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A deep rumble vibrates, instantly relaxing my stiff muscles and easing the pain in my stomach.
It’s a purr.
“Baby, come on,” Landon whispers, holding me closer to him. “Come on, wake up for me.”
I am awake, I want to say. I can hear you.
“What the fuck did you do to her?” River hisses. “You’re going to prison, you fucking piece of shit!”
Landon holds me tighter, rocking me back and forth. “Hold on, okay?” he murmurs in my ear. “Hold on for us. We need you.”
I hum in his hold. They found me. They came back for me. I’m safe again.
I could swear I hear him murmur something, but I’m asleep before I can piece it together.
It was three words, though.
I remember that.
13
LANDON
The mobile home smelled so strongly of Omega that I was sure he was keeping more than one here.
But no, it was just Skylar, her scent so warped and sickly-sweet that I wasn’t sure it was her.
Briggs had the audacity to try to barricade the door with furniture, as if that wouldn’t only delay the inevitable and add more to his list of charges.
But judging by the baking tray full of O and the makeshift lab in his kitchen, he hasn’t been thinking clearly for a long time.
I thought Skylar was dead when I broke down the door to that hellish room and saw her frail body on the floor.
Her skin is paper white and her body is nothing but bones. Slick and other fluids stain her baggy clothing.
But she’s alive. The moment I held her to me, I listened to her heartbeat and purred for her. I don’t even know if she realizes she’s in my arms.
Vincent enters the room, his eyes briefly falling to Skylar. The hardened expression on his face softens.
“She’s going to make it,” he says solemnly. “It will be fine.”
I’m not sure who he’s trying to comfort, himself or me, but I’m grateful. “Your hunch was right,” I say.
He scoffs and turns his attention to the room Skylar was held in. There is a chain next to the mattress connected to a pole in the corner of the room, and he nudges it with his foot. “Shit,” he mutters. “He kept her chained up until she was too weak to need it,” he muses.
I swallow. This isn’t the worst thing we’ve seen by far. But it happened to Skylar, which makes it personal.
It’s a different kind of horror. It’s the crippling fear that I’d lost her forever, that I would never know what happened to her.
But she’s alive.
Every instinct in me screams to kill John Briggs. To hell with the justice system. All rational thought leaves my mind when it comes to the Omega in my arms.
I grip her tighter, knowing that in the end, harming Briggs would make it much harder on everyone.
And if River can keep it together, then I can, too.
Vincent continues into the bathroom, standing in the doorway.
