Cade: The Boundarylands Omegaverse Read online

  Her last chance. Emily wasn't sure if she hoped or feared that was true. She knew what Sloan was capable of—he could kill her without breaking a sweat if he wanted to. And as he liked to remind her almost daily, he had every right to do so.

  "You're my property," he'd say off-handedly as he gutted fish in the sink, slopping their innards on the floor so she'd have to get on her knees and clean it up. "Don't ever forget that. You belong to me. And just like everything else I own, I can build you up or cut you down whenever the fuck I want."

  They'd driven over three hours before Sloan pulled off the road without warning, causing Emily to slam into the passenger door and hit her head on the glass. He parked in the corner of a gravel lot in front of an unremarkable wood-sided building whose purpose became apparent when the door opened and she caught a glimpse of alphas clustered around a long bar drinking beer.

  Stopping at a bar didn't surprise Emily, though it didn't improve her situation either. Sloan liked to drink despite the fact that it made him even more short-tempered and unpredictable.

  The stranger who'd come to her window—now, that was a surprise. In her experience, alphas tended to steer clear of strangers. The few she’d encountered either looked through her or were just as cruel as Sloan.

  It was just her luck that when she finally met one with a hero complex, it was at the absolute worst time. Once Sloan knocked the handsome young alpha down, he was sure to come after her.

  It didn't take long. Not even a full minute after she'd climbed back into the truck, the barroom door was thrown open, crashing into the wall. Emily closed her eyes in dread as heavy boots stormed down the wooden stairs.

  It seemed her last chance was over before it began.

  "Cade," a deep alpha voice called—a voice didn’t belong to Sloan or to the one who’d spoken to her earlier.

  Emily turned her head and was surprised to see the handsome stranger striding toward her. Amazingly, there wasn't a scratch on him—and Sloan was nowhere in sight.

  A small crowd of alphas and omegas had spilled out of the bar behind him. The women stayed safely behind the wood porch railing, and the alphas fanned out behind the stranger, keeping several paces back.

  "You don't want to do this, Cade," one of them muttered warningly.

  The stranger stopped long enough to wave him off. "Go back inside, Zeke. This ain't any of your business."

  "The hell it ain't," another alpha growled. "You made it all of our business when you knocked an uplander out cold on the floor of my bar."

  "Oh, for fuck's sake, Ty." Cade turned his back on the others and came up next to the truck. "That used to be just a regular Monday night around this place."

  Emily blinked as he leaned down and rested his forearm casually on the truck's windowsill, so close she could lean over and touch him—if she had even less sense.

  She stared at him, her heart hammering, and saw that he was younger than she first thought, only a few years older than she, his close-cropped dark hair lightened from the sun, no silver in the stubble of his beard. He had unusual golden eyes that gazed at her directly as if he was trying to see through her.

  Like all alphas, he was big, over seven feet tall and ridiculously wide at the shoulders, but it was still hard for her to believe that he had knocked Sloan out.

  In her mind, Sloan was an undefeatable monster. With his brutal grin revealing teeth he'd neglected too long, his straggly beard, and his constant boasting that he hadn't lost a fight in years, he'd become practically invincible in her mind.

  But apparently, he wasn't indestructible after all.

  The stranger—Cade—threw her door open. This time, Emily didn't bother trying to ignore him.

  If this alpha really was the one who had knocked Sloan out cold without earning a scratch, that made him an even greater threat, one who was capable of horrors she couldn't even imagine, much less prepare herself for. She slid over to the driver's side and dangled her legs over the seat, waiting to hear what he wanted.

  "Come on down."

  Emily surprised herself by shaking her head. She couldn't seem to force herself to obey. She was simply too afraid.

  Even though she'd been steeling herself the whole way down here, knowing this trip could be her last, this was different. Not knowing what was coming made everything worse. Right now, she was every bit as afraid as she'd been that first moment with Sloan.

  "Aw fuck, she's bleeding," one of the alphas said. Emily didn't dare take her eyes off Cade to see who had spoken. "Did you do that, Cade?"

  Cade's expression hardened, anger turning his face to granite. Slowly, he turned to face the other alpha. "Are you fuckin' serious, Troy?"

  "You've tried picking fights with everyone else here," the alpha shot back. "I've got no reason not to think you'd start throwing punches at omegas, too, if you had the chance."

  The tendons in Cade's neck stood out in high relief, a vein beneath pulsing. Emily slid backward on the seat, trembling with fear.

  "Shut your damn mouth before I shut it for you," Cade snarled. "That goes for all of you sons of bitches. Can't you see you're scaring her?"

  "I'm scaring her?" the blond one named Troy said. "That's fucking hilarious."

  "Guys," a woman's voice broke through. "You're all scaring her."

  Emily tried to find the source in the crowd. Up near the northern boundary, she was the only omega for twenty miles. It had been a long time since she'd heard another woman's voice. In other circumstances, she'd be relieved and delighted.

  But Emily didn't want to be near these women any more than she wanted to be around Cade or his alpha brothers. These were the real omegas, according to Sloan—the ones who knew how to treat their alphas. Who were supposedly going to teach her how to bond, claim, and breed with a creature that she hated more than the devil himself.

  Emily had made her mind up hours ago not to listen to a damn word they said.

  She watched as a petite woman with long, wavy dark hair stepped forward from the crowd and slowly walked across the parking lot toward her, palms up to show she meant no harm. Surprisingly, no one raised a hand to stop her. Cade even stepped out of her way as she neared the open door of the truck.

  "Hi, I'm Mia," the omega said, her smile not quite hiding the concern in her eyes. She was pretty, with bright, intelligent eyes, high cheekbones, and not a single bruise visible on her face. Maybe Sloan was right, and these women really did know how to pleasure and pacify their alphas. "I'm not going to hurt you, I promise, but I can help you if you come out from there."

  Emily shook her head again, her gaze darting between Mia and the others. There was no way in hell she wanted the kind of help this omega was offering, the kind that was designed to force her to grin and bear it the way Sloan wanted, to teach her to please the monster currently laid out on the barroom floor.

  In that moment, Emily realized that she would rather die than live another minute as Sloan's omega, no matter how happy she learned to make him.

  "I'm not going anywhere with you."

  Mia raised her eyebrows, but she didn't appear angry when she turned back to the crowd. "All right. So, she's afraid of me too. Anyone else have any suggestions?"

  "Yeah," Cade said, stepping between Mia and the truck. He reached across the seat and grabbed Emily's ankle, gripping it tightly.

  Then he pulled her across the seat before wrapping his arms around her waist. She tried to pry his hands off her body, but it was pointless to struggle against his massive hands as he lifted her off the seat and set her on the ground.

  "It's time to stop asking," he said to no one in particular, "and just do what needs doing.”

  Chapter Three

  "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

  Cade didn't bother to answer Zeke as he hoisted the omega up and over his shoulder. It was a reasonable question, though—what the hell did he think he was doing, exactly?

  Stealing another alpha's woman, obviously, just as he'd told that fuckwit o
n the floor of the bar that he would. The real question was why.

  For someone who liked a good fight, Cade couldn't stand a bully. He'd never taken a shot at anyone who couldn't defend themselves. He'd never hit a beta—man or woman—and he sure as shit had never laid a finger on an omega. In Cade's opinion, any man who would try to prove himself by punching down was no kind of man.

  Which explained why he'd knocked the son-of-a-bitch uplander out cold…but it didn't explain why Cade was now carrying the bastard's omega to his own truck.

  At least the woman wasn't resisting. An omega could put up a good fight when she wanted to—he'd heard enough stories from his alpha brothers to know you'd be a fool to provoke one without a damn good reason. But not this one. If it wasn't for the tension radiating from her body like a high-power line, he might have thought that she was the one out cold.

  Zeke headed Cade off, putting himself between them and Cade's truck.

  "This ain't a fucking game, Cade," he growled. "I can't let you do this."

  "Step aside, brother," Cade said. Zeke might be a decade older, with a famously short temper, but that didn't make him Cade's boss.

  "Make me." Zeke folded his arms and glared.

  "Now you want to fight?" Cade was incredulous. For months, he had been jabbing at the older alpha, trying to get the crabby bastard to throw down and blow off some of that frustrated energy. He couldn't believe Zeke had chosen this moment, when Cade had a bleeding omega slung over his shoulder, to finally decide to take him up on the offer.

  "You can't just take another alpha's omega." The venom in Zeke's voice made it clear that for some reason, this was personal—though Cade couldn't imagine why.

  "She ain't his," his shot back. "That piece of shit had no claiming bite, and neither does she."

  Though, even she had, Cade still wouldn't give a shit.

  "Zeke, sweetheart." Darcy, Zeke's pink-haired omega, was trying to get her mate's attention from the porch. "Cade's right. This is nothing like what happened between you and Stephanie. You saw the look in that alpha's eyes! When he wakes up, he'll just hurt her again…probably worse."

  Zeke squeezed his eyes shut and gave a powerful growl. Slowly, as though it pained him, he let out a long breath, unclenching his fists. Cursing under his breath, he opened his eyes and reluctantly stepped out of Cade's way.

  Cade didn't know what was more surprising—that he'd actually seen the infamous Zeke Proctor stand down, or that for the first time, an omega had actually helped him out.

  With that out of the way, Cade yanked open his passenger door and deposited the lush woman in his arms inside. She didn't spare him a glance, instead turning away from him and making herself small against the seat. The scent of her fear and resignation was as heavy as before, but at least she wasn't trying to escape.

  At this point, Cade would take any wins he could get.

  "Don't move," he told her before shutting her inside the safety of his truck.

  Then he turned to face half a dozen skeptical, disapproving alphas.

  "Where are you taking her?" Ty demanded.

  "Where do you think?" It wasn't as if there was a Four Seasons tucked away in the Boundarylands that Cade could put her up in.

  "I knew it." Zeke's voice dripped with disgust. "He isn't saving her. He's just taking her home to use her as a fuck toy."

  "You're not going to hurt her, are you?" one of the omegas—Faith, Troy's woman—asked from the patio.

  Cade growled at the insult. Faith was lucky she was an omega because if an alpha had asked him that, he'd be flat on his back right now with a busted nose.

  "Go back inside," he said, addressing the entire fool crowd. "Finish your beers. Play some fucking pool. And when that piece of shit Sloan wakes up, you can give him a message for me—if he's stupid enough to show his face around here again, I won't go so easy on him."

  There was nothing more to say, so Cade turned back to his truck, ignoring the muttering as the alphas headed back up the wooden stairs and into the bar.

  "Hey, Cade," Zeke called. Of course, that bastard had to have the last word.

  Cade groaned. He was ready to pummel the bastard into the ground if he didn't back off. God knew he wanted to.

  But something held him back…something having to do with a pair of huge baby-blue eyes that had seen more than enough violence for one day.

  "What do you want now, Zeke?" he asked tightly, turning to face the other alpha.

  What he saw in his brother's eyes surprised him—it was more resignation than anger. "Just to tell you that I've seen this play out before. I know how it ends…and it isn't pretty."

  An electric tingle of warning shot down Cade's spine, but he ignored it. "Is that all you have to say?"

  Zeke gave a low growl of disappointment before answering. "That's all."

  "Good. Then go back to your woman and your beer."

  But Zeke didn't move. He was still standing in the parking lot shaking his head when Cade jumped into his truck, threw it in reverse, and drove the hell out of there.

  If she made herself small enough, maybe one day she'd disappear completely.

  Emily had been repeating this comforting fantasy to herself for months. It worked no better now, hurtling up the Central Road in a stranger's ca,r than it did back at Sloan's. Still, if she couldn't physically disappear, there was at least a sliver of relief to be had in pretending she could.

  She imagined a magical thread binding her at the shoulders and knees, slowly winding and pulling her body in on itself tighter and tighter until she vanished into nothing.

  As always, when Emily finally opened her eyes, nothing had changed.

  Yes, she was in a different truck with a different alpha, but Emily had learned through a series of very hard lessons that only the scenery ever changed in the life she led now.

  If anything, her situation was a hell of a lot worse. The second Sloan came to, he'd come looking for her with a single-minded determination. And when he found her alone with another alpha, they both would pay for his humiliation with their blood.

  If Emily had been feeling charitable, she would have felt badly for the alpha sitting next to her, who didn't realize this was his last day on earth. But he wasn't exactly innocent.

  She hadn't asked him to intervene. She certainly hadn't asked to be thrown in his truck and carried off like something he'd bought at the general store.

  Emily considered warning him again but quickly discarded the idea. This alpha might be young and handsome, with golden eyes that warmed her insides, but he was also unpredictable.

  At least with Sloan, she'd had a pretty good idea when the blows were coming. With Cade, she had no idea what would set him off...and she wasn't in any rush to find out.

  Better to keep her mouth closed and wait for Sloan to find them and end it all.

  The thought of death didn't scare Emily. She'd come to terms with its inevitability long before Sloan had tossed her into his truck this morning.

  What she was afraid of was all the pain he'd make her feel before he finally ended her.

  Of course, the alpha at her side had proven he could cause just as much suffering as Sloan ever did...maybe more.

  Emily glanced over at him. The face that had been contorted with rage when he'd snarled at his alpha brothers had relaxed somewhat, but she couldn't forget his deep, threatening voice.

  Shut your traps before I shut them for you.

  Emily shivered and closed her eyes again, pressing herself against the passenger door with her face turned toward the window. But try as she might, she couldn't mute the other voices that filled her head—the voices of the other alphas, talking about this one.

  I don't put it past you to start throwing punches at omegas.

  He isn't saving her. He's just taking her home to use her as a fuck toy.

  This alpha Cade might be younger and more attractive than Sloan, but he was apparently cut from the same cloth.

  And why would Emily ever
dare to expect anything else? Alphas were all the same—mean, quick-tempered, violent.

  There in the parking lot, while the alphas argued outside the truck, Emily had committed the one unforgivable sin of her world: she had dared to hope.

  It had only lasted a moment, and it was a fragile hope indeed—that she might somehow escape and create a new life.

  But then Cade had slung her over his shoulder, just as Sloan had that first time. Just like that, all hope disappeared.

  And yet…there was something inside her that refused to give up.

  Against every rational thought, Emily found herself sneaking another glance at him.

  Even now, several miles down the road, Cade’s body was still tense with anger. He gripped the steering wheel so hard she was surprised he didn't snap it in two.

  "You got something to say?"

  Emily flushed. How could he possibly know she was looking at him?

  "Well?"

  "No," she mumbled. "I don't have anything to say."

  "Really?" His tone bordered on mocking. "' Cause you sure weren't so quiet when we first spoke."

  "That was before."

  "Before what?"

  For a moment, Emily considered holding her tongue, but she knew it wouldn't do any good. When an alpha asks a question, he expects an answer, Sloan always said.

  Besides, she knew there was no possibility of saving herself. Her die was cast.

  "Before you kidnapped me."

  Emily braced herself for the backhand she was sure was coming. But the alpha only gave an annoyed grumble—one that didn't seem to be directed entirely at her.

  "Yeah," he acknowledged. "Things got out of hand back there. I wasn't expecting everyone to follow me out."

  Emily blinked. Things got out of hand?

  Surely, that wasn't meant to be an apology. Alphas never apologized for anything.

  "Of course," Cade continued, "I wouldn't have had to be so forceful if you'd just come down out of the truck when I told you to."

  Ah, there it was, the kind of talk she was used to.

  This is your fault.

  You made me do it.