Chapter 33 In which we finally get answers

We haven’t found where they’ve taken our omega.

Ethan is working on it, but the assholes found a blind corner in a parking garage and changed cars there. Drove our omega out in a new vehicle that we have no clue about the make or model. There were twenty cars that left the parking garage shortly after they entered, and Ethan is following up on all of them.

So far, he’s had no luck.

The rest of us are just standing around with our thumbs up our fucking asses while we wait.

I’ve already put the call out with our men, already have them scouring the city for any sign of Sadie. I have our most fierce enforcers mobilized, ready to go at the drop of a fucking hat, and we have enough weapons strapped on our bodies to start world war three. We’re ready to get our girl. We just don’t know where the fuck she is.

“Shoulda put a fucking tracker under her skin. Was gonna. Didn’t want to risk losing her again,” Swift mutters to himself. Under normal circumstances, I might have called him on his overprotective bullshit. I know Sadie thinks I’m the one that’s overbearing, but I’ve got nothing on Swift. Once he finds something he wants or cares about, he’s fucking obsessive.

If I’d known Swift was the first of us to find Sadie, I wouldn’t have fought so damn hard. I’d have known he wouldn’t let her go.

“But I was trying to be fucking respectful,” he continues. “Didn’t want to freak Cherrybomb out. Should have just done it while she was asleep, so she’d never know.”

“Can you get a sense of where she is?” Logan asks. He’s pacing. Logan never fucking paces. He’s always a sea of calm in our pack bonds, but here he is, moving back and forth across the hardwood floor.

“If I could,” Swift grits out. “We wouldn’t be sitting here. She’s fucking scared, though. And angry.”

Good. Anger will keep her spirit up, will keep her from falling into despair.

“I’m trying to let her know we’re coming, but I don’t…” Swift looks down at his hands. “We have the pack bond, but I never try to monitor it.” It’s true. Swift is always a swirl of emotions in the bond. Whatever he’s feeling, we feel too, unless he has it shut down tight. It’s always one or the other. Everything or nothing. And I know there’s no chance in hell of him shutting out Sadie right now. I don’t want him too, and I doubt she would either. I’m sure she’d rather have all of his emotions connecting him to her than nothing.

I clap a hand on his shoulder. “As long as she can feel you, she’ll be happy, Swift.”

His expression is uncharacteristically grim as he shakes his head. “Its weird, but I swear she keeps thinking Claudia at me. Like she just keeps popping into my head. I never think about that woman unless it was to get rid of her to make Sadie happy.”

I frown. “Maybe she’s worried about her?”

“Our girl does have a soft heart,” Logan pauses in his pacing. “Maybe she’s worried Claudia is wherever she is?”

“Have we had any calls?” Luca asks, sounding wrecked. His face is pale, and he looks like he hasn’t slept in a week. Dark circles under his eyes and gaunt cheeks. I’ve never seen up close what losing a bond can do to a person. Not the immediate aftermath. Sure, years later, I’ve seen it. But this is… I’m worried Luca won’t survive this if we can’t get Sadie back.

I shove that thought aside. We will get her back. We will bond her. Bite her. Make her ours. And then we’ll never let her go again. I’ll even help Swift convince her to let us put a tracker under her skin so we can always know where she is.

“Nothing,” I mutter. We’d been hoping that whoever took her would reach out. Would try to ransom her. I’m pretty sure I would give the heart right out of my chest if they demanded it. So long as Sadie is fucking safe.

But there’s been nothing from them.

Only silence.

And that is concerning.

This whole time, we’ve been thinking any threat to Sadie would be because of us. Our enemies. But any of our enemies would want to taunt us with her. Play with us by dangling her in front of us.

That we haven’t heard from anyone makes me think maybe this isn’t about us at all.

Our omega has enough weird shit in her life that it could be about her, about the experiments Dr. Funkle did on her and Claudia.

That terrifies me. Because if that is the reason they took her, there’s a very real chance we won’t ever see Sadie again.

The elevator dings and our heads whip toward it as the doors slide open. I don’t know what we’re hoping for? That Sadie escaped somehow? That she made her way through the city back to us without calling first? Without one of our guys seeing her? It’s wishful thinking at its finest. Whoever took our omega isn’t going to just let her go.

The scent of cherry pie hits me as the doors slide open. It has all of us lurching toward it. My heart thunders in my chest as the metal doors part. An inch. Two. Three.

I’m right outside them when they part enough for me to see the occupant.

Claudia.

Fuck.

I should have known.

She’s looking at the ground, blonde hair a mess, tears streaming down her face. She looks up with those wide blue eyes of hers and whines when she sees me, sees us, her pink manicured hand reaching forward, like she expects us to grab her and cradle her close.

Good fucking luck with that.

“Alpha,” she whimpers, stumbling forward, the omegamones flooding the space with her distress. “Please.”

I fall back, and the rest of my pack does too. Not wanting to let her touch us and trying like hell to shove down the instincts that are trying to make me comfort her.

Claudia doesn’t need me. She doesn’t need us. She’s here, safe and sound, stinking up our penthouse with her scent.

Sadie is the one that’s lost to us. She’s the one with god knows what happening to her. She’s our focus. Not Claudia.

The other omega draws up short just inside the apartment as the doors close behind her. Like she’s just now realizing that we might not give a fuck if she’s safe. She blinks at us with watery eyes. “Why are you treating me like this?”

I honestly don’t have time to deal with her bullshit, so I don’t answer. Instead, I turn and press a hand to Ethan’s chest, urging him back toward his laptop. “Go find our girl.”

He nods once and retreats to the table. “Logan.” Our doctor’s light green eyes find me and I jerk my chin at Luca, who is swaying on his fucking feet, looking about a second away from passing out. His nostrils flare as he breathes in Claudia’s scent. I watch as his eyes dilate. It strikes me that Luca hasn’t been around Claudia without his bond with Sadie. The bond that made it easier for him to resist her.

The rest of us have built up a tolerance of sorts. Sure, the instincts are there, but we’ve learned to push them down in favor of our chosen omega. Luca’s never had to do that.

“Get him out of here,” I mutter to Logan, who gives a sharp nod before clamping a hand on Luca’s shoulder and dragging him away, down the hall and to the room that Sadie had been staying in, before she started sleeping in ours. Her scent will be faint, faded and stale, but it’s better than letting him stand here huffing Claudia’s.

I turn to the woman in question, sweeping my gaze over her, hating that she’s here and Sadie is not. Heartless? Maybe. Doesn’t change the fact that I would give Claudia up in a heartbeat if it meant my omega was here in my arms. “Where did you go?”

Swift moves until his shoulder presses against mine, his head tilted, eyes like chips of cold gold as they watch her, reading every single flicker on her face. Claudia sags, defeat in every line of her body. “I ran. When that man turned his attention to Sadie, he released his alpha command, and I ran. I used the stairs. Got away. I was so scared.”

“Where did you go?” Swift asks, eyes still cold as hell. “Did you go to the police?”

Claudia swallows thickly and shakes her head. “No. No. I know who you guys are. I know what you do. I figured you’d want to deal with this on your own.”

It’s the right move. We do want to deal with this ourselves and it’ll be a helluva lot easier if we don’t have to deal with the police. Not that it would stop me if we did. The assholes who took Sadie would still end up dead. But this is easier.

Still, the penthouse was breached fucking hours ago. Where has this little omega been for all that time?

Swift must be thinking the same thing, because he shifts forward, towering over her with his larger body. “Then where have you been, Claudia? Where did you go?”

She shrugs and won’t meet his eyes. Her scent turns acrid and burnt. “I just ran as far as I could and then turned around and came back.”

“Why?” I ask. “Why would you come back here? To a place you knew is unsafe? Why would you risk coming up in the elevator and announcing your fucking presence? How did you even get the elevator to move ?”

She looks up at me, hope limning her blue eyes, like she thinks the reason I’m asking is that I’m worried about her, about her safety. That I’m angry she would put herself in a dangerous situation like this. “I knew you would come back, and I wanted… I needed my alphas.” She whispers the last part, like it’s a secret meant just for us. Her small hand reaches toward me. “Please. Please let me just…” I back out of her way before she can make contact and a whine pulls out of her. “Maddox, please, baby. I don’t know how you can be so cruel to your omega.” Tears slid down her cheeks. “Sadie’s not here. Surely you can tell now that I’m your real omega. Please.”

Swift shifts forward again. One of his hands snaps out and curls around Claudia’s throat. She lets out a little gasp and then melts against him, like she thinks this is the precursor to sex, like he’s going to choke her while he fucks her or something. But I know better. Swift has an omega and he would die before betraying her by putting his dick anywhere near another woman.

Claudia’s lips part on a pant as he dips his head and runs his nose along her neck, in her hair, down her arm to her fingers, that I’m just now realizing have split knuckles. Swift breathes in deep over the skin there, then he tsks. “Claudia,” he murmurs, his voice ice cold. “You’ve been a very, very bad girl.”

The omega shivers, her chest rising and falling rapidly as she pants. “Have I?” she asks breathily. “Are you going to punish me, Swift? Bend me over and make my ass red before you fuck me?”

Swift straightens, his fingers tightening on Claudia’s neck. “Oh, I’m going to punish you alright.”

Claudia, the little idiot, doesn’t realize the danger she’s in. Instead, she’s writhing against him, making needy little sounds as the air around us grows thick with her perfume. The perfume that is so like Sadie’s, but not. I can tell the difference now. And so apparently can Swift.

He holds out Claudia’s hand to me, the one with the blood beading on the knuckles. Without questioning it, I bend and take an inhale of her skin. And everything in my body fucking freezes. I look up at Claudia, who’s looking down at me, confused as fuck.

Another inhale, and my resolve solidifies.

I straighten, look at Swift, and nod. “Do what you have to do.”

Our resident psycho grins at me, just before his fingers tighten, cutting off Claudia’s air. She lets out a wheeze, and her eyes finally reflect what she should have been feeling all along. Fear. Fear of us. The men that she thinks of as her alphas.

Because Claudia’s hand, right over the split knuckles, smells like Sadie.

Swift squeezes Claudia’s neck until her face goes red, then blue, and she passes out. He hums a cheerful tune as he loads her into the elevator and down to his workroom in our garage. He doesn’t use it all that often. In fact, I can count the number of times he has on one fucking hand. One of them being Danielle, Sadie’s mom, and that wasn’t really a torture session. More of a fright fest.

This isn’t going to be like that. No. This session in Swift’s little torture chamber is going to be filled with blood and screams and begging.

“Swift,” I say, as he straps her onto a metal table. “We need her to talk as quickly as possible. You can play with her all you want after we have Sadie back.”

He gives a quick nod. “Of course. Cherrybomb is the most important thing. And then I’ll torture this piece of trash every day for the next fucking year for hurting her.”

I clap him on his shoulder. “Good.”

I watch as Swift does what he does best, prepping the space for what comes once Claudia is awake. He sprays a shitton of descenter into the air and over the omega, then douses a black face mask with a skeleton jaw and mouth on it, in the same thing before looping it over his nostrils.

He offers one to me too. Which I take because if I don’t, if I catch one whiff of distressed omega pheromones, I might do something fucking stupid, like make him stop. And that is the last fucking thing I want to do.

Swift tilts his head when we’re ready, staring at her inert form. “How should we wake her up?”

I don’t have a chance to answer before he’s swiping up a taser and shoving it into her side. Her body arches and twitches, her lids fluttering as she screams. When he pulls away, her eyes open, darting around the room as she tugs at the restraints. She whimpers, but there is no omega whine.

Which is… weird.

I would think she wouldn’t be able to stop that from happening just after she’s been shocked into wakefulness.

“Claudia,” I lace my voice with a hint of alpha dominance, and her watery blue eyes find me.

Now she whines. “Alpha.”

I ignore the way I want to soothe her, instead focusing on the split knuckles of her right hand, the scent of Sadie that clings to them. “Tell me where Sadie is.”

I give her a chance to answer me, to tell us without the influence of a bark.

She shakes her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know where she is. I ran. Remember? I ran from the man and got away, found my way back to you. I’m your omega! How could you do this to me? Strap me down and strip me to hurt me?”

Swift grins down at her, though his mouth is covered by his mask. “Oh, our omega adores being stripped and tied down. Loves a little pain. That is not what is happening here, fuckface. Tell us where Sadie is.”

She thrashes against the bonds holding her down, breast jiggling in the harsh light. “Why couldn’t you just want me? Love me? What is so wrong with me that you would pick some nothing little beta over me? She’s nothing.” Her eyes latch onto me. “You said it yourself. She’s nothing but trouble.”

I go still at her accusation. I did say that. Ages ago in the alley behind The Market to Lily, to keep anyone from realizing just how much the woman over my shoulder meant to me, to us, our pack.

It’s possible that Sadie told her about it. Possible but not probable. Neither of the omegas who have been staying in the penthouse have been buddy-buddy with each other. They haven’t had any heart to hearts. And so if Sadie didn’t tell her that… then who the hell did?

“Where did you hear that?” Claudia’s eyes widen in fear, like she just realized she gave something away, something she wasn’t supposed to. “ Tell me.” The alpha command rolls off of my tongue easily, no hint of remorse in the least.

“We’ve had people following her,” she blurts out, looking horrified.

“ Why? ” Swift demands, his alpha bark just as strong as mine.

Claudia bites her lip so hard blood wells up between her teeth before she gasps and says, “Sadie is part of an experiment. To turn betas into omegas. They’ve been monitoring their investment, especially once she presented as an omega.”

We knew all this already. Danielle told us with a lot less coercion than Claudia’s needed. She pouts, blood smearing her chin. “They promised she wouldn’t do that. And they wanted to test… to see why that happened.”

I blink at the woman on the table. “They took her to run tests on her?” I think back over the last month. Every time someone tried to take her, to hurt her. They weren’t trying to kill her, they were trying to take her. The men on the street that I didn’t recognize. The lack of taunting from any of my enemies. The way they shot at us, but avoided Sadie.

This whole time, we’ve been operating under the assumption that any danger to our omega was because of us, but it’s been because of her, because of the experiments done on her as a child. No wonder we never found anything out about who was trying to take her from us. We were looking in the wrong fucking direction.

Fucking fuck.

I should have known.

“ Where is she ?” I grind out, not hesitating this time to use my alpha bark on her. Imagine my surprise when Claudia bites down on her lip again, struggling to keep the words inside. But I don’t have fucking time for this, so I snarl out. “ Tell me where Sadie is now. ”

“She’s gone.” Claudia sobs, and for one moment my heart stops in my chest because I think she means Sadie’s dead. But if that were the case, Swift would be fucking feral right now. He’d be tearing her apart with his teeth and bare hands. “Out of the city by now. They wanted to take her as far as they could before I came back to you.” Her eyes widen meaningfully. “I came back to you. I need you please, alpha.”

I grit my teeth against her. There’s something about the way she says alpha that seems so practiced, forced. I didn’t notice it before, but it’s painfully obvious now. “Us finding you wasn’t an accident, was it?” I ask, tilting my head as the pieces fall into place. “You made yourself an omega, stole Sadie’s hormones, her scent, took everything from her, and injected them into your body.”

Swift laughs delightedly. “Oh, shit. You’re the fake, aren’t you, Claudia? You’re the beta and Sadie’s always been an omega.”

I close my eyes and shake my head, thinking of all the times Sadie called herself a second-rate omega. How certain she was that she was always meant to be a beta. What her mother told us seemed to solidify that fact. That we were choosing the imitation of our scent match. But Sadie has always been it.

“You saw the articles,” I say, opening my eyes and meeting her gaze. “The ones that postulated that we’d finally found an omega. You recognized her because you used her and you thought if we saw you instead, the perfect replica of an omega, we’d fall all over ourselves to be with you.”

Claudia shakes her head, even as she laughs humorlessly. “I thought having the scent and the looks would be enough. I thought my father, being the man that he is, I would have found a pack by now. I thought it would have fucking happened as soon as an alpha caught a whiff of me. But no. No one wanted me.”

“Must be your winning personality,” Swift says, wandering over to the table covered in his tools. “Here’s a tip. Maybe don’t be a lint licker and more people will like you.”

I chuckle, and Claudia’s eyes flash. “You think this is fucking funny? You’re never gonna see her again. Do you understand that? She’s gone forever. They’re never gonna let her go. And they won’t let me go either. I’m the beta that turned into an omega. She‘s the one whose hormones helped that fucking happen. Do you have any idea how valuable she is? Once they can pinpoint what part of all the treatments they did before worked, they’ll use her to market a miracle drug.”

A shiver works down my spine at that while rage like I’ve never felt floods my body. An experiment, a means to an end. That is how these assholes see our omega. I’ve never had much of an imagination, I prefer to deal in real world situations in facts and logic, but now a flood of images batters me, Sadie locked in a room, strapped to a bed, wearing a hospital gown or scrubs, machines all around her as they drain her blood and monitor things like her hormones.

I wouldn’t put it past them to induce heats, to make her omegamones stronger. How long would they use her like that, creating pills and injections to turn others into omegas, manufacturing countless omegas with our scent match’s perfume?

Saliva floods my mouth as my stomach roils. I swallow thickly to keep the bile back.

“ Tell me where my omega is .” The bark rolls off my tongue, spurred by the images in my head.

“Right fucking here,” Claudia wails. She must really believe that she’s our omega, even knowing she’s a fake.

“ Where is Sadie ?” Swift is quick to follow up.

“I don’t know. I don’t! They told me they were going to move her. I don’t know where.” Okay, so she must be telling the truth. Doesn’t mean I like her answer.

“Where did you last see her, Claudia? Answer me. ”

Her eyes squeeze shut, and she fights against the pull of my bark. Being a beta must help with that. If she were a true omega, she would have given in already.

“ Now ,” Swift adds the weight of his command behind mine, and I nearly try to answer my own question. He’s a fucking powerful alpha and if he wanted to be the pack lead, he could easily take it from me. But he has no interest in leading, and thank god for that, if he did we’d probably be knee deep in blood all the fucking time. But on the other hand, Sadie would be with us right now. He never would have let her go without solidifying all our bonds for as long as I have.

“There’s an abandoned doctor’s office on the eastside of the city, on Waterloo. That’s where we took her.”

A growl rumbles out of me, even as I pull out my phone to let Ethan know what we found out. He’s quick to respond that he’ll find out what he can.

By the time I refocus on the room I’m in, Swift is dragging his knife over Claudia’s skin, not enough to hurt her, but in an explicit threat. The bound woman whimpers and cries, struggles to get out of the tight leather manacles on her wrists.

Swift is unmoved.

“I think,” he says almost conversationally. “That I’m going to start with your nipples. Cut them from your body. And then I’ll dig out all the saline bags in your tits. I’m going to undo every fucking surgery you underwent to become an omega. Do you understand me, Claudia? By the time I’m done with you, you will be fucking ruined .”

He lifts the knife and taps it against his lips. “Maybe I’ll root around and see if I can figure out how to rip my girl from your veins. Though really the only way to do that would be to bleed you dry, hmm?”

“Please,” she whispers. “Please. The only thing I did was want to be an omega. Who doesn’t dream of that when they’re younger? My father took me to the doctor, and they told me it might be possible. I didn’t know. I didn’t know when they started they were using a child to do it. Please. I’ll leave. I’ll go far away and you won’t have to see me again.”

Tears are flowing freely from Claudia’s blue eyes. Her struggles cease as she realizes she won’t escape this. Or maybe she’s hoping we’ll see her as pathetic and go easier on her.

That won’t happen.

Claudia might like for us to believe that she’s a victim in this as much as Sadie is. That she just expressed her concerns as a teenager to her doctor, but we know better. She knew who Sadie was, knew her face well enough to see an article of her out with Logan and devise a plan to lure us away from her.

When that didn’t work, she resorted to helping the assholes who ran tests on our girl for fucking years.

“You know, I might believe you,” Swift says tilting his head as he looks at her, and Claudia nods frantically, body relaxing somewhat.

“Its true. I didn’t know what they were doing to her. I didn’t know-”

“I said I might believe you,” Swift cuts her off, a smile stretching across his lips. “But see, you let something slip. Something that tells me you’re just as much of a conniving bitch as I’ve always thought you were. Do you know what that was, Claudia?”

He strokes his knife over the swell of her breast.

She shakes her head. “I didn’t say anything.”

He leans closer until his mask brushes against her ear. “You said, ‘we took her.’ We , Claudia.” She whimpers. “Which means that you’ve been in on this from the beginning. You let the asshole into the apartment. You watched as another alpha bit our omega, obliterating her bond with Luca. You stood by as he drugged her. You helped him load her into a car and fucking took her from us. Even if you didn’t know what you were doing back then, you sure as fuck knew what you were doing now. And for that, we have to punish you.”

My phone buzzes in my hand with a text from Ethan: Tracking the car now .

I glance up at Swift. “Ethan found her. She’s in a car. He’s tracking it. We need to pack up and go.”

Swift nods, but hesitates.

“Swift?”

“I need to hurt her, Dox,” he says, eyes gleaming with bloodlust and savage revenge. “I need to hear her scream. She hurt Sadie, my fucking Cherrybomb, my bonded mate.”

“What?” Claudia gasps out. “You bonded that piece of beta trash?” Of course, that’s what she’s worried about and not that Swift is practically begging me to let him hurt her.

Swift spins and has her neck in his hand again, bearing down on her until her face turns red. “Keep talking like that, Claudia. I’m already gonna hurt you, but if you want me to hurt you more, by all means, insult my fucking mate.”

My gaze flicks back to Claudia sobbing on the metal table. I nod. “Whatever you can do in seven fucking minutes, Swift. We’ll meet you in the garage. If you aren’t ready, we’re leaving your ass behind.”

A wicked grin curls his mouth as he nods his agreement. Then he swagers back over to the sobbing omega. “Clau-di-a,” he sings her name, bending over her trembling form. “This is where I really shine. Where you get to meet the real me. And I’m fairly fucking sure, you’re gonna absolutely hate the monster under my skin.”

I won’t be able to stay, even though I kind of want to. I know my instincts to protect and shelter the omega will get in the way, as much as I might want to listen to her screams, to hear her confession of what exactly she did to Sadie, I know I won’t be able to stop myself from intervening.

Swift needs the spill of Claudia’s blood right now as much as I need to finish preparations to get our girl back.

So I slip out of the room just as the first scream sounds.