Page 25 of The Brooding Alpha's Mate
There were sounds of war from all kinds of animals. Lions. Tigers. Bears. Wolves. Dragonfire exploded and burned entire houses after they were cleared out.
“We found them,” Hammer said, running to the SUVs. “There are so many. We need help.”
He got on his phone and called Gray, his mate, Sloan, and Hutch, the other alphas’ omegas, and told them to bring more vans and car seats. There were so many kids being held. We’d never seen anything of this magnitude.
“What can I do?” I asked.
“You’ve done well, Colson. Really. Without you, we wouldn’t be rescuing all these people.” Hammer turned around. “Oh, and we found Chad. Here he comes now.”
In the distance, Tyrus walked with Chad. He looked worse for the wear. I hoped they didn’t take my leaving out on him. When he got close, he sprinted toward me and we hugged for a long time.
“Thank you for coming back for us. All of us.”
“Alex.” I turned to my mate. “This is Chad. Chad, this is Alex, my alpha. My mate.”
The aftermath took longer than the battle, but I soon noticed something missing. “Where’s Dean?” I asked everyone.
“We didn’t find anyone named Dean,” Maverick said. He was back on two legs since most of the danger had passed.
“Are you sure? He’s the alpha. He’s the mane lion. Get it?” I laughed, but everyone else took a minute. “Sorry, that was weird. But he runs the show. Are you sure you didn’t see him?” Tears flowed down my face thinking that Dean had gotten away. To be honest, I wished he had been captured so I could at least punch him in the face once. That would’ve been nice.
“He’s gone,” Caleb, one of the other lions said. “Fucking coward.”
No honor amongst thieves.
Also, Caleb got knocked out by Alex for even speaking to me. That was kind of fun to watch. “Let’s focus on the kids and omegas now. Let’s get loaded up. King and Aziz, let’s do one last sweep of the place. We don’t want any little ones or omegas being left behind in this godsforsaken place.”
The lion and the hyena filed out on Hammer’s orders while the rest of us got to work. Because despite their reputation, this pack or this group of vigilantes weren’t about killing or violence. They were about saving omegas and children who were abused and trafficked and sold like imports and exports instead of people.
Once everyone was accounted for, we loaded up the vehicles and headed back home.
Home. I never thought I’d get to say that again.
Alex was unharmed for the most part, and we’d rescued so many people of all ages.
Today was a good day.
Chapter Fourteen
Alex
The rescue mission had gone well…almost too well. We went and found who we were looking for and got them out with everyone safe. We should be celebrating, but I couldn’t. Not with the largest of loose ends still flapping in the wind.
Dean was still at large. He had zero regard for the law, or human or shifter life, and had a violent streak of proportions I could never understand. My bear was so far from docile. I’d been known to bleed out a few shifters in my day, but my bloodthirst was nothing like his. And the bull’s-eye he was currently aiming for was my mate.
I wasn’t going to rest easy until he was gone from this earth. And while my bear wanted to be the one to do it, my human half didn’t care as long as he was dead and buried. No, not buried. He didn’t deserve that respect.
It terrified me that Dean was so focused on my mate, and all of our intel said that he was. Not only that he lost what he called property, but he also lost face after not being able to deliver him to another, losing a man in the process. To someone like Dean, that made my mate enemy number one.
And all of that was before we took his business from him. Things we’re going to get bad and quick if we didn’t find him soon. If it were up to me, we’d already be scouring the world for him, not resting until he took his last breath. It wasn’t up to me though, and the plan was only half enacted. We couldn’t stop now.
All of us from the team were watching on computer monitors as the financial takedown took place in real life. The money didn’t come out in one chunk; that would get flagged according to the conversations we’ve had. There were so manydays I felt completely ready to be an active part of this team…going on missions and doing the good work.
And then there were days like today when I didn’t even fully understand the plan, much less be able to help form the details of it. It was moments like this when I realized that delivery duty was where I belonged…at least for now.
Watching it go from more money than I’d ever heard of, down to zero and then being redistributed to nonprofits that helped omegas, both shifter and human alike, felt amazing. No one was going to be able to slide in and take over the pride. There was nothing left there.
I wished my mate could’ve been by my side, watching his abuser lose everything in real time, but when all of the omegas and babies and slaves were brought back to the warehouse, Colson had wanted to stay with the other mates and help get everybody situated.
