Page 12 of Break Me Knot

Every protective instinct I possess roars to life. She looks exhausted, desperate, and yet there's a fierce defiance in the set of her jaw that makes something in my chest tighten. She’s used to fighting her own battles. And she’s…unbonded.

The confusion hits next, trying to pierce through the fog of alpha instinct and recognition. What is an unbonded omega doing here? In our building? At dawn? The scent of heat pheromones grows stronger, and I realize she's very close to going into heat if she isn’t in it already. Here. Alone. In the headquarters of Pinnacle Therapeutics.

Nothing about her being here makes sense.

Her uniform marks her as one of our office cleaners, but why is she a cleaner? If she’s unbonded, why isn’t she at Haven? And why does it feel I've been waiting for this scent my entire life?

None of it makes sense, but my body doesn't care about logic right now. Every instinct I possess is screaming to claim, to protect, to possess. She's ours. The certainty is in my bones, in the way her pupils dilate, in the way her scentharmonizes perfectly with our own, creating something new and perfect and right.

There's also terror in those huge green eyes.

Fear and desperation and everything I don’t want to see there.

“Omega!” Adrian’s bellow echoes around the foyer.

The sweetness of her scent is blasted with bitter terror as she drops whatever she’s holding and bolts away from us. I don’t think as I run after her, past our offices and into the service corridor. The need to pursue, to catch, to claim, is overwhelming.

“Omega, stop!” Adrian's voice carries a desperate edge I've never heard before. “Please! We won't hurt you!”

She can't possibly miss how our scents call to her, how perfectly they harmonize with her own. She must recognize ours as we do hers. Why is she running from us? The thought disturbs me deeply… what has happened to make her so afraid?

My heart slams against its cage as I lose sight of her, then everything hangs in suspended time when I round the corner to see the service elevator doors closing with her panting and trembling against the back wall, her wide eyes staring right at us. The doors seal shut, taking our omega away just moments after we found her.

“Fuck,” Adrian snarls, slamming his palm against the closed doors. He drives his fingers through his hair and stares at the closed doors as though they’ll open again through willpower alone. “Fuck!”

I don't fare much better than him. I start pacing because I can’t keep still while I watch the elevator numbers slowly tick down to see where she’s getting off. “Why did she run? Did you see her face? She was terrified. Of us.”

“If we scented her, then she’d have scented us. Surely she must have recognized that she’s ours,” Adrian says. His dark eyes burn as they drag over my face.

“I never thought… that is, she’s… she’s ours. Our omega!” It’s fantastical that today is the day we come face to face with our future. Our destiny.

Cole's expression is shuttered, pain and old memories warring across his features. His turmoil is rife in our bond. Seeing this omega has opened the woundthat never healed but there's no time to help him process this. Not when our omega is running scared through the city. I clamp my hand on his shoulder to stop him spiraling.

“She's scents like she’s in heat,” Adrian growls, his eyes fixed on the elevator's floor indicator, watching numbers drop with agonizing slowness.Where will she get out?His knuckles are white where his fist lies against the wall. “Her scent will draw every alpha within miles. If another pack claims her...” He doesn't finish the thought. He doesn't have to. We all know what happens to unclaimed omegas in heat.

“I’ll fight any bastard off if I have to. They won’t get to her.” My words come from somewhere certain, deeper than conscious thought. Recognition pulses through our bond. She belongs with us.

The elevator moves as if in slow motion, each floor taking an eternity. Our combined scents fill the space thick with urgency and need. When it finally stops at the basement, Adrian barks, “Service stairs!” and we move as one, racing down forty flights in the service stairwell that will take us directly into the basement. Our footsteps thunder against cinder blocks, echoing our pounding hearts.

We burst into the basement. I stalk over to the elevator, slamming my hand on the open button and hoping against hope she’s inside, but when the doors open all I inhale is the sick scent of terror-stricken omega. I swirl around and cast a frantic gaze at the empty car spots, looking for any place she could have hidden, but she's gone.

“We’ll have more luck finding her if we split up,” Adrian says, already moving toward the street exit. “Cole, take the west side. Zane, east. I'll check the service entrance. She can't have gotten far, not in her condition.”

I sprint down the empty streets, the freezing dawn air burning my lungs. My shoes slip on the icy sidewalk as I check every alley, every doorway, every possible hiding place. The city is just waking up, delivery trucks making their rounds, early commuters hurrying to catch buses, street cleaners pushing their carts. None of them have the slightest hint what I'm looking for, what we've lost before we had a chance to claim her.

I grab the arm of a passing beta on his way to work, demanding to know if he's seen a small woman in a cleaner's uniform. He shakes his head, frightened by my intensity, by the pheromones I'm pumping out in my desperation.

Her scent trail keeps disappearing and reappearing, confused by the wind and the morning traffic. I catch traces of burned, bitter sugar, but it’s growing weaker, mixing with exhaust fumes and the general stench of Canton. Each time I lose the trail, panic claws higher in my chest.

“Where are you?” I mutter, scanning the streets. She's so small, so vulnerable. The thought of her out here alone, in heat, in this freezing weather... The thin uniform she wore wouldn't protect her from anything, not the cold, not other alphas, not the dangers that lurk in every shadow.

I check another alley, finding nothing but dumpsters and scattered trash, but the streets remain empty of what matters, and her scent grows fainter with each passing minute.

Adrian's out-of-body frustration, Cole's reopened pain, and my own wild panic create a perfect storm through our bond. She's out there somewhere, in heat, alone. Vulnerable to any alpha who might catch her scent. The thought makes my blood run cold even as it makes my alpha nature rage. We reconvene in the front of our building after Adrian’s terse text message.

“The uniform,” Cole says, his voice rough with suppressed emotion. His fingers trace the bond mark on his neck. “She was wearing a cleaning company uniform. Which company does our cleaning?”

I shake my head, frustration welling. Why don't we know this? I run our research division, oversee millions in funding, but I can't tell you who cleans our offices. The oversight is massive, now unforgivable. I should know every detail about our company, down to who empties our damn trash.

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