Chapter Seventeen

Raven

My dad had a saying about plans being what you make while life falls out from underneath you. It had been accurate for my entire life, but I really hoped it wouldn’t be this time. Hope didn’t get me far.

The team and I had come up with a solid plan. I was going to go in and help extract some of the omegas, if not all of them. I would be the one to get the details, to infiltrate. Everything would go easy peasy. Fine. I never for a second believed that, but it would work. It had to. The team would never say I needed to make up for my old life, but I did. Not for them, but for me.

And then Tyrus discovered something. Something big. Something bad. Something that made our plan useless.

We already knew they were taking omegas from other shifter packs for power and that they were getting others in an apparently random way and selling them. But, until Tyrus found the app, we didn’t realize how they were getting those “random” shifters. There wasn’t a single thing random about it. They were using what looked like a dating app to anyone who stumbled upon it.

Tyrus and Sutton dug deeper to find it was even worse than we originally thought. Over the past few years, there had been different versions of the app, targeting different interests and locations. From what they could piece together, as soon as they got a group of omegas, they’d shut one version down and launch another. It was vile. Disgusting. Terrifying. The stuff of nightmares.

The version Tyrus uncovered was very new, like a week old, and located locally. Our guess was they needed omegas stat and were getting sloppy. But that was 100 percent conjecture.

Sutton wasn’t happy, but I signed up for the app on a burner phone. We needed to at least see how they did it. Then came the worst part: waiting.

I expected it to work like human dating apps—someone sending a message saying, “Hey, I think you’re cute. Come meet me.” But it didn’t. I didn’t get a single match. Instead, I got an invitation to an omega night at a nightclub. The entire app was a bait and switch for singles activities. I could see why they did it that way. Having to get omegas to agree to meet you one at a time was inefficient. This? One app blast and done.

It was advertised as an alpha/omega mingle where they would use our profile data to help us find the perfect mate. The questions the app asked, how they seemed to be geared more toward assessing your connections to others than to your interests. Sure, there were a few about favorite colors and such, but most were pretty intrusive. They wanted to be sure the people who came to their “events” were not going to be missed, or at least not missed too loudly.

When we looked up the location, Tyrus discovered something disturbing. The website for the nightclub was brand new. How he figured that out, I had no clue. Tyrus was gifted like that.

Sutton used a mapping app, and we figured out the location was actually adjacent to the property of the pack. It was owned by a trust Tyrus was sure would trace back to them. They weren’t even leaving home to kidnap the omegas, just bringing them right to their doorstep.

Or maybe they were just bringing me. The invitation said it was omega night, but that didn’t necessarily mean there were multiple omegas invited or coming. It could have been a lure, just for me, or for a hundred.

Sutton was pissed when I put my foot down and RSVP’d that I would attend. He said there were too many variables, and there were, but there were also omegas who needed our help, and I wasn’t willing to wait until all the ducks were in a row. Every minute that ticked by might be a minute too long for one of them.

Then I did something I never thought I’d do again. I called the team and asked them to give me a chip. The first one had been a prison, but this one—it was going to be my escape.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” King pounded the table as he stood up. “No fucking way.”

To my surprise, it wasn’t just my alpha who was seething at the suggestion.

“You were the victim once. We will not allow you to be the victim again,” King growled.

“That’s why the chip is important.”

Sutton was eerily silent, but his fear was palpable. He didn’t want this either, but he was respecting my decision, as much as it killed him.

“If you give me a chip, you can come get me if I get lost, or if they move me somewhere else, or anything unusual.” Not that I was hoping for any of that.

“And what if they scan you for chips?” Tyrus at least had a valid point. That didn’t stop me from rolling my eyes.

“Do these people seem like the type who’d worry about omegas having chips? And so what if they catch me? I’ll just say it’s my original one.”

Sutton growled low in his throat.

It was the longest meeting ever, but, three hours later, I was walking out with Sutton clutching my hand and Tyrus working on the chip. Tyrus refused to give me one I couldn’t use to call for help. It wasn’t necessary, but I appreciated that he cared.

I had one day to get ready.