Which was when they decided to appear.
“Well, well, what do we have here?”
They were like feral cats, appearing from the shadows, leaping over my bench, only to take a seat on either side of me. I took in the tall young men, the brightly coloured tracksuits, and instantly went to get to my feet, but big hands dragged me back down as one guy took position before me, feet positioned wide, one hand wrapped around his other wrist. He grinned, his fangs gleaming in the sun as he looked me up and down.
“You smell tasty.”
I jerked away as the guy sitting on my right purred that in my ear, only for all three of them to start cackling.
“Doesn’t she just?” the guy in front of me said, his head tipping to one side as he stared at me with now silver eyes.
“Shit…!”
I went to get up, to get away, to cry out, but his smile faded, his voice full of alpha command as he barked at me, “Sit. Stay, omega.”
Fuck me if my body didn’t do exactly as he commanded, my every muscle trembling in protest, but he didn’t say remain still. I stared into his silvery eyes as my thumb moved, unlocking my phone and then tapping on one of those notifications, hoping to bring Max or Lucien’s number up.
“Free range omegas? Thought you pretties were all locked down tight in hick towns or kept in pretty cages for rich alphas to play with.”
Was that what Lucien and his brothers had intended for me? I couldn’t spend too much time considering that threat, not when there was a very real, very present one right in front of me.
“And what did you have in mind?” I asked sharply, looking from one man to the other.
You could tell they were brothers. They could’ve been triplets, each one sporting a shaggy mullet that young guys seemed obsessed with, and the only thing that differentiated them was the rings in their eyebrows or lips.
“Lush little bitch like you…?” The leader let his eyes slide down my body. “Maybe we’ll let you run, give you a head start, before we hunt you down.”
“Fuck yeah…” said the one on the left, grinding his hand down on his junk.
God… I felt a wave of revulsion rise and rise, threatening to make me sick.
“Or we could—”
“Sage?” a tiny voice said, barely audible from my phone. “Sage, is that you? Where are you? Sage?”
My phone was plucked from my fingers by the guy on the right, the screen consulted for a second before it was thrown away, smashing down onto the concrete some metres from our bench. People turned around at the sight of it, and I stared at them, willing them to come closer, to find out what the hell was going on, a scream building in my throat.
“Don’t.”
His alpha bark ruled out everything, clamping down on me and my reactions in a way I’d never fucking experienced. It was like all that was Sage was trapped inside me, tamped down and left screaming, because my body wouldn’t. I tried, a muffled whine escaping me, but that just got the guys laughing.
“Smelled you some blocks away,” the leader said. “Let my boys know there was a tasty treat roaming around the city centre, unescorted. Followed that damn fucking scent of yours all the way here, to our playground. Now, you’re gonna come with us. We’ve never had an omega to play with, and the betas we hook up with always scream when we force them to take our knots…”
He was like some fucking Bond villain doing his monologue, reciting all of his petty and not so petty crimes, but as I shrank back into my seat, the two other alphas shuffling in closer, choking me with a scent of burning plastic and petrol, the cavalry arrived.
I just never expected it to be Beau.
He appeared in the park looking less like a male model and more like a feral animal.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!”
His voice lashed every one of us, reverberating through the park, getting the attention of people walking by, forcing them to stop, some pulling their phones out.
“Who the fuck do you—?”
The leader didn’t get to complete the sentence as Beau drove his fist into the other alpha’s jaw, sending him flying. The young fellas beside me leapt to their feet, but Beau turned on them with a snarl.
“GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM MY OMEGA!”