Fucking bastard! What’s he got to smile about? My blood runs cold.
“You okay?” Rickon whispers.
I shake my head. “No. I think I need fresh air.”
He bundles me into his embrace and rushes me out to the corridor. Tears burn behind my eyes, but I sniff them back. I’ll save them for later, not here where I’m exposed.
“Where’s Zack?” I ask, reaching out blindly. My alpha catches me around the waist, his warm chest thawing my back.
“There’s a lot of press waiting outside,” Callisto says after we’ve huddled for a few minutes. “I’ll make a brief statement, and then we’ll get you home, okay?”
I nod, dabbing my fingers at my eyes in case my makeup ran. Rickon reassures me I look fine, and I take his and Zack’s hands in mine. I can’t wait to get my alphas home and roll myself in their scents, and feel their solid bodies pressed to mine. To close this wretched chapter of my story.
Cameras click and lights flash as we exit the courthouse, but this time, the sounds are oddly soothing. It reminds me that this is reality, and the cameras are here to record everything. I won’t wake up from a dream only to discover Ray’s walked free.
One of the flashing lights changes to amber, the color out of place among the white spots.
My phone vibrates in my purse and I reach in to grab it while Callisto reveals the verdict to the crowd and says we’re tired butpleased justice has been upheld. His words float distantly in my brain as a powerful, foreign sensation rockets through my body, as if I’m howling inside. Shock freezes me in place.
That one weird strobing light changes from orange to red and the howl erupts—from Zack’s mouth.
I turn, ready to lunge for my alpha, hampered by the purse and phone in my hands, but something shatters at my feet, sucking the air pressure from my ears with a dizzying gulp. A cloud explodes around us, thick with alpha musk. The terrifying, choking smoke, like someone put fifty feral alphas in a car together, clogs my nose. Shapes beside me drop to the ground as a burning scent strips away my sanity, locking up my joints with an animalistic alpha command.
But not Zack.
With a furious scream, he launches into the crowd, his leg scissoring out in a high kick. Trapped by an alpha scent so strong I can’t disobey it, I stand frozen in place as a line of police rush toward the outraged alpha. Why are there so many of them?
A dream after all? A nightmare?
Now I can’t tell if my paralysis comes from this scent in my nose or the uncontainable fury blazing through my alpha’s bond. The kind of fury that kills mindlessly.
A body goes flying and then another, Zack a whirlwind of destruction as he deals with the threat to his omega.
I jerk forward, vomiting up the foreign alpha smog. A scream follows the bile as the officers fling Zack face down on the ground, pinning his arms and legs. Beside me, Callisto, Rickon, and the OCB agents quiver, fighting the invisible force. Like someone’s condensed an alpha’s scent and weaponized it.
Callisto sheds the paralysis first with a strangled growl. “Fuck! Not like this—” He throws a panicked look my way, the expression on his face so tortured I fall to my knees. He spins and races into the crowd, shouting at the police.
On my knees, I watch, shivering and silently screaming as they shove Callisto away roughly and shackle Zack’s hands. They drag my big alpha toward a wagon.
No, he can’t go back into a cell. He can’t. “You can’t take him!” I scream, the words tearing my throat. “You can’t!”
Zack hears me and jerks against his captors. His shout carries across the carnage. “Ohm! Red!” His pure rage explodes through my head and chest, so potent they fill my mouth. I choke and arch, screaming again.
I scrabble against the ground, trying to find leverage to get to my feet. My dropped phone skims across the ground into my line of sight. The lock screen blinks with a message:
Did you think that was the end, Lev? If I go down, I’m taking you all with me.
I look up, blinking through enraged tears as the red and blue lights swirl down the street and around the corner.
My alpha’s gone.
~ Intermission ~
