5. Resa

Chapter 5

Resa

I 'm not sure who's the most shocked when the drunk collapses into a heap.

My pursuers still have their hands on their guns and those are still pointed at me, so taking advantage of the drunk who stumbled into this alley to pass out isn't an option.

" Hey !" One of my pursuers nudges the drunk's shoulder with the toe of his boot.

His friend never lowers the gun aimed my way. "Leave him, Karl. He won't see a thing. We'll be good and done with our business by the time?—"

The drunk rears up and goes back to his loud singing, like someone switched off his battery and then just as suddenly switched it back on again.

"Get the fuck out of here," Karl orders, shooing him away with his free hand. Both men are visibly twitchy.

One wrong move and this drunk is paying for it with a bullet in his brain. The surprisingly handsome blond man beams at Karl, giving him a salute so sloppy he smacks himself in the head before he veers my way.

"Jusht a ssshecond…" the drunk slurs, fumbling with the front of his pants.

He doesn't seem to notice the guns my pursuers are holding. I do. It's why I have my back glued to this freezing wall.

Please tell me he is not about to do what I think he is.

I wince as I hobble-step out of his way. It's like walking on razor blades, but it's move or be mistaken for a wall and get pissed on.

At the last second, he trips and stumbles right into me, pinning me to the wall. " Uh! "

I was expecting throw up in my mouth homeless man stink. You know, BO, piss, liquor, or a disgusting combination of the three. I'm pleasantly surprised.

This beta smells of fresh lemon and musk, sweet, woodsy, and a little sharp. He's also more muscled than I was expecting, though lean, like a runner. Probably a veteran fallen on hard times. Still, that doesn't mean he has permission to piss on me.

I shove him off me, but he's like dead weight, impossible to move.

My two pursuers raise their voices, then immediately lower them. There's a reason they followed me down this alley and it has everything to do with what I did to their employer's son.

Again, I try to shove the drunk off me. "Get off ."

He isn't budging.

I'm getting ready to knee him where it hurts when he angles his head and whispers in my ear. "You feel that thing poking your thigh, beautiful? I need you to put your hand?—"

My god, this day just keeps on giving.

I swear the sound of my spine stiffening echoes down the alley as I hiss, "Are you fucking kidding me?"

My two pursuers take a step toward me, raising their guns.

The drunk continues in an inaudible murmur. "It's not what you?—"

"I don't want to know about your boner ," I snap, and my two pursuers snort out a laugh, the tension leaving their bodies as they amble toward me. "And if you think I'm touching it, you have another thing coming."

The drunk's tropical sea-storm blue eyes are suddenly not the least bit drunk. They're amused. "I have a literal gun in my pocket I'm eager to use on those two fools blocking the alley. Pull it out, put it in my right hand, then drop and cover your ears. Bessy, my Beretta, is a loud bitch and you'll be up close to her. Got all that?"

He says it quietly, and he speaks fast. I struggle to believe it, but I get it.

Which is when I realize he's not a nut-job looking for a hand-job. This guy is serious.

"You name your gun?" I speak in a whisper as my two pursuers close the distance.

"I do. Time's running out."

I know that. We're both liable to wind up with holes in our heads and our bodies in the stinking dumpster if we don't act soon.

"Which pocket?"

"Left."

"Mine or yours?"

"Yours."

I give it a quick, delicate pat. It doesn't feel like his cock, but I'm not eager to stick my hand in a strange man's pocket. "Why can't you do it?"

"Can't without them seeing me."

My pursuers' eyes narrow with suspicion. Probably because I've stopped shoving this pretend drunk off me.

They slow their steps.

"What's he saying?" the shaved haired guy who has at no point lowered his weapon calls out.

"You don't want to know," I mutter, rolling my eyes.

And if you did, you wouldn't believe me.

Karl chuckles. "Hey, drunk guy! Find some other wall to piss on. Or a woman to fuck. This one is ours."

I bite back my complaint. If things go the way I hope they might, I won't have to worry about them for long.

"You ready?" I whisper. I'm not sure I am.

"Just waitin' on you to put your hands on the goods, beautiful." Pretend drunk grins.

"You're making me want to punch you," I warn him.

"And you pouting like that makes me not mind if you did." His eyes sparkle as he winks.

We are literally about to die, and he thinks now is the time to flirt.

He also wasn't lying about what was in his pocket.

Everything happens fast.

Within seconds of slapping the gun into his palm, I drop, hands over my ears. By the time my ass hits my heels, two men are down, a gun is smoking and this beta with the cheeky wink is offering me his left hand. "Your chariot awaits, my lady."

I tell myself he's lucky with his shots. He couldn't have had time to aim with how fast he spun.

It's only when he escorts me past the two bodies and I get a good look at the holes in the middle of their foreheads that I realize this guy doesn't just know what he's doing. He's a professional. Or he must be. Ordinary people do not make extraordinary shots like that.

We leave the alley behind us, and I lower my head when the few people on the street turn our way.

I'm scratched up from tackling a tree. My right sleeve is hanging off my shoulder, and the soles of my feet burn as I try desperately not to hobble.

The beta with the ability to make impossible shots tucked his gun back into his pocket while I wasn't paying attention. His left palm is a little calloused—from target practice, maybe?—but his grip is loose as he steers me down the street.

"Aren't you worried about being arrested?" I speak out the side of my mouth, hoping to hell I'm imagining the suspicious glances cast my way.

" Arrested ?" he echoes in a voice so innocent I don't buy it for a second. "Whatever for?"

It's strange, but pretend drunk guy is different.

He tucked his shirt into his pants and raked a hand through his blond hair. Even his expression is more… or less distant. He's a taller, more put together version of the man he was seconds before.

Someone gasps behind me and I instinctively turn around.

"Don't," he says quietly, stopping me. He slides his arm around my shoulder and draws me close. I get another good serving of musk, clean lemon and raw masculinity. "We're just two beautiful people on our way home from a date."

Has he seen the way my sleeve is hanging off my dress?

But he's right to have stopped me from peering over my shoulder. Someone would have heard the gunshots and wondered about the black truck with its engine running at the end of the alley. Whoever gasped couldn't have found the bodies.

At least, not yet.

Two bodies in an alley is definitely going to cause more of a scream than a gasp.

"Which way?" I speak out of the side of my mouth.

"We don't need anyone connecting what happened in the alley with us. This way, beautiful."

We cross the street.

Stepping down onto the road from the sidewalk is killer on my feet. But stepping up on the other side?

My eyes water as my feet scream. I'm approaching the point I wish someone would roll me down the street so I never have to take another step again in my life.

Just get through tonight, Resa.

"I can carry you," he offers, but he doesn't push.

"I'm fine," I lie and start walking again.

That's why a beta will always be preferable to an alpha. Alphas bulldoze, betas know how to listen.

"What happened?" he asks, nodding at my feet.

"You wouldn't believe me."

I feel him look at me, but he doesn't ask again. For that, I'm eternally grateful. Trying to focus on conversation as I hobble down the street is not easy.

He overtakes me, turning right into a parking lot, and leads the way toward a black jeep. As he digs a set of keys out of his pocket, I ask myself what the hell I'm doing following a man I don't know into his car. Yes, he's a beta and not a predatory alpha, but he's a stranger. A literal stranger.

Feet from his car, I stop.

He peers over his shoulder, his lips curving into a smile. "Ah. I forgot to tell you my name, didn't I? It's Vaughn. Vaughn Potter. You ready to get somewhere safe?"

That safe place was back down the street. "I was going to Ever Safe."

I'm still not sure I can find true safety in a free heat clinic with owners who profess to give a shit about omegas, but it has to be safer than climbing into a strange man's car. Right?

He nods, not rushing me when he should be. He just shot two men in the head. Hanging around can't be a good idea for either of us. Yet here we are, standing in a dimly lit parking lot in the middle of the night.

"It's not safe." He pauses. "At least, not for you right now."

I don't know why my safety is so important to this beta when I'm as much of a stranger to him as he is to me. Which is when something occurs to me now I'm no longer staring down the barrel of a gun. Or two, in my case.

I thought Vaughn was on his way to pissing on me. I stepped aside, but he stumbled right into me, and I can only think of one reason he would have done that.

"You were protecting me with your body," I realize.

His expression is serious as he peers down at me. "They had their weapons pointed at you. Yes, I could have maybe taken them out before they got a shot off, but my way meant you wouldn't wind up with a stray bullet taking you out first."

So instead, he put himself in the firing line. Literally.

Then I hear it. The sound is faint but unmistakable. Police sirens approaching.

"Where is the safe place you had in mind?" I ask.

His cheek dimples. "You see, beautiful, I happen to be in the security business, and my pack is the best in the city."

"I don't believe you."

He walks over to his car and opens the passenger door, leaning in to grab something from the center console. I try not to notice his ass, but the guy is hanging out of his car right in front of me.

He slides back out and hands me a business card I can barely read.

I squint. "Lucas Security?"

It looks official, but anyone can make a business card these days. All you need is card stock, a printer, and an idea for a logo. Any fool could do it. As I focus on Vaughn Potter, I don't think he's any fool.

I chew on my lip as I consider my options.

I've never heard of Lucas Security, but just because I haven't doesn't mean they don't exist. I need to be off the street. What better place to hide out than with a guy who won't hesitate to blow Nathaniel Lang's security staff away?

Not a hint of stress makes it to his handsome face as police sirens scream our way. He just waits for me to decide if I trust him, or I don't. It's what finally motivates me into the car. This man just killed two others to save me. If the cops find him, he'll spend the rest of his life rotting in a cell and that's a fate only alphas deserve.

I pass the card back and hobble over to the passenger seat. Vaughn steps aside, holding the door as he waits for me to slide in. He slams the door shut with a flourish, reminding me of his earlier promise that my chariot awaits.

A dark green Jeep driven by a guy who pretended to be drunk.

Some chariot, I mentally snort.

I buckle my seatbelt as he rounds the car and climbs into the driver's seat.

He starts the engine and pulls out, snapping his seatbelt with one hand as he pauses at the mouth of the parking lot. "You didn't tell me your name."

He turns left, away from the alley. Out of the corner of my eye, neon lights flash rapidly.

Recalling Vaughn's earlier warning, I don't look that way. The last thing I need is to make eye contact with a cop, so I focus on the beta pulling into the road. "I appreciate you stepping in to help me, but?—"

"You're looking to get out at the first opportunity?" he interrupts.

I nod.

He drives for the next minute in silence. It's late, the roads are mostly empty, so the only thing that stops us is a red light as we leave downtown behind us.

His cell phone vibrates. He fishes it out of his center console, taps out a quick text, and tosses it back before he looks at me. "You don't have to tell me anything, or even your name."

"I sense a but coming," I guess.

His lip quirks in a smile as he darts a rapid glance my way. "Right now, the safest place in the city is with my pack."

"And your pack has an alpha?" I know they do.

Alphas make a pack and only an alpha leads it. Some have one or two. Others more, but one is always more dominant than the rest. The true leader. I don't smell alpha pheromones on Vaughn, so he and his alpha must not be lovers.

If they are lovers or not lovers, if they like each other or only barely tolerate each other means nothing to me. Alphas hold the same appeal as a soak in a pool filled with piranhas, and if I had a choice, I'd take the flesh-eating fish any day of the week.

The lights change. Vaughn doesn't seem to notice.

"Garrison is the boss. Blaine is…" His easy going expression turns inscrutable. "Blaine is Blaine. You'll be safe."

I look out the window as sarcasm makes my words sharper than I intend. "What omega wouldn't be safe with an alpha?"

I'm expecting an old, beige colored office building tucked down one of the city's side streets.

In my mind, someone who works security wears coffee-stained shirts, an open shirt with no tie, and is bleary-eyed from surveilling cheating husbands and wives. It's an oddly specific view that makes me wonder if I haven't watched too much daytime TV.

Vaughn tears through the dark city, winding his way through them to leafy streets where mansions tower behind tall iron gates. Lucas Security, it seems, has done well for themselves. And clearly, there must be more to private security than I thought.

"Just how rich is your pack?" I ask as he pulls to a stop at a black iron gate that doesn't give me even a peep of the mansion it protects.

He rolls his window down to tap a code in a keypad. "We don't starve."

The gates slide open, and I nearly swallow my tongue as a stark white mansion looms ahead of me. Literally looms like a big fat moon in the sky. It is fucking huge . If anything could've convinced me Vaughn did not make his business card with card stock, this would do it.

"Holy shit," I breathe, sitting forward in my seat.

"So maybe we do a little better than not starving," Vaughn laughs as he resumes driving while the gate closes with a quiet snick behind us. "But I wanted to impress you. You like it?"

Do I like the big fancy mansion with the security gate and a keypad that means Nathaniel Lang can't send O'Brien to sneak an attack on me?

I feel like I just stepped into a castle with a moat and someone drew up the drawbridge.

"It's okay, I guess. Must cost a lot to heat a house that big."

He barks out a laugh at my lie. Still smiling, he parks right in front of the house beside a Hummer that looks like a tank. "I think I like you. Come on in and meet everyone."

He's out of the car and holding my door open before I've unbuckled my seatbelt.

I take one step out. The soles of my burning feet demand to know what the fuck I'm doing as I sway, catching myself on the open door.

"Want me to carry you?" Vaughn offers.

I shake my head. "I'm okay."

That's a lie. I'm secretly holding out for someone to appear with a wheelchair, a stretcher, anything that means I never have to take another step again in my life.

"Well, if you change your mind…" He steps aside.

I hobble toward the mansion's black front door where I hope the alphas I'm about to come face to face with are old and gray with no interest in omegas. That they send Vaughn out to do their detective work because they're too fat and lazy to leave their fancy mansion.

The odds are in my favor. To live in a mansion this big, they must be fifty or sixty years old to have had time to accumulate such wealth.

But it's too late to ask Vaughn what they look like now he's pushed the front door open, which, don't they lock the door or do they just count on that big iron gate to keep people out?

I shiver as I hobble into a house a few degrees cooler than I was expecting. Not uncomfortable, but noticeable.

"This way," Vaughn says, skirting around me and leading us past dark rooms to the one brightly lit off the entryway.

I step into a black and white kitchen.

Neither of the two men standing beside a gray granite island are fat, old, or ugly.

They are the most attractive men I've ever seen in my life.

Their nostrils flare as I grind to a screaming halt just inside the kitchen doorway.

Both are dark-haired, in their late twenties or thirties, with the heavy muscles that mark them out as alphas. And they must be over 6'3 to tower over my 5'4 height the way they do.

The alpha wearing a turtleneck shirt with black-rimmed glasses has green eyes and a burn on his right cheek. Sandalwood, pine, and rich vanilla tempts me to crawl into his arms and press my nose to his throat.

The other is bigger, taller, slightly older, with pretty hazel eyes flecked with amber. His scent slams into me. Cedar, wood-smoke, and leather is so potent; it's a combination of scents I never knew I needed in my life.

I want to lap up their scents and go back for seconds, thirds, fourths, and it still wouldn't be enough. From their hungry inhalations, they must be experiencing an equally powerful response to my scent. What it means floods my body with so much panic, I'd run if I thought my feet could handle moving that fast.

This cannot be happening. I refuse to let this happen.

I back up a step, already shaking my head. " No . Absolutely the fuck not."

"What do you m…" Vaughn's voice trails off. His eyes bounce between me and the staring alphas. When he speaks, he sounds tense and strangely hesitant. "If I were to put two and two together, what would I get?"

You'd get an omega who just came face to face with her scent matches.