Chapter 10

Samson

Everyone one of my instincts screamed "Wrong!" at me as I walked Ari through the forest, back to his camp and back to his terrible, unfulfilling life. My inner alpha was in full rebellion, growling and thrashing and snarling, "Mine! My omega! My child!" The farther we walked, the worse it got.

Honestly, it was unnerving. I've never felt anything even close to that level of possessiveness and protectiveness before. Something was definitely going on that went beyond having a great time with a fantasy. It went beyond knowing I'd impregnated Ari, too, though I was waiting for him to say something about the baby before I brought it up and risked looking like an idiot.

I could feel Ari's emotions. As we walked through the forest, I could feel his low-level panic and his despair. I could feel those things and more in ways that took me completely by surprise.

I knew what that meant, too. Ari and I were forming a bond, if we hadn't completely formed it already. I wondered if he realized that was what had happened. I didn't have the first clue what we were going to do about that either. If we really had bonded, then me walking Ari back to his camp was pointless. He wouldn't be able to leave me, and I wouldn't be able to let him leave. The new bond would cause too much pain for both of us as it was stretched.

I was sort of hoping all of that would come out into the open without either of us having to awkwardly broach the subject once Ari tried to get in his car and drive away. As it turned out, that wasn't going to be an option, one way or another.

"Where's my car?" Ari asked, fear pulsing through him.

He broke away from me, charging into the camp as though the car, or maybe some answers, would appear.

"Slow down," I warned, stepping after him. "We don't know what's happened here. Treat it as a crime scene for now, and don't touch anything."

Ari pulled up just as he reached the edge of his campsite and turned back to me. The worry and uncertainty in his eyes hit me like a fist in the chest. I could feel it so strongly my hands started to shake. I balled them into fists and threw caution to the wind and sent calm and reassurance through our fledgling bond.

A jolt of shock and Ari's intake of breath told me he felt it…and was unnerved. The bond was the least of our worries at the moment, though.

I reached Ari's side at the edge of the campsite and held my hand out to keep him from moving forward. "It could have been an animal," I said, not believing that myself.

The campsite had definitely been ransacked. The chair Ari had been sitting in when I'd jumped out of the trees and surprised him had been toppled. The tent was ripped in a few places. A backpack that Ari must have brought with him had been upended and its contents scattered through the site.

"Did you have any ID with you?" I asked, my alpha rebelling at the idea of anything that could identify my omega being found.

Ari shook his head, then answered, "No. I didn't think it would be a good idea."

I let out a breath of relief. My omega was a smart one.

"I mean, except the car," he added with an uncomfortable shrug. When I glanced to him, he said, "It was my car. Registered under my name."

He blinked, glanced back to the empty space where the car had been, and said, "Actually, no. I'm pretty sure the car is registered under my father's name. If someone were to run the plates, it would come back as his. I don't think my name is attached to it at all."

From the rush of emotion that followed, I gathered not having anything under his name was something that hurt Ari. That was definitely something I wanted to deal with, but not now.

I nodded. "Right. There are a couple possibilities here," I said. "Its possible that someone was roaming the forest and stumbled across your car and campsite. They saw it as easy pickings, looked for cash, then took the keys and stole your car."

Ari nodded, letting out a relieved breath.

I hated saying it, but I had to. "Or someone knew you were here, went looking for you, didn't find you, and took your car to leave you vulnerable."

I felt the shiver that passed through Ari. "I don't like that possibility," he said in a thick voice. He rested a hand on his stomach, but I wasn't sure he was aware of the gesture.

"Until we know more, don't worry too hard," I said, taking a risk and resting a hand on his shoulder.

Ari glanced anxiously up at me, but he didn't flinch away. That was another sign he was pregnant. Post-heat aversion could last for days, except with the alpha who had impregnated the omega, or if the couple had bonded. In those cases, the aversion to touch was fleeting. After that, the omega took great comfort from their alpha touching them.

"Don't worry," I told Ari again, testing my theory by pulling him into my arms and closing him in a tight embrace. "It's probably nothing."

Ari let out a breath and pressed his cheek into my chest, eyes closed.

Yep. Pregnant and bonded.

Major, major problem.

I gently pushed Ari away, brushing a hand over the side of his face and sending comfort through our fledgling bond.

"Let's look around," I told him. "Don't touch anything, but look for anything that doesn't belong to you or any marks or tracks that might indicate whether one person did this or several."

Ari nodded, his confidence growing. "I guess you used to do this kind of thing all the time as a cop," he said.

"Actually, yes," I told him, smiling. "A lot of missing persons cases begin with scenes exactly like this."

Josiah's case had started like this. I'd been called to a campsite where whatever deal had led him into trouble in the first place had started. The scene I'd found there had been much more of a struggle, but it had contained a lot of the same elements.

I tried not to let bad memories from the past swallow me as Ari and I tiptoed through the campsite, searching and observing, but not touching anything.

"What happened?" Ari asked, glancing over his shoulder at me as he walked around his collapsed tent.

I blew out a breath and rubbed a hand over my face. "I was part of a kidnapping investigation early last year," I said. "There was an omega, Josiah, who got himself involved with some bad people."

Ari stopped what he was doing and watched me across the wrecked campsite, eyes going wide.

"We had all sorts of clues and information about his whereabouts," I went on. "It's not like we were grasping at straws. I was already familiar with the traffickers who had him. I knew how they operated, knew what other kinds of business they were into, drugs and arms dealing. I thought we had way more time than we did to reach him."

Ari swallowed, his emotion taking on a note of dread. "What happened?"

I frowned, then sighed, then rubbed a hand over my face, trying to sort all the emotions that I thought I'd buried way deeper than I apparently had. All the while, I stared down at the campsite, looking for anything that would reassure me this was just some vagrant and not the beginning of another nightmare.

"We were too late," I said in a hushed voice. "I knew Josiah was being held at a warehouse and that we had a limited amount of time before he was taken offshore and sold to some sick, foreign tycoon for his harem. But by the time we reached the warehouse, the ringleader had brought in reinforcements."

"Did you…did you save him?" Ari asked, his voice thin and tight.

I shook my head. "A firefight broke out. It was three minutes of complete chaos. I would have been dead if I hadn't been wearing body armor. I was shot three times. Josiah ended up in the crossfire, but…he wasn't wearing body armor."

"Oh, God. I'm sorry," Ari seemed frozen to his spot, staring at me with wide eyes.

I shrugged, the same feeling of helplessness I'd had then rushing back on me. "We saved half a dozen other omega captives that day and busted the trafficking ring. It made a huge impact on the area. I was given a commendation and celebrated by a lot of people. The parents of one of the other omegas gave me a ridiculous cash reward for bringing their daughter home."

I paused, no longer able to use the excuse of searching the campsite not to look at Ari.

"That's why I left the force," I finished. Part of me still felt like a coward for running away from a massive success. But I couldn't get Josiah's terrified face, then his dead eyes, out of my head.

"You did something good," Ari told me. "Something amazing. You're a hero."

I stiffened, hating when people said that. "Tell that to Josiah."

I expected some sort of shame, or maybe even indignation for my curt reply, to come through the bond. Instead, a wave of understanding hit me.

"We always regret the things we couldn't do, even if we've done a dozen other amazing things," Ari sighed. He returned to glancing around the area.

My heart did all sorts of gymnastics, from leaping to melting. I shouldn't have been surprised that Ari got me. He'd vibed with me from the start. We shared a lot of the same, intense kinks, so why wouldn't we share other aspects of outlook on life?

"These look like tire tracks," Ari said all of a sudden, pointing to something on the ground.

My first instinct was to say they were from his car, but he was on the other side of the camp from where his car had been parked.

I strode quickly over to where he was searching the ground and looked myself. Sure enough, the ground was crisscrossed with tire tracks. They were placed close together, which told me at once they were from some sort of all-terrain vehicle and not a standard car.

The thrill of that discovery gave way to a different kind of dread.

"How much do you know about this forest?" I asked Ari, keeping my voice low.

"Not a lot," Ari admitted, speaking quietly as well as he circled around the tracks to stand by my side. "Kincade Slopes ski lodge is on the other side of the mountain, I know that much. As far as I know, this side is mostly private property."

I nodded. That gelled with what I knew. The real estate agent who had showed me the place before I bought it mentioned half a dozen blocks of private property that may or may not be for sale at some point in the future. I'd asked about the plots adjacent to the acreage I'd bought. I'd had the fleeting idea that if the investments I'd sunk my reward money into paid out the way my financial guy said they could, I'd buy up more of the land around me.

"I wish I knew more about this place," I said, stepping carefully to the side and trying to trace where the ATV tracks went. "I don't like being unfamiliar with the area where I live."

"That's what you get for moving all the way across the country," Ari said, almost playfully.

I grinned at him, wondering if his suddenly lighter mood was because he was standing so close to me. I might not have been familiar with Barrington or the area around my own home yet, but there was only one way to fix that.

"Are you okay to follow these tracks for a while with me?" I asked, glancing off into the trees. I could see signs of someone plowing through on an ATV now, now that I knew what I was looking for.

"Absolutely," Ari said, moving even closer to me. "It's not like I can go anywhere without my car anyhow."

I nodded. "Good point."

Briefly, I glanced back to the dirt road Ari had driven up to find the campsite. If I had an entire team with me, I would send someone to see if they could track the car off the mountain. Hell, if I was still on the force, I'd put in a call to have someone search for the car by license plate.

Since it was just me and Ari, though. I chose to try to follow the ATV tracks to see what they could tell us. I'd make a decision about how to proceed, whether to call the local authorities, once we knew more.

"I think we're dealing with more than one person," Ari whispered as we walked carefully along the line of crushed foliage and grooves made by the ATV.

"What makes you say that?" I asked, perking with interest.

Ari shrugged, glanced around with a frown, then looked at me. "If it was just one person and they stole my car, there would be an ATV parked in the middle of my camp. My car isn't big enough to carry an ATV away."

"They could have chained it to the back and towed it behind," I said.

Ari looked disappointed. "Yeah. I didn't think of that."

I hated the weight of disappointment I felt push down on my omega.

"But I think you're right," I said as we walked on. "I didn't see a lot of footprints back there—and we can check all of that out when we head back in a bit—but I swear I saw two different kinds at least."

"Some of those might have been mine," Ari pointed out.

I smiled warmly at him again. "Are you sure you haven't served on the force or as an investigator before?"

Ari laughed. "Definitely not. But I'm good at putting together the whole story based on just a little bit of gossip."

I laughed, then immediately pressed my mouth shut to keep from making too much noise. "Life can't be all bad," I said walking on, but making sure Ari was within my arm's reach. "I've known a lot of people with money who have done some amazing things, charity work and the like."

Ari made a small sound and tilted his head to one side, even as his eyes stayed glued to the ATV tracks. "My mom is like that, sort of."

"Yeah?"

I felt intense discomfort from Ari. "She does her best with what she has," he said. "She has an entire charity foundation, but she's hired someone else to run it. She's involved, but she insists she doesn't know enough about business to be in charge. She's fully committed to her role as omega spouse. I've tried to tell her she deserves more a hundred times, but she won't hear me. She says she's happy how she is, but I think it's more like she's content with her lot and too scared to want more."

I hurt for Ari's sake. The way he spoke and the way he felt through the bond told me that was the life he expected he'd end up with, too.

Or, at least, it was what he'd expected before I'd come along and fucked up his life. Literally.

"Ari, you know that doesn't have to be you," I said.

I didn't get any further. I'd only just started to feel a huge bundle of emotions from Ari through our bond when the sound of distant voices froze both of us where we were.

My alpha instincts to protect and shelter flared to life harder than they ever had before. The impulse was so strong that I stepped in front of Ari, blocking him from the voices, even though they were far away.

The problem was, they weren't as far away as all that.

I held a hand out, indicating that Ari should be perfectly silent, then took a few cautious steps forward. I tried to recall every one of the maps and property diagrams the real estate agent had showed me six months ago, and everything I'd stumbled across in the forest in the four months since I'd moved in. I cursed myself for spending so much time working on The Retreat instead of doing reconnaissance in the area.

"There's more than one person up there," Ari whispered behind me.

I nodded and continued to hold my hand out for silence.

The whole thing was eerily familiar. I'd done this whole stalking through the forest, knowing danger awaited in front of me, thing before. Only this time, I didn't have the back-up of an entire police force behind me. It was just me and Ari, and I didn't like it.

I liked it even less after walking on for several minutes, when I caught sight of buildings in a clearing ahead of us. I slowed down even more, gesturing for Ari to keep low and walk carefully. I was suddenly glad the sweatsuit I'd bought for him was black. Camouflage would have been better, but black would be good. It would conceal him from whatever lay ahead of us.

"I have a really bad feeling about this," Ari whispered as we edged our way around the trees.

"I know," I whispered back, not so much in agreement, but because I could feel his growing panic.

I took us away from the ATV tracks, particularly when they were joined by others and seemed to form a well-used trail. Whatever the buildings ahead of us were, they'd been there for a while and they were in use. The closer we got, the more voices I heard as well.

It wasn't good. My alpha roared within me that I should take Ari back to my house and lock him securely inside, but ten years as a cop wouldn't let me leave things alone just yet. I had to know what was going on, and if it was something illegal, I had a moral obligation to either deal with it or collect as much information as I could to help the local authorities deal with it.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing, Bruno?" someone shouted closer to the buildings.

Whoever it was had just driven up a gravel drive and parked a sleek, black SUV in front of what I could now see was a small warehouse or metal shed of some sort. It looked like it had been made out of a shipping container of some sort. I needed a better look. It might have just been a shipping container that someone had driven into the forest and parked.

In fact, it looked like there were two of them, side by side. Ari and I had crept close enough to see the containers, the gravel drive, the SUV, and two other cars.

"That's my car," Ari whispered, nodding to a sleek, black sportscar.

Whoever these guys were, they knew someone else was in the forest with them.

Worse still, we could see men walking around the containers. At least half a dozen men, and those were the ones we could see. And shit, they had guns.

"What's the meaning of this?" the man who had come out of the SUV demanded of one of the guards. "Remmington will be here in two hours, and this place looks like shit."

Whether it was drugs, guns, people, or something else, I knew when a deal was about to go down.

But it was worse than just that.

Ari gasped at my side when the man who had come out of the SUV turned so that we could see him fully. "Clyve?" he gasped.

I whipped back to face the unfolding scene on the drive. Clyve was the name of Ari's fiancé. What were the odds?—

My thought was cut short as Clyve squinted into the forest where we stood, like he'd heard something across the distance. "Are you sure this place is secure?" he asked.

"Yes, boss, it's fine," one of the armed men said.

Clyve apparently didn't trust that answer. He marched to the end of the drive, heading straight for us.

"Get down," I hissed to Ari, pulling him into a crouch with me.

We had to run, but against half a dozen armed men, we wouldn't get very far. My only hope was that Clyve hadn't actually seen us, or if he had, he'd think we were something else and wouldn't pursue.