Page 96 of Running on Empty

Ash

I never wanted this, but now I was here, with my omega’s body pressed against me and a stranger’s hot blood on our skin, I couldn’t bring myself to regret it. I’d been holding something back the moment we got Stevie out of that fucking club, and now it was out and ready to play.

I’d watched those fucks tell their little stories of rape and debauchery, skimmed through their tales, looking for clues, but it was something else hearing a victim talk about what was done to them.

When Stevie told us what had happened to her.

I burned with a terrible guilt, the wolf inside me feeling it was chewing a hole in my guts for letting this happen in the first place.

But it had, despite everything.

And if it did? Well, then this was a fitting end. I looked across at Ronan as I held our omega and he nodded slowly, the fuck smiling in vindication, as he watched me have my little moment of realisation. Because part of me wished I had other powers than the ability to shift form, that I could bring Jack back to life, just to hurt him some more, glorying in his pain as Stevie exorcised hers.

“It’s over, beautiful,” I told her quietly and that’s when we were joined.

Stevie

Their presence was announced by the sound of rifles being raised, the other alphas snapping to attention as four men strolled into the room.

“It is over.” The spokesman for the group’s voice was clipped, controlled and cultured. “We told Jack that you wouldn’t be satisfied with his brothers as sacrifices, that if you were prepared to set alight houses and clubs, that coming here and taking him would mean little, but…” He let out a sigh. “I’m James Spencer and we would like to find a way to move forward now that this…” He glanced at his dead son. “Unfortunate situation has been resolved.”

“Think you can negotiate your way through this?” another masculine voice said, and with it came several other well-dressed men in the company of the dads and many other men wearing familiar leather jackets. Some dared to look over at me before my men stepped forward and provided a wall between me and them.

“Who’s the friendlies and who’s the target here?” Cooper Murphy snapped, moving the sight of his rifle restlessly, not sure who to focus on.

“These fucks are the daddies of the boys you’ve been after,” the new guy said, gesturing to the four well-dressed alphas. “They’re the ones that lived the life of luxury, who taught their boys to just take what they want, when they want it.”

“Sounds like the targets to me,” Billy Wilson said, looking down the rifle sight at the closest Spencer senior. “If you want some friendly advice, I wouldn’t make any unnecessary movements…” His finger tightened on the trigger when one of the Spencers started to edge away.

“Where’s Scarlett?” I half asked the question to myself, having been drowning in my own memories up until now, but when answers weren’t forthcoming, my voice got louder in ways I wouldn’t be able to stop. “Where the fuck is Scarlett?”

“Our son did one thing right, bringing himself a little surety back to the estate, though he neglected to make use of it,” one of the Spencer seniors said.

I started at Scarlett being described as ‘it’.

“If you think some woman is going to keep you safe, you’re mistaken,” the guy with the MCs growled, and then the room was filled with the explosive sound of a gunshot.

My alphas resisted my attempts to push them aside so I could see what had happened, but when I succeeded, I saw one of the Spencer dads lying on the ground, blood pooling under his head as the man with the MCs smiled smugly. Other men with similar patrician features swarmed around him, looking just as pleased until the soldier boys started barking orders.

“Hands up!” Seb snapped. “Hands in the fucking air, or it’ll be the last thing you do!”

The men looked utterly unrepentant, not doing a thing as the MCs all drew their handguns and pointed them at us.

“Look, everyone needs to calm the fuck down and point them guns at the real enemies here,” Rusty said, holding his hands up in surrender, before nodding to the senior Spencers.

At a look from Ash, our guys aimed their rifles at what remained of the Spencer pack and that seemed to settle the tension in the room. Well, except for the Spencer pack. The remaining men looked terribly pale, red spots forming in their cheeks as they stared us down.

“Get the woman,” Rusty demanded. “That’s why we’re here.”

“You heard the man,” the guy who had to be from some offshoot of the Spencer family said “Produce the woman or I’ll have my associates tear this place apart, looking for her.”

Rusty nodded to me, as if that was the job done, but as James put his hands up slowly and then reached inside his jacket for his walkie-talkie, every armed man stiffened.

“Is anyone still standing?” he asked, betraying a moment of vulnerability then as he stared down the rest of us. At first the only answer he got was a crackle of static, but finally a voice came through the speaker.

“Here, sir.”

“Is that you, Smith?”

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