Page 33 of Bound to the Guard

The warning in his tone dares Damien to push further.

My Alpha backs off, holding up his hands in mock surrender. “Hey, no judgment here. We’ve all got our weaknesses. Just make sure this one doesn’t interfere with the current mission.”

Sebastian nods curtly.

The conversation leaves me feeling like an intruder in a family matter, and I shift with discomfort.

Sebastian returns to his searching, muttering under his breath about nosy and intrusive cousins until he straightens with a shout that startles me. “Got it! This must be the lab where Seven was held.”

I lean in closer, my heart pounding as I take in the grainy image on the screen. It’s a nondescript building, surrounded by a high fence and what looks like a security checkpoint at the entrance.

Sebastian zooms in, and a red brick building with a green roof comes into view. He drops to street level, and a rusty sign announces:Construction Machinery Restoration.It appears abandoned, the windows and door boarded up. So there was no one ever there who could have saved me.

“That’s it,” I whisper, trembling. “That’s the Doctor’s lab.”

Sebastian’s jaw clenches tight. “It appears like it’s heavily guarded. We’re going to need some serious firepower to get in there.”

“We have firepower.” Damien studies the screen, committing it to memory. “Get the building plans from the city.”

“Don’t tell me how to do my job.” Sebastian glares at Damien before he turns to me, eyes fixed on my chin. “What do you remember about the other locations?”

I take a deep breath, trying to steady my nerves after being brought face to face with the place that stole my humanity. Like with the lab, I describe what I remember from the other locations where I was held between sales and the houses where my owners lived.

As Sebastian listens, his fingers fly over the keyboard with a speed and precision that’s mesmerizing.

“There.” He points to the screen. “That’s one of the estates. And a quick dip into the finances shows shipping records for groceries and the electrical use doesn’t match a single occupant household reported to the county, even one that doesn’t care about their carbon footprint.”

I lean in closer, squinting at the grainy satellite image. The Victorian estate is something out of a Gothic novel, all towering spires and dark, foreboding walls. The sight of it sends a shiver down my spine, memories of the holding cells in the basement surging forth.

A shot of a man in a blue suit overlays the estate. “That’s my second owner.” I shudder in disgust, though seeing him doesn’t give me the same instinctive reaction of fear that seeing the Doctor did. “He had five Omegas he was breeding.”

A muscle in Sebastian’s jaw ticks. “And here’s the other one.”

He pulls up another image. “The owner’s financial records show large cash withdrawals. One of them corresponds withwhen you would have been auctioned off the third time, with a smaller reimbursement when he sent you back.”

My heart races as I take in the sprawling mansion set amidst manicured gardens and rolling hills. To the public, it’s a place where the wealthy elite go to play, not a secret prison for tortured Omegas.

But I know better.

“I remember that place.” My body trembles as I trace the outline of the buildings on the screen. “They used to…air us out in the garden.”

The scent of roses and the splash of the fountains had always made it especially cruel when they put us back in our cages.

Damien growls in the back of his throat. “They’ll pay, Seven. Every one of them.”

I swallow the lump forming in my throat. It’s still hard for me to believe this is happening. After all this time, I might get the justice I’ve been denied for so long.

Over the next hour, Sebastian tracks down auction houses and holding pens, adding their locations on an ever-expanding map. It boggles my mind to see how far I traveled, yet also how close I always stayed to where they kidnapped me from.

“I have bots tracing the money trail now. Hopefully, we’ll find more buyers and the shell companies they run all of this through.” Sebastian’s brow furrows in concentration. “It appears a series of shell corporations funded the lab, so I’m tracing that, too. No reason not to shut down whoever financed those experiments.”

Data floods the screens, and I don’t understand even half of the information. “So, what happens now? How are we going to take them down?”

Damien’s foot taps, bouncing me in his lap. “We’ll need to hit them all at once. Every location Sebastian identifies, everyfacility connected to his previous owners. We can’t leave any chance for escape or warning.”

I try to imagine what kind of planning that will take and shiver. “When?”

“As soon as possible.” Sebastian’s fingers fly across the keyboard. “We need to move before they relocate and cover their tracks.”

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