This conniving, cruel alpha had to be lying to her.
Faith would rather be dead than be an omega…and she was willing to prove it.
"Liar," she spat at him, using all her strength to yank back her hand. She wanted to smack him, and she did her best. But he was too quick and caught her wrist before she even got close.
With both of her arms in his grip, the demon alpha crushed her against his body, then leaned down and kissed her mouth.
Faith gasped as his tongue, hot and wet, swept against her lower lip. Her body reacted with a rush of sensation instantly, flooding with heat, betraying her will. Her heart raced, and her blood rose in her veins.
Faith heard a moan—low and needy—escaping from her own lips. The rough fabric of the alpha’s shirt scraped against her nipples through her thin dress and bra, sending splinters of pleasure radiating straight down to her most private places. Still, it wasn't enough to slake her sudden, frightening thirst. She felt her hips tilting back, her legs opening to press herself against this monster in a sinfully intimate way.
Faith had never touched a man this way before. Not even Peter, her fiancé.
The pressure on one particular spot grew keener as she rocked, these astonishing new sensation multiplying so fast she could barely keep up. It felt so good.
Too good.
Faith suddenly remembered that it had to be wrong. Shrill warning alarms blared in her head, commanding her to pull back. To reject this sin and save herself.
But there was another force—even stronger—that kept her writhing against him.
When Faith opened her eyes, she had the horrifying realization that it wasn't the alpha making her behave so indecently. He had released her, his hands no longer pressing her body against his. She was free to pull away from him.
She was pressed against him of her own free will, kissing him wantonly, grinding against him. Feeling the sinful rush of the devil's own touch.
Shame rocked Faith to her core. She wrenched herself away with an animal cry, shaking all over.
She was free—but she didn't run.
It was as if her body couldn't bear to stray too far from the lure of his heat, his touch.
Faith's hands flew to her mouth, attempting to smother the ragged sob that erupted from her. She'd give anything to deny what she was feeling, but she couldn't. Even now, she could feel her shame running, hot and slick, between her legs.
"Fuck," a growling voice from the porch behind them rumbled. One of the other alphas—the darker and meaner looking of the two. "No sign of an omega for twenty damn years. Now they're showing up by the busload."
"You're just pissed you didn't grab her first," the second alpha said.
"And you're just cocky 'cause you've already got one waiting for you at home."
Faith tried to block their squabbling from her head. She didn't know what they were talking about, and she didn't care…just as she didn't care about the searing kiss or electric shocks of pleasure or the need dampening her thighs—and certainly not about the man who'd done all that to her.
She was here for something else entirely.
Faith closed her eyes and summoned all of her strength. She used the sheer force of her will to block everything from her mind but her mission. When she opened her eyes again, she stared the alpha straight in the eye.
"Take me to my sister, devil."
The alpha's eyes narrowed, her demand glancing harmlessly off their ice-capped seas.
"Fuck that."
In the space of a heartbeat, he hoisted her up and over his shoulder.
Faith screamed. She kicked and punched, pummeling his back and chest, but the alpha didn't even flinch. Why would he? She was as insubstantial as a gnat to him, nothing but a minor annoyance.
"Put me down!" she yelled as he started down the porch steps, and the other alphas went back inside the bar. Her voice was swallowed up by the swirling snow, the only other sound the alpha's boots crunching through the icy crust. "Where are you taking me?"
"First to my truck," the devil answered. "Then to my bed."
* * *
Troy had never given much thought to the subject of omegas.
Up until last year, he'd never had to. They were rare creatures...or so he and the rest of his alpha brothers had all been told.
The truth was that no one really knew how many omegas there were in the world. Unlike alphas—whose natures became obvious around the age of sixteen—omegas only changed once they felt the touch of an alpha.
And since beta society did its best to keep females scared and close, there weren't tons of women flooding over the boundary line.
There were some, of course. Nicky and her girls, for instance. But they were all confirmed betas. Then there were always a few fanatics who were driven to find out if they were special, their heads full of dangerous misconceptions about alphas and the lives they led.
But for the most part, women stayed as far away from the Boundarylands as they could.
Troy could remember the bullshit propaganda the teachers had fed kids' brains when he was growing up. They taught that alphas were animals, bloodthirsty and murderous. If they weren't killing, they were screwing, and they could split a beta woman clean in half with the force of their cocks. They didn't use that kind of language, of course—the lessons were presented in the same dull prose that made Troy want to throw his textbooks across the room—but he got the message nonetheless.
That was the crap the woman sitting in the passenger seat of his truck had been raised on. She probably got to hear it all over again at home, from her religious-freak parents and their church.
Troy tried to dig back in his memories
