Page 76 of Knot Forgotten

Oh, fuck, they came. And got caught.

“Stop!” I shout as if my demand would do a single thing. I’m a prisoner, too. All it does is echo back to me, along with another scream filled with pain.

Cam.

No. No. No.

This can’t be happening.

“Stop it!” I yell again. My legs go weak, and I sink to the floor, my fingers wrapped around the bars. “Please.” The word is broken as it tumbles from my lips, barely an audible whisper.

They are going to die. It is all my fault. I knew my dad was out there, and still, I went to the school I wanted to go to as a teen. I got close to the boys I should have stayed far, far away from. Tears leak from my eyes, and I let them fall, giving in to the helpless feeling that is trying to drown me.

After even more time passes, my tears dry because I don’t have any more left in me to cry. Raven appears once more, a hood drawn up over her hair, darkening her face in shadows.

“Why are you on the ground?” She kneels next to the bars, concern visible on her face in the places the light reaches once she is closer. “It doesn’t matter. We have a chance to go. Todd blitzed the security camera, and Ripper is busy torturing some alphas.”

She straightens, and the click of the lock sounds before she slides the door open. “Come on. I don’t know how much time we have to get you out.”

I scramble to my feet, grabbing my backpack, my heart in my throat as I step out of the cell. She turns in the opposite direction of their screams and starts heading away. I hesitate for a second, weighing freedom without the guys and discarding it as something I could never do. Then I turn on my heel and run toward a fresh scream.

“What are you doing?!” Raven whisper-yells. “This way!”

“I can’t–” I say, not stopping for a moment.

A cell comes into view with the guys are strung up like pigs, hanging from large hooks in the ceiling. A man holds a wicked-looking knife, already coated with too much blood, facing them. The door is wide open as if he has no fear that any of them will escape.

Riley catches sight of me first. He shakes his head, telling me to go, to save myself. My heart plummets into my ass as I look around for something to attack the man I assume is Ripper with. A fire extinguisher hangs on the wall, and I tear it down just as Raven appears.

Her wide eyes take in the cell and the man dealing out the torture before landing on me. I can see her decide in a split second. She pulls out a gun from the back of her waistband, unclicks the safety, and lifts it, aiming at Ripper’s back.

He spins toward us, the knife in his grip. “You!”

Raven cracks a smile. “I’ve wanted to do this for years, you son of a bitch.” She pulls the trigger, and blood blooms around the hole in his shirt as he stumbles forward.

Even his hand over the wound can’t stop the bleeding. Raven doesn’t even wait until he is on the ground before she steps into the cell and hits four buttons on the wall to lengthen the hooks from the ceiling. Riley barely catches his feet while the other three are able to release their wrists. Raven helps them out of the rope holding their arms together, while I hold Riley steady.

“We don’t have much time. Only Todd is here right now, but he is going to have to call in reinforcements soon or get punished for not doing it. With the cameras down, we all need to be gone before they come back up.”

“Riley, can you walk?” I ask, not even sure if his implants are on and working.

He nods, his arms hanging limply at his sides, as Raven slices through the rope with the knife Ripper used on them.

There is no time for conversation. Raven leads the way out of the cell and back the way we came. “Did you guys have a car?”

“Yeah, it is in a parking garage down the street,” Matt says. I glance back at him, and he is dangling his key between his fingers. “That guy was pretty sure we weren’t going anywhere when he just tossed my keys to the side.”

“Good, all I have is my bike,” Raven says over her shoulder.

“Why are you helping us?” Cam asks.

She pushes out into a dark alleyway, turning to face us as we file out. “Sometimes the omegas come to my father willingly or to pay off a debt they owe. They know what they are getting into most of the time. When they stand on that stage to be auctioned, sometimes all they hope for is an alpha that will keep them on whatever drug they enjoy.”

She turns and starts walking toward the street. “But Erin’s situation is different. She is innocent in this. My father should know by now that the innocent ones never make it to auction if I can help it. But if he knew it was me, I would be up on that stage. So, let’s go.”

The spike of adrenaline in my blood starts to wane as we exit onto the sidewalk. Raven heads to a bike, unstrapping a helmet and tugging it on. The guys start heading away, but I pause.

“Thank you for helping me,” I say.

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