Breaking the Bonds

  Inside, the music was so loud, Sam could feel the beat through the floor as they edged around the crowd. Everyone was talking, and at the far side of the room, many danced. Sam had never seen so many females in one place. He found them odd, but nonthreatening, for the most part. When one patted him on the ass, he gasped. She smiled and pursed her lips at him in a kiss before walking off.

  “You’re attracting the ladies,” Sid said in Sam’s ear. “Feel good about it. Means you’re hot.”

  Sam wasn’t interested in females, or males for that matter, because he had Leo; but he supposed it was okay to feel flattered by the attention. Sid led them to the bar and ordered alcoholic drinks.

  “Uh, I only want a water,” Sam corrected.

  Sid rolled his eyes. “That’s no fun.”

  Lydia’s drink was pink and had something red floating in it that she immediately popped into her mouth.

  “Look, Sam. I can tie a knot in the stem of this cherry with my tongue!” she said around the small, too-red fruit that hadn’t looked like any cherry Sam had ever seen.

  “Stop showing off,” Amber said. “He’s got a boyfriend.”

  “A mate,” Sam corrected, and at Amber’s confused look, he added, “It’s like a husband.”

  Lydia pouted, but it didn’t last long. A man approached and asked her to dance, and she downed half her drink before walking off hand in hand with him.

  “Does she know him?” Sam asked Amber.

  “Naw. She just wants to dance.”

  Amber’s drink looked like cola, but by the smell of it, there was alcohol mixed in. Sid had something clear with a green and white thing stuck on a skinny stick inside.

  “Wanna dance, Sam?” he asked after a few minutes, fingers tapping in rhythm to the music on the bar.

  “I’ll just watch for a while,” Sam said. “Go ahead.”

  Sid disappeared into the crowd. The room was crowded and hot, and Sam unbuttoned the top button of his shirt and took a long drink of water.

  “You okay?” Amber asked, bending close so Sam could hear her. “You’re sweating.”

  Sam nodded. “Why is it so hot in here?”

  “It’s not too bad.” Amber drank, eyes moving from person to person. “Hey, look at him. He’s hot!”

  Sam turned to see a tall, broad man with dark hair filing through the people near the front door of the club. Sam knew immediately the man was an alpha shifter. The omega’s skin tingled, and his mind filled with a hum like a thousand cicadas on a hot summer night. The alpha turned his head their way, dark eyes zeroing in on Sam in the line of patrons sitting at the bar.

  “Fenrir’s water bowl,” Sam whispered when what was happening suddenly hit him with the force of a charging grizzly bear. “Amber…get me out of here.”

  Amber glanced at him. “What? Why?”

  Sweat poured down Sam’s face, and his blood fizzed in his veins. It’s not time, his mind screamed. How could his heat be coming on? There’d been no warning signs. No red around his vision or hours of dense buzzing. Heats could come on fast, but Sam couldn’t imagine why it would come weeks early.

  “Please,” he said, eyes on the alpha now making his way toward them, nose in the air and nostrils flared. “I’m…I’m…” Sam grabbed the cell phone out of the pocket of his jeans, fingers slick and slipping on the screen as he hit “1,” his quick dial number for Leo.

  “Sam?” Leo’s voice was loud in Sam’s ear and full of surprise. Sam had never called his alpha while Leo was at work.

  “Leo…”

  “Sam, what’s wrong?”

  “What’s the name of this place again?” Sam asked Amber, who looked concerned but also intrigued at the intensity of the approaching alpha’s gaze directed at Sam. He kept getting stopped by people asking him to dance, but he seemed hell bent on getting to the bar.

  “It’s called Bar None,” she said.

  “Sam?” Leo’s voice grew louder over the line.

  “I’m at a club called Bar None. It’s near you,” Sam said. “Please come get me, Leo. Now.” He disconnected the call and ignored it when it rang again. He could barely hold his head up, he felt so dizzy.

  The alpha arrived at the bar with a smothering wave of pheromones, causing the omega to pull away to breathe.

  “Well, well, well. What do we have here?” the alpha asked, eyes running over Sam from head to toe.

  Amber’s eyes were wide behind her glasses. “Are you a—”

  “He’s an alpha,” Sam interrupted. “Go away,” he told the man.

  “I think I like it better right here.” He placed a hand on Sam’s shoulder, and Sam couldn’t help but bend his neck in submission.

  “A mating bite,” the alpha said, staring at Sam’s skin. “What kind of fool alpha would let his pretty omega go alone to a bar when in heat?”

  Sam squeezed his eyes shut, breath coming in pants. A surge of slick oozed from his body, and the alpha growled, sniffing the air. Sam had to get away. The alpha would take him, if not right there, then in the closest empty room. Pounding music combined with the intense buzzing in Sam’s head, making it difficult for the omega to think clearly. His oncoming heat had his body reacting to the proximity of the alpha, opening up and smoothing the way with copious amounts of sweet-smelling slick. Sam could see the bulge in the alpha’s blue jeans, which were so tight, Sam could make out the knot at the base through the denim. He desperately wished Leo was there.

  The alpha stepped closer, pressing in against Sam.

  “Hey, beat it,” Amber said, grabbing hold of the alpha’s muscular arm. “He doesn’t want you.”

  “Here, dressed like this, and smelling so inviting, I’d say he does,” the alpha said.

  “I-I-I have a mate!” Sam managed to protest.

  “If an alpha allows his omega in heat out of his sight, he deserves to be cuckold.” The alpha leaned forward and took a whiff of Sam’s neck. Distantly, Sam scented Leo and raised his head, searching the club.

  The alpha beside him slid the tip of his nose over Sam’s neck, and a tremor ran through Sam’s body. The next moment, the strange alpha was yanked away from him and thrown backward, toppling several people over.

  “Hey!” A large man with a T-shirt with the name of the club emblazoned on it came barreling at them.

  “We’re just leaving,” Leo said. He wore the black slacks and white dress shirt that was his uniform for the Italian restaurant where he worked, and his long, strawberry-blond hair was pulled back in a man-bun. The anger on his face turned Sam’s guts to water and his dick to wood as Leo grabbed him around the waist and propelled him out of the club.

  Outside, it was fully dark with only the glow of the street lamps lighting the sidewalk. Beside Sam, Leo pulsated with pent-up ire as he strode toward River’s Mustang that he’d parked illegally in front of a fire hydrant. Sam thought he could detect fear mixed with the anger in his mate’s scent and was filled with shame. Leo opened the door and pushed Sam inside before rounding the car and sliding behind the wheel just as the alpha who had come on to Sam barreled out of the club, shoulders bunched and chest heaving with fury.

  Leo tensed and made to get out of the car.

  “No!” Sam clutched at his mate’s arm. “Please get me out of here, Alpha.” Not only would a fight between alphas be bloody and potentially fatal to one or both, it would also look bad for the growing shifter community in the city. River would be furious.

  Whether responding to Sam’s plea or thinking the same thoughts as his omega, Leo growled and flashed his teeth before pulling away from the curb, leaving the other irate alpha in a cloud of exhaust.

  Sam tried not to wriggle in his seat, but it was difficult. Leo’s scent filled his nostrils, alpha pheromones making him desperate to be filled.

  “Pull over somewhere,” he said tightly, not meaning to order his alpha but unable to resist any longer.

  Leo swerved into an alley and exited the car. Sam’s fingers trembled on the door handle, but
Leo ripped it open before they could find purchase. Hoisting Sam out of the passenger seat, Leo flung the omega face-first over the hood of the Mustang before yanking the jeans Sam had borrowed from Sid to his ankles. A few seconds later, Leo was buried knot-deep inside the omega, and Sam’s yell of pleasure was cut off by Leo’s fingers pushing into his mouth. Leo fucked Sam hard and fast, putting all his built-up anxiety and anger behind it, and within moments Sam’s climax crawled up his groin and shot through him like a cannon. He lay panting, shirt bunched up and skin pressed against the warm steel of the car while Leo knotted him.

  “What the fuck were you doing in that place?” Leo growled into Sam’s ear, his knot smashing against the omega’s swollen prostate.

  Sam whimpered, too overcome to find the words to explain. Leo half-climbed on top of the car and shallowly fucked in and out of Sam until the knot broke and another burst of pleasure washed over the omega like a sudden summer storm, clearing away the fog in his brain.

  Leo relaxed against Sam, heart pounding against the omega’s back. Sam drew in deep breaths, feeling as though he’d awakened from a dream, the coupling with his alpha easing the intensity of his heat. As Leo eased off and helped Sam dress, the omega watched his alpha furtively, wondering what Leo would do next.

  But Leo only told Sam to get back into the car. They had to stop once more, this time on a deserted country road close to home. Sam’s legs ached from having his feet planted on the inner roof of the car as Leo fucked him into the seat, cock barely pulled out of the alpha’s trousers. And then, as fast as the early heat had come on, it began to wane. By the time the two werewolves climbed the front porch steps of the plantation, Sam was himself again.

  Chapter 11: River

  River had never seen his third-in-command so rattled. Leo paced the living room of the plantation house while Sam huddled in the chair by the window. River had been in the kitchen eating when Leo and Sam had come home, the slam of the front door bringing the pack alpha into the hallway to see what was going on.

  Standing with David and Brooks in the archway between the hall and living room, River watched Leo growl and pace with his fists bunched at his sides.

  “What happened? Why aren’t you at work?” the pack alpha asked.

  Sam let out a sob, burying his face in his hands. River called up the stairs for Josiah to come down, and a moment later, the first omega descended the steps, clear blue eyes darting about the room, quickly assessing the situation.

  Ignoring the irate alpha pacing the room, the first omega hurried to join his friend in the big chair. Taking the other omega into his arms, he asked, “Sam? What’s happened?”

  Leo rounded on Josiah, pointing a finger. “Do you happen to know how my mate wound up at a dance club?”

  Hackles rising at the tone Leo was using with his mate, River stepped into the room and growled.

  Josiah blinked up at Leo before looking at Sam. “Sid took you to a club?”

  “Sid?” Leo shouted, face reddening. “I’ll kill him!”

  “There’s no harm in going to a dance club,” Josiah said to Leo, and River hoped to hell his mate would never be so bold as to speak to an irate alpha in that way if River weren’t there with him.

  “Even when my mate was almost raped?” Leo demanded, hands on hips and feet planted apart. The alpha glowered down at the omegas in the chair, and Josiah tightened his hold around Sam but tilted his head in submission.

  A growl rolled up from River’s chest. “Calm down,” the pack alpha ordered, and Leo took a reluctant step away from the chair.

  “What do you know about this?” River asked his mate.

  “Earlier today, I dropped Sam off at Sid’s apartment to visit. He texted me later on saying he would have a ride home with Leo.”

  “And where did you find Sam?” River asked Leo.

  Leo spoke through clenched teeth. “He called me from some club near the restaurant, freaking out. Scared the fucking hell out of me. When I arrived, Sam was in heat and some alpha was all over him.”

  “In heat?” River sniffed the air. He didn’t detect any omega pheromones.

  Leo took a deep breath and let it out, and when he spoke again, his voice was slightly calmer. “It ended as fast as it came on. Not only that, it’s much too early.”

  “Sam?” Josiah prompted gently.

  Sam looked up from his lap, large brown eyes swimming with tears. “I didn’t expect it and never even felt it coming on. Sid wanted to dance, and I-I didn’t see any harm in going. I was drinking a water with Amber, Sid’s friend. One minute I was fine, and the next I felt weird. The alpha…he came o-out of nowhere.” He looked at Leo. “I called you as soon as I realized.” The omega’s bottom lip trembled, and a fresh wash of tears cascaded down his face. “I-I was so scared.” He rubbed at the place on his neck where the strange alpha had touched him, even though Leo had thoroughly licked the scent away by now.

  Some of the anger melted from Leo’s face, and River was relieved to see the third-in-command’s instinct to comfort his omega finally overriding his fear. River couldn’t imagine what it would be like to learn Josiah was vulnerable out among humans rather than safe at home as presumed. And then to find him in heat with a strange alpha nosing around him? River knew he’d go ballistic.

  “What happened when you got to the club?” River asked Leo.

  “I threw the son-of-a-bitch across the room and took Sam out of there.”

  “Was there a fight?”

  Leo showed his upper teeth in a snarl. “Sam stopped me from fighting the other alpha.”

  “Thank the gods for that,” River said. A shifter fight in the city was the last thing the werewolves needed.

  Josiah ran his hand through Sam’s hair, murmuring comfortingly before glaring at Leo. “It wasn’t his fault.”

  “Oh, I know that,” Leo picked up steam again. “It was Sid’s fault. He’s out of control, trying to be a human and dragging Sam into his bullshit.”

  “The humans were nice to me,” Sam protested. “It was that alpha I was afraid of.”

  Leo seemed to grow with his anger, chest expanding and muscles rippling. “And rightly so! A few more minutes, and he would have mounted you right there at the bar.”

  River didn’t want to think about the consequences if that would have happened. Such animalistic behavior from shifters would have been the perfect opportunity for a certain human faction to spread hatred. Leo most certainly would have killed the other alpha, and if another pack was involved, it might have led to a pack war.

  David spoke for the first time. “Sounds like the crises was averted. We were fortunate.”

  River nodded and crossed his arms over his chest. “I agree with Leo about Sid. He never should have taken Sam to that club.”

  “But nothing would have happened if I hadn’t gone into heat!” Sam protested, disentangling himself from Josiah’s arms and sitting up. “I was having a good time.”

  Leo growled, but Sam held firm. “Right now, I’m more concerned with why I went into an early heat, and why it lasted only hours before going away without a trace.”

  Josiah rubbed his hand over the other omega’s back. “Do you think it has something to do with the way you’ve felt lately?”

  “That’s what I was thinking.”

  “We’ll let Angela know,” River said. “And whether or not Sid was in the wrong, I’ll pay him a visit tomorrow. He needs to hear what happened.”

  Sam pulled the cell phone out of his pocket. “I must have turned this off by accident.” He switched the phone back on. “Seven missed calls from Sid.”

  “Let me have that.” Leo took the phone, but River snatched it from him.

  “I’ll let Sid know Sam’s home safe. You go take a run and calm down. Let me take care of this.”

  The words were an obvious order, and Leo growled but obeyed, stepping out onto the front porch and closing the door behind him. Seconds later, River saw the reddish-gold wolf streak past the window,
heading for the open fields.

  “Are you all right?” Josiah asked Sam.

  “Yeah. That strange alpha just scared me. He said any alpha who left his omega alone deserved to be taken, but Leo didn’t know I was there.”

  River was glad Leo was out of earshot for that bit of news.

  Sam sniffled and reached for a tissue from the side table.

  Brooks brought in a plate with a sandwich on it and a glass of water. “Here, eat. You’ll feel better.”

  Sam smiled at the beta and took the plate with hands that shook.

  River walked onto the back porch and dialed Sid on the cell phone.

  “Sam?” The beta sounded frantic.

  “This is River.”

  “Is Sam okay? Amber said something happened, and Leo came to get him.”

  “He’s fine, just shaken up. The something that happened was Sam went into heat, and an alpha tried to attack him.”

  “Oh, shit!”

  “Why would you ever think it was a good idea to take him to a club?”

  “We were having fun. Sam didn’t say anything about being close to his heat.”

  “The heat came out of nowhere, but even if it hadn’t, a human club is no place for an omega without his alpha. Particularly if other werewolves could be there.”

  “Sam shouldn’t have been in any danger.”

  “Yet he clearly was. Lately you aren’t thinking like a werewolf.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you’re having so much fun trying to be a human, you’re forgetting how much danger the human world holds for us.”

  “It isn’t as bad as you think, River.”

  River growled, and Sid fell silent.

  “I think it’s time you came back to the pack.”

  “I don’t want to do that. I love school and my friends—”

  “You can stay enrolled in school, but you need to live here where you belong.”

  The beta went quiet. River might have thought Sid had hung up, but the alpha could still hear breathing on the line.

  Finally, Sid spoke, and River’s spine straightened at the words.

  “I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, River, but I belong where I am. If you say I have to live at the plantation, then I-I’m leaving the pack.”