But this was my life, my body, and it had nothing to do with any of them anymore, so I pulled my hands in, jerked my clothes back where they were supposed to be, and then I stood tall, facing down their collective gaze—one which was going to be added to in moments.
“What the fuck…?” Ryan came closer, then Colt, and the four of them blocked out whatever was happening behind them, and for good reason.
I jumped when I heard a dull thud, quickly followed by a yelp of pain, then another.
“No,” I said, but it made no fucking difference. Fen Vanguard was beating the shit out of Clayton, and for what? “No,” I said, much more firmly, shoving at their chests, clawing at the wall of muscle that kept me pinned where I was. “No!” I raked my nails across skin, slashed at clothes, becoming a wild thing now, because each cry of pain felt like my own, even as I felt a rush of guilt because Clayton was the one hurting, not me. “Fen!” I threw all of my breath, spirit, power into my voice. “Fen Vanguard, you got a problem, you sort it out with me!”
“What an excellent idea,” Haze rumbled, grabbing my wrists, showing me exactly how fucking powerless I was. He stretched them up over my head, gripping them in one hand as he took in the way my body was forced to elongate.
“Why does she smell like that?” Ryan asked, his head tilting, his voice completely transfigured, as were his mannerisms. He sniffed the air the way the neighbour’s dog did when a bitch went into heat.
“Fuck…” Colt hissed, shoving his way closer to the sound of his brothers’ rumbles of discontent. “Riley…” He sucked breaths in with rapid pants, but that just made things worse, so much worse. The muscles in his face tensed and smoothed, then began to shift in a way that I’d only seen in video footage.
“Colt…” I was going for soothing now, all challenge gone, because somehow, Colt was right on the edge of shifting.
And so were his brothers.
The sounds of pain died away as Fen shoved his way through the group, taking up a position front and centre. He grinned then, a sharp, savage thing, made worse by the splash of blood across his knuckles, one that was smeared across his face seconds later.
“Baby girl, you been holding out on us?” he asked, but it was evidently a rhetorical thing. I couldn’t breathe, despite the fact my chest was heaving, because his foot slid out, wedging between mine, then forcing them wide, creating a space he stepped right into, hoisting me up and into his arms, my legs wrapping around his waist on reflex.
No, no, that wasn’t what I wanted, but any ideas otherwise were quickly silenced as I was slammed into the side of Clayton’s car.
Clayton!
I thrashed in earnest then, but what luck would a single beta have against five fucking alphas, especially when they all surged in? Hands wrapped around my wrists, held them pressed against the cool steel of the car, kept me utterly pinned for what was to come.
I’d spent my whole life wanting this, wanting Fen Vanguard to look at me like I hung the fucking moon and I was a delicious treat, ready to be consumed, so I wondered who the hell I’d pissed off that it was all coming true like this.Contusions, my mind pointed out accusingly.Concussion, a fractured skull.It was creating a laundry list of all the possible ways Clayton could be hurt, seriously hurt, for being stupid enough to cop a feel of me.
“You need to let me go!” I snarled then, my own voice distorting to a growl in that moment.
At that, the five of them went still, so very still, and then Fen grinned.
“Oh, I don’t think we will.” He leant in, slowly, slowly, but there was no point in prolonging shit. I was utterly at their mercy, and they knew it, which of course meant that this was deliberate. Fen was playing with me like I was an omega, the power dynamic between the two designations all part of their savage foreplay.
But I was a fucking beta.
“I-I’m not the one for you,” I stammered out. “I’m not an omega, I’m a beta.”
“No…” Colt crooned, his face losing all its usual world-weary cool and becoming something much more feral. “Not smelling like that, you aren’t.”
“You’re the one.” Blake’s head jerked like it’d been slapped, but he recovered way too quickly. “All this time, and you’re—”
“What the fuck are you doing to that beta?”
And just when I thought things couldn’t get worse, everyone’s heads snapped around at the sound of an alpha bark.
The Williams pack stood there, only four of them, but they had several years of strength, height, and muscle on the Vanguards and they knew it. Keith Williams, the unofficial leader, stepped forward, his boots planted firmly apart, his arms crossing a massive chest.
“Is this what the famed Vanguard pack does? Attacking beta guys when they’re on a date and sexually assaulting beta girls?”
None of this was for my benefit or Clayton’s, but I managed to find a silver lining in it. I was free, sliding down the car when they wrenched themselves away from me to face the Williams pack, then crawling free through their suddenly tensed legs.
“Shit, Clayton…” I hissed, scooping him up and then using my top to wipe the blood trickling from his eyebrow.
“Fuck, Riley…” he said, pushing at me weakly. “I can’t be seen with you. I thought they were done, that they’d be finding their omega—”
“We have,” Ryan said in a deathly serious tone, growling at the two of us. I got to my feet, then slung Clayton’s arm around my shoulder, despite his complaints, and hauled him out of the way, the crowds only willing to take him from me when I’d gotten well out of range.