“Of course I fucking am,” he said, changing the sirens to the most obnoxiously aggressive tone he could find. Then his phone started ringing in his coat pocket. He frowned. “Can you get that, Nance?”
“Sure,” she said, tugging it out. “It’s Big Daddy.”
Oliver grimaced. “Put it on loudspeaker.”
Nancy nodded and hit answer. “Big D—, I mean sarge, it’s Nance. You’re on loudspeaker.”
Lucas grunted, his breathing heavy down the phone. “DC Purslow, tell DC Reed to pull over. Immediately.” Oliver frowned and eased off the accelerator. Nancy swallowed.
“But sarge, the Inspector said?—”
“Fuck. The. Inspector,” the alpha snarled, his tone making the two of them flinch.
“Lucas, I can assure you we are maintaining a safe distance,” Oliver said, trying to remain professional, but the surety in his voice was quickly fading.
Lucas let out a long breath as though trying to regain his composer. Then, cool as a cucumber in the middle of winter, he said, “Oliver Jamie Reed. You are carrying our unborn child.Youwillpull over.Now.” Oliver’s eyes flicked to Nancy, whose mouth was hanging lower than the Titanic at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. He gave her a look that said,‘not a fucking word,’before turning off the sirens.
Without warning, the Ford Focus veered left, past a minibus full of little old ladies, and straight into the bordering hedgerow.“Oh look, they’ve pulled over,” Oliver said, slamming on the brakes.
“Reed, you will not engage,” Lucas growled, making the hairs on Oliver’s arms stand on end. “Blake and I are three minutes from your location. Sit in the car and don’t do anything stupid. Do I make myself clear?”
Oliver huffed, and clenched his jaw. “Yes.Sergeant.”
“Oh shit,” Nancy gasped, pointing towards the newly formed hole in the hedge. “There’s a child. There’s a fucking child being pulled out of the boot.”
Oliver swung the Jazz across the lane of oncoming traffic, over the grass verge, and into the cornfield behind the Ford. With utter horror, he realised Nancy was correct as a stocky dark-haired man flung open the boot of the car, flipping a bound and gagged pre-pubescent boy over his shoulder. He kept his fingers pressed into the side of the boy’s skull to stop him from shifting.
However, he wasn’t alone because also clambering out of the boot was Bartek fucking Bosko and his lanky fucking face.
There was no Oliver in that moment. No Nancy, no Lucas and no unborn baby. The wolf within him shook and snarled, begging to be let loose.Not yet, not yet.He had to keep his head.
Pure adrenaline saw Oliver ripping off his seatbelt as he flew out of the Jazz. Nancy was at his back, having performed what could only be described as a matrix style roll over the bonnet of the car. Then they were running, chasing down the terrified cries of the kidnapped child through the densely packed crops.
“Charlie papa one! We have a decamp! I repeat we have a—oh fuck, ouch!” He hissed, as the razor sharp corn leaves whipped past his face and neck. Holding up a hand, his fingertips came away bloody as they touched his cheek.
“Oh sod it,” he said, pressing the red button on the top of his radio. A high pitched set of bleeps rang out across all the radios, and Oliver himself became a beacon for every single police officer within a ten-mile radius.Come get me, come get me, come get me, help!
“Charlie papa one, welfare check,” the dispatch officer called out. But Oliver was too focused on trying to locate the kidnapped child between the tall stalks. His eyes trailed along the ground, finally spotting a patch of crops that had been tamped down. “This way!” he shouted to Nancy, and the beta was at his back once more.
The ground wasincrediblyboggy, the late winter downpours making the farms all but swim in mud. He and Nancy quickly sank up to their ankles in thick, oozing sludge. Oliver heard Bosko and the other man shouting and swearing in Polish a few metres ahead, followed by a bloodcurdling squeal from the child.
Nancy shifted first; sections of her stab vest sent flying as her radio hit Oliver in the face. Oliver grit his teeth, wrenching his feet free as he crawled on his hands and knees between the corn. It shouldn't have been so difficult, but the quagmire had long since swallowed his shoes, leaving only his pink and lime green socks to cover his feet.
‘Now, now, now,’his wolf snarled, and before he could rip off his own stab vest he burst into his sandy wolf form.
His canine senses bloomed across his vision, and his sensitive nose picked up the trail almost instantly. Bosko slowed as he and Nancy gained, and as Oliver wound through the stalks with his belly slung low, he finally caught up to the sex traffickers.
Catching the terrified child’s eye, he tipped his ears forward in an almost playful manner, trying to reassure the boy that it was going to be alright. Because not even heaven and earth could stop Oliver from reaching him. The boy blinked, sending a torrent of fresh tears streaming down his filthy face.
Oliver snarled, his lips peeling back over his fangs as his claws tried to grip the slippy ground. Something curled in the back of his throat, something hot and wild that thrashed to be let out. He stared at the boy, and the boy stared back. It caused something to snap in Oliver’s brain as he opened his jaws, threw his head up to the sky and let the primordial howl rip free from his lungs.
It was like a fire whipping from deep within his belly, as it crashed up his windpipe and spilled over his teeth. The deep, bellowing sound triggered the boy’s omega senses, snapping him out of his panicked stupor. He twisted and bucked in his abductor’s grasp, nipping and barking until he finally wriggled free. Self preservation must have kicked in for Bosko and the other man, because they shifted without so much as a backwards glance.
Oliver jumped on Bosko, Nancy on the other, as they tussled in the mud, flattening the corn stalks as they thrashed and ripped and snarled at one another. Oliver pinned the wolf beneath him, using his body weight as an anchor as the wolf’s legs struggled to gain purchase on the slippy ground.
A pulse throbbed through his fangs.‘Bite, bite, bite,’the sigma wolf roared as he failed to stop his head reeling back and his jaws snapping around the other wolf’s neck. There was a moment of still as his teeth breached flesh, and then another as hot, metallic blood gushed onto his tongue.
‘Kill. Kill. Kill.’
