Page 71 of His Captor

A horrific sense of finality spread over me. Part of me wanted to argue with Colin and remind him of how big a jerk he’d beenfor the last few years. Another part of me wanted to tell him that everything would be alright, that he was intelligent and could make a name for himself without me.

The greater part of me knew that none of that mattered. Colin wouldn’t get that chance.

“It’s okay, buddy,” I said, shifting and holding one of his hands. “You tried. You did the wrong thing, but you tried.”

It was way more than he deserved, but in honor of the good years we’d had before greed got the better of him, I couldn’t let Colin die alone and scared.

His thrashing slowed, and his gaze focused on me for a few seconds before everything vital and animated about him vanished from his eyes.

I felt sick. There was no way I could have imagined this when the two of us had started our company together. Worse still was the certainty that Colin had killed himself with his own foolishness, and not just because he chose to run with a loaded gun tucked into his jeans. It didn’t have to end that way.

Seconds later, my senses snapped back to full alertness. There were sirens in the distance, people on the beach screaming and panicking, and footsteps running across the sand. But that wasn’t what jerked me straight, like a hook caught around my navel pulling.

“Hayden.”

I stood, whipping back toward the parking garage. My omega was in pain, and he was scared.

“Mr. Canton, where do you think you’re going?” the police officer from inside the hotel shouted at me as I pushed away from Colin’s body and ran back toward the parking garage. “This is a murder investigation now,” he continued to call.

I ignored him. I even ignored Det. Shirley’s sudden arrival on the scene and her shout of, “It’s okay. Let him go find his omega.”

I would ask questions about how she got here and how she knew where I was headed later. Just then, the only thing I cared about was getting to Hayden.

I could see from the beach that the parking garage was recessed into the ground. There was an entrance close to the back of the beach, which saved me time. The more I ran, the more refined my sensations of Hayden were.

The good news was that I knew exactly where to run, down another flight of stairs and back toward the hotel, to a plain, slightly dented door in a shady corner. The bad news was that I could feel the pain that racked Hayden almost as distinctly as if it was my own pain.

All of that pain was centered in Hayden’s lower body. I could feel it in my balls, which was both exciting and disturbing. I knew that Colin hadn’t hurt Hayden, but my omega was in an exceedingly dangerous situation.

The door was locked when I reached it, but whether it was old and cheap or whether the powerful, alpha instinct running through me gave me supernatural strength, I was able to slam into it with my shoulder a few times and break the hinges, tearing it open.

“Hayden!” I shouted as I dashed into the room.

“Mace?” Hayden’s small, shaky voice answered me from the far end of the room.

I rushed across the room to the mattress where Hayden lay. I would have torn the metal shelves apart with my bare hands if I’d needed to. Nothing was going to stop me from reaching my omega.

“Thank God, Mace!” Hayden cried out, almost feral with pain, as I reached him and nearly threw myself down onto the mattress with him.

He was on his hands and knees, rocking subtly, and he’d shoved his trousers and underwear down around his knees. Hisface was contorted with fear and pain, but relief and joy joined those emotions as he saw me.

A moment later, he burst into tears and cried out, “I don’t want to have our baby like this!”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Hayden

He came so close. So close that I screamed out for him.

Of course, the scream also could have been due to a particularly fierce contraction.

But then he didn’t come. It was like I could feel Mace right there. Right there and…above me. But he didn’t magically materialize. And then he was gone again. Not completely gone, but he’d switched directions and was running away from me instead of toward me.

“No!” I shouted, rocking on my hands and knees.

Another contraction hit, and I growled through it, teeth grit. I’d shoved my trousers down as soon as Colin left, just in case, but for a change, I prayed that I just looked silly instead of having done something smart and necessary.

“What the hell are you doing in there, kid?” I shouted, clutching a hand to my belly. “Oh, you want to come out and see what all the fuss is about tonight? Really? You know this is no place for a baby.”

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