruise, love?”

Only then did I notice darkness blooming at her temple, half hidden by her hair. Red tinted my vision for a moment, but I tamped it down. I turned my face back so I could take a deep breath of her scent. Not as bitter as before, but still nowhere close to her baseline. I gave the nape of her neck what I hoped was a reassuring rub. “Let’s make sure you’re all right, Omega,” I said quietly, trying to nudge her face forward toward Brooks. She only burrowed further into my chest with a whine that tore at my heart.

Lin and Brooks shared a grim look, first with each other, then with me. “Have you called the police?” Lin asked softly.

I shook my head. It’d been all I could do to call him, to get someone else here to help make sure she was safe, to figure out what had happened.

Brooks sighed. He held out a folded stack of crumpled papers roughly the size of my phone. “Well, this will complicate things. Found it on the floor.”

He pulled out one sheet, a folded print-out with four photos of Taryn, all clearly taken without her knowledge, all showing different angles of her face and body, two with hair up and twowith hair down, one with sunglasses. Days and times were jotted down in the margins.

“Fuck,” Lin muttered, taking the stack from Brooks.

A sick feeling creeped through my stomach. Confirmation of what I’d already suspected. “This wasn’t random. Someone chose her.”

Fifteen

Caine

IfIhadimaginedbringing Taryn into our pack apartment before, it would’ve been nothing like the reality now playing out.

The police had come and finally gone. They hadn’t gotten much from Taryn, who wouldn’t leave my arms or speak. It had taken all my remaining energy to keep my alpha at bay with them, still close to the edge as he was. Lin and Brooks had relayed as much as they could and given the cops promises that Taryn would go into the station the next day for a better report.

Brea was frantic. The bus line had fallen behind and she was stuck at campus. Lin had left as soon as the officers did to pick her up. Brooks was downstairs in the girls’ apartment, gathering a few necessities because over my dead body were either of them staying in that place.

Only Taryn and I remained in our apartment, huddled together on the brown leather couch. My mind was at war with my alpha. My mind wanted to relish this time with her, because the moment Brea arrived my role in comforting her would bethrough. My alpha raged against the idea ofanyonepulling her from my arms. And my mind hit back again, insisting that there was nothing to relish because this wasn’t my omega and never would be and I didn’t even want her to be anyway and thus the ability to hold her or not hold her was moot.

I expected a migraine to appear any moment.

Fuck you, mind.

My hand stroked Taryn’s hair, my other arm tightening around her. My eyes drifted shut as I planted my nose at the crown of her head and took another hit of her scent. I pumped out as much alpha pheromone as I could for her, hoping it would further soothe her omega.

The door swung open behind us without warning. Taryn flinched, and I tensed until I caught three familiar scents.

“Taryn?” Brea called out in a shaky voice.

A high-pitched whine broke from Taryn, and Brea rounded the corner. She spared barely a glance for me as she sat on the couch next to us. “Taryn, baby?”

She’d barely gotten the words out before the omega lunged from my arms to Brea’s. Her own alpha’s. She twined her arms around Brea’s neck, whining and burying her nose against the female alpha the way she had in mine.

I clenched my jaw. I had no right feeling jealous or territorial. Taryn wasn’t my omega. This was what she needed to calm, to feel secure. Her alpha. The one bonded to her, the one she’d chosen. The one she loved. Who loved her.

Brea ran her hands along the omega’s body as though detecting for invisible injuries. Tears streamed down the alpha’s face. She turned her face and kissed the omega’s temple.

Only then did she look up to me. “Thank you,” she whispered. I only nodded. I had yet to see Brea look so shaken, so vulnerable. Fragile, even. For weeks, that had been me. It was a strange reversal.

Clearing my throat, I made to stand. Brooks and Lin could get them situated in the guest room. Or maybe even their room. Either was fine with me, so long as I didn’t have to wrestle with my alpha to pull the omega back into my arms.

But as I shifted forward, a hand reached out toward me. Fingers closed around my wrist. Held on tight.

Taryn’s. Taryn’s hand gripped my arm, even as she kept her other hooked around Brea, her face turned into the woman’s neck. I felt her still-raw fear in that grip, an energy vibrating from her to me.

She wanted me…tostay.

I met Brea’s gaze, a question in mine. A plea. She pressed her lips together—an emotional response, but not an angry one, I didn’t think—and nodded. I scooted closer so I could wrap my arms around them both. I pressed my forehead to the back of the omega’s head, breathed her in. That beautiful too-faint toffee scent. It mingled with Brea’s notes of vanilla, and my head spun at the combination.

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