Page 22 of Jace

“How long ago?” I asked. Behind me, Ryder was running towards the door, punching the button for the elevator. Which I should have already fucking done.

“Five minutes maybe,” one girl said.

“She won’t have gotten outside yet,” Ma said. “Everyone, calm down.”

I looked toward Dane on his mobile talking to someone, muttering, “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

“What,” I demanded. “What the fuck happened?”

The elevator arrived with a ding.

“Outside the zone,” he said. “Out the back and through the fucking gate. There’s a fucking riot down there.”

The elevator journey was an exercise in patience that I hadn’t known I possessed. We exited at the bottom into a wall of four men loading up with weapons.

“Stand down, guys,” Dane said before pulling his cell away from his ear. “She’s left the zone. Got into a car. Someone picked her up at the gates before Snake’s crew could get through.”

He flipped his cell sideways and hit play on a recording. It was grainy as fuck, but it showed the gate slamming shut, a beta with her, pulling a chain around the closed gate just as a fuck ton of alphas collided with it, nearly buckling the whole structure. A car pulled up, arms waving frantically to Sloane, then she climbed straight in. Her sister, maybe?

And the guy with her, her liberator? Art, our barman, if I recognised that mop of curly dark hair, locked the chain and then pulled a fucking gun out. He had a key for deliveries, so that part made sense.

“We had an agent for Alpha Control in our midst,” Dane snarled.

Meanwhile, inside the zone, the crowd had turned ugly, alphas driven by their animal instincts by a whiff of omega, the beta calling for backup, it appeared.

“Shit!” Ryder muttered. “That still going down?” Dane fast forwarded to the camera feed. “Nope, looks like they’ve mostly dispersed. What a fucking mess!”

My heart was pounding out of my chest. The need to fuck something or someone up battled with the calm I needed to assess the situation. “You think Snake will try to track her down?” I asked.

“Yes,” Dane said. “Fresh meat and all that. The license plates are grainy on this image, but it might’ve been clearer for anyone on the ground. If Snake had any sense during that frenzy, which he may not, he’d have clocked her plate. You need to call her and warn her.”

“Call?”

“He doesn’t have her number,” Ryder said.

“I don’t have her number,” I agreed through gritted teeth. It hadn’t been a priority when I was… “Check her ID she came in with.”

“But I’ve got something almost as good,” Ryder continued. “Her sister’s number.”

Chapter Seven

Sloane

“So, girlfriend, dish,” Jude said as he took a seat at our breakfast bar. “I want allll the details. Was he amazing? Like amazing, amazing? Like this amazing?” His hands went up, measuring a metaphorical Jace’s attributes in the air, but his eyebrows shot up when I didn’t reply. “More amazing than this? Girl, you can’t leave me hanging here like this!”

I couldn’t do this. I stood by the sink, fingers turning white against the cool metal, in a kitchen I’d rinsed more dishes in than I could decently remember, yet this was all so different. The stink of the sponge hit me. Yeah, that needed tossing, but the thought of touching its harsh plastic surface made me literally gag. The traces of detergent blasted me with a breezy artificial citrus scent, clogging my nose until I reached over and opened the small kitchen window. Even that was no help, the smog in the air, the many industrial stinks of city living hitting me like a ton of bricks. My sensitive stomach clenched hard, my hand going to my mouth before I felt the bile rise.

“I need to?—”

I sprinted from the room, flying into the toilet and dropping to my knees, then shoving the seat up before emptying the meagre contents of my gut into it.

“Shit, Sloane…”

I waved them off. Their scents, their presence, their feelings, were all too oppressive right now, and wasn’t that a worry? This was my baby sister and my best friend. Jude and I had met early on in high school and been buds forever. There had never been a time I didn’t want him around, but the little sounds of distress and concern they made, the restive shift of their bodies, it was all like nails on a chalkboard.

“She’s hungover,” Em decided. “Sloane, I’ll get you some ibuprofen and water.”

“Great, thanks,” I croaked out, not sure I’d be able to keep them down, but I needed something. I didn’t have a headache, more a whole body ache. I’d run from the zone, the memory of those alphas making my heart begin to race again, muscles tensing, which didn’t help at all. I’d hardly put in an hour of cardio, so why was everything hurting? When the two of them left, I reached up and flushed the toilet, then leaned against the wall, just for a second, then felt a hot, hot flush wash over me.

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