“So, Saoirse,” the man said, flashing me a smile. He had to look over his shoulder at me a little, since he was leaning forward due to the cuffs, but there was something sexy about that. “What’re you in for?”
I ignored his question. “What’s your name? You know mine. Doesn’t seem fair.”
His smile widened. “Does anything about this situation strike you as fair?”
He had a point, but he was already going on. “My name is Reed McKinney. Pleasure to meet you, Saoirse.”
“Shut up,” Blue warned, glancing back at us. “Saoirse, he’s a sociopath. You don’t want to talk to him.”
Reed rolled his eyes. “Hurtful.”
“Maybe I do,” I told Blue, feeling a spark of heat ignite in my chest. “At least he told me what his name is.”
“You don’t need to know our names,” Blue said.
“I prefer psychopath, not sociopath,” Reed said to me in a confidential tone. “Sociopaths are disorganized, antisocial. That’s not me.”
Blue snorted. “You’re not antisocial? You’ve killed more than your fair share of people.”
“And so have you, I’d wager,” Reed shot back. Looking to me, he added, “I’d be happy to fit into society, if society weren’t so damn terrible.”
“Right now, that’s pretty hard to argue with,” I said.
“Oh, let me guess,” Reed said. He cast a critical eye over me, and I felt my cheeks heat faintly as his gaze sharpened. He looked at me as if he liked what he saw, his eyes roaming my face first, then down my body.
He seemed to pause for a second on my fists on my knees. I had the strangest sense he saw through me and knew about the key I gripped in my hand, as if the man could read me.
His gaze drifted back up to my face. “Resisting the alpha’s advances? Not resisting the alpha’s advances, and becoming inconvenient? Refusing to marry?”
“Maybe she’s an ax murderer,” Blue said. “I told you to shut up.”
“Maybe she should have been an ax murderer,” Reed shot back. His gaze went back to me. “What do you think, Saoirse? With everything they did to you…”
“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” I said. “I just want to live my own life.”
“Mm.” Reed cast a critical eye over me one more time, then turned his attention to the road, looking over Blue’s shoulder. “Speaking of. We’re coming closer to Freed territory.”
Blue shook his head, refusing to answer, but my heart raced at the thought.
“Not that it matters right now,” Reed murmured, his nostrils flaring. “She’s in her heat, isn’t she? She’ll need to mate. She won’t want to be alone until she has.”
I shook my head, rejecting his words, even though the way my blood burned through my body, my core clenching, made me think he spoke the truth.
“I could help you with that,” Reed said, his voice low and sexy. “If you choose.”
“No, you bloody well can’t,” Blue said.
“You’re going to let her go to prison where there will be no release for her?” Reed asked skeptically. “Well, that seems like the cruelest cut of all.”
“The need will fade once she’s not around any alpha,” Gray said. He gave me an encouraging look. “If you do feel anything, it’s not… going to last forever.”
“Oh, she feels something.” Reed gave me another one of those looks that seemed to go right through me, and a strange, tingling feeling swept across my skin. My knees clenched together, revealing far more than I meant to, and Reed laughed out loud. If he hadn’t been laughing at me, it would have been a nice-sounding, boyish laugh.
Just then, there was a pop outside the car, followed by a whap-whap-whap sound that seemed to be coming from the front right tire.
“Fuck.” Blue exploded, slapping his hand against the steering wheel.
Gray leaned forward, drawing his gun from the small of his back. He and Blue exchanged a glance, as if they expected this might be the prelude to an attack.
Reed smiled to himself.
“Stay put,” Blue said, again. He pulled over to the side of the road and got out of the car, and Gray did the same. Gray moved quickly to the trunk of the car, and when he had closed it, I glimpsed a long barrel, like he’d gotten a shotgun or a rifle. I couldn’t see exactly.
Gray stood watch as Blue knelt beside the tire, and then I lost view of him as he began to set the jack.
“Want to get out of here?” Reed tilted his head at me curiously.
“Obviously,” I said, wondering what game he was playing. “Did you set this up?”
“No,” he said, and I thought he meant it. “I wish.”
“Then how would we get out of here?” I asked.
“We.” His lips twitched in a widening smile. “I like the way you think. I was right, wasn’t I, little Omega? You don’t want to be alone?”
“No wolf wants to be alone,” I shot back. “It’s not just because I’m…”
He studied me for a second. “You never felt it in your old pack, did you?”
I didn’t owe him any answers. And yet, despite myself, I found myself saying, “No.”
“Is that why you wouldn’t do what you were told? You wanted to hold out for true love and fated mates and something beautiful?” He said it in such a mocking tone that anger flared in my chest.
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe I just didn’t want someone else to make all the decisions for my life. I didn’t want to be told what to do by a bunch of assholes.”
“Ah, I know that feeling,” he said. He jerked his chin toward me. “From the way you’re sitting, they made you pay for it. Why didn’t you
