Page 19 of Captive Omega

He rolls his window down to tap a code in a keypad. “We don’t starve.”

The gates slide open, and I nearly swallow my tongue as a stark white mansion looms ahead of me. Literally looms like a big fat moon in the sky. It is fucking huge. If anything could’ve convinced me Vaughn did not make his business card with card stock, this would do it.

“Holy shit,” I breathe, sitting forward in my seat.

“So maybe we do a little better than not starving,” Vaughn laughs as he resumes driving while the gate closes with a quiet snick behind us. “But I wanted to impress you. You like it?”

Do I like the big fancy mansion with the security gate and a keypad that means Nathaniel Lang can’t send O’Brien to sneak an attack on me?

I feel like I just stepped into a castle with a moat and someone drew up the drawbridge.

“It’s okay, I guess. Must cost a lot to heat a house that big.”

He barks out a laugh at my lie. Still smiling, he parks right in front of the house beside a Hummer that looks like a tank. “I think I like you. Come on in and meet everyone.”

He’s out of the car and holding my door open before I’ve unbuckled my seatbelt.

I take one step out. The soles of my burning feet demand to know what the fuck I’m doing as I sway, catching myself on the open door.

“Want me to carry you?” Vaughn offers.

I shake my head. “I’m okay.”

That’s a lie. I’m secretly holding out for someone to appear with a wheelchair, a stretcher, anything that means I never have to take another step again in my life.

“Well, if you change your mind…” He steps aside.

I hobble toward the mansion’s black front door where I hope the alphas I’m about to come face to face with are old and gray with no interest in omegas. That they send Vaughn out to do their detective work because they’re too fat and lazy to leave their fancy mansion.

The odds are in my favor. To live in a mansion this big, they must be fifty or sixty years old to have had time to accumulate such wealth.

But it’s too late to ask Vaughn what they look like now he’s pushed the front door open, which, don’t they lock the door or do they just count on that big iron gate to keep people out?

I shiver as I hobble into a house a few degrees cooler than I was expecting. Not uncomfortable, but noticeable.

“This way,” Vaughn says, skirting around me and leading us past dark rooms to the one brightly lit off the entryway.

I step into a black and white kitchen.

Neither of the two men standing beside a gray granite island are fat, old, or ugly.

They are the most attractive men I’ve ever seen in my life.

Their nostrils flare as I grind to a screaming halt just inside the kitchen doorway.

Both are dark-haired, in their late twenties or thirties, with the heavy muscles that mark them out as alphas. And they must be over 6’3 to tower over my 5’4 height the way they do.

The alpha wearing a turtleneck shirt with black-rimmed glasses has green eyes and a burn on his right cheek. Sandalwood, pine, and rich vanilla tempts me to crawl into his arms and press my nose to his throat.

The other is bigger, taller, slightly older, with pretty hazel eyes flecked with amber. His scent slams into me. Cedar, wood-smoke, and leather is so potent; it’s a combination of scents I never knew I needed in my life.

I want to lap up their scents and go back for seconds, thirds, fourths, and it still wouldn’t be enough. From their hungry inhalations, they must be experiencing an equally powerful response to my scent. What it means floods my body with so much panic, I’d run if I thought my feet could handle moving that fast.

This cannot be happening. I refuse to let this happen.

I back up a step, already shaking my head. “No. Absolutely the fuck not.”

“What do you m…” Vaughn’s voice trails off. His eyes bounce between me and the staring alphas. When he speaks, he sounds tense and strangely hesitant. “If I were to put two and two together, what would I get?”

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