My legs give out from under me and Spence carefully helps me to the ground. How... How did they manage to make this all about my Alpha father? My name isn’t even mentioned. It’s all about how he wants me back, like I’m a car or a boat, an object, not a person, never taking into consideration what I might want. I’m nameless, not important, what my Alpha father wants is what’s important, he’s important.
Then, suddenly, the program switches to my Alpha standing in front of the police station, his eyes passionate, and since someone has turned the subtitles on on the TV, I don’t even need to hear him to know what he’s saying.
My father focuses his eyes on the camera, doing his best ‘bereaved parent’ impression. The text above him says, ‘Passionate plea from Alpha Fireborn’. Then he starts speaking and I can read what he’s saying right under him. “Please, I implore you. Wherever you’re holding her. Please, return her to us. We’ve already had to miss her for years and now we finally know she’s alive, who she might be with, we beg you to return her to us. Alpha Tempest, Alpha Raiden, Alpha Craig and Alpha Forest, I implore you, do the right thing and return her to me. I will drop all of this, if you do the thing that you know is right. If you return her to us, we will drop all the charges, we just want her back. We don’t want any problems, we just want her.”
Then, a guy steps next to him, taking his place at my Alpha father’s side. I have no idea who he is, I’ve never seen him before, but with the way my Alpha has his arm around the ‘grieving’ younger Alpha, I can make a pretty good guess. The text on the screen changes. ‘Alpha Douglas implores everyone who has any knowledge about his Omega mate-to-be to reach out so the two can be rightfully united.’
The guy is at least a decade older than me, and a small voice in the back of my mind is wondering what’s wrong with him that he’d play along in this ploy of my parents... I get why my parents would choose some creepy rich guy, no matter his age, they like the money and status, but what’s in it for him?
Zack storms out of the room, his voice bouncing around the room. “Fucking assholes. Fucking creepy fucking bastards. When I get my hands on them...” And then there’s more crashing as he vents his anger on the table, the rest of his words getting lost in the noise.
I just stare at the TV. When my parents announced that they already had an Alpha for me, my ‘rightful’ Alpha, we knew that there was a good chance this was going to happen. I knew they’d try to get me back any way possible. Any way they could.
But to see them like this, filmed in front of the police station, like what they’re doing isn’t some big scam, some way to go beyond the law to get their hands on me, and somehow also gain some sympathy from the public. It’s a scam. It’s a big lie, and nobody is stopping them or calling them out about it.
It’s more than I’m used to from my parents. It’s bigger, beyond what they’d normally be able to do, at least what they’d have been able to do a few years ago. Something’s not right. We’re missing something, something big. What’s going on? Why are they doing this? Why the ruse? Why the... Why all of this?
Then my heart feels like it’s about to fall out of my body as the TV switches to a single image. The text on the screen loudly proclaiming that the reward for whoever manages to return me to my parents will be upwards of two million bucks.
I feel sick, my dinner threatening to come back up, as I belatedly realise that the TV is on a human channel, this is on the human news of a worldwide broadcast station. They’re getting the whole fucking world involved.
Oh, hell no.
We’re doomed. We can’t win this. We can never win this, not anymore. It’s over. They won. We lost.
Four pairs of arms surround me, holding me tightly between them, but my mind is spinning. How are we going to survive?
I’ll lose them. I’ll lose my Alphas, my mates. And... what happens then? What happens to me and... and... and our babies?
What’s going to happen to us?
Don’t want to stop reading? Grab your copy of the next book:
OUT Dec 16th! Pre-order now!
Omega Phoenix: Hunted (Her Shifter Harem’s Babies 2)
Get updates about Layla Heart’s books by signing up to the Easily Distracted Media Newsletter:
Easily Distracted Media Newsletter
Next in this series: Omega Phoenix: Hunted (Her Shifter Harem’s Babies 2)
Don’t want to stop reading? Grab your copy of the next book:
OUT Dec 16th! Pre-order now!
Omega Phoenix: Hunted (Her Shifter Harem’s Babies 2)
Freshly mated Omega Cyra and her four Alphas are being hunted, by Cyra’s parents, the media and the police...
At the yearly Night Gala, an exclusive event for rich shifters, four Alphas catch Cyra’s Omega scent and react to her instinctively, recognising her as their mate. They don’t know what to make of it at first, but the party is not a place to talk privately, especially not with so much paparazzi around, so they decide to sneak off, find a better place to figure out what’s happening.
Cyra, a rare Omega phoenix, had been hiding herself from the shifter world for years because she wanted to live her own life and not be constantly controlled by an Alpha. As soon as an Alpha mates an Omega, they become that Alpha’s property and Cyra refuses to live like that. More importantly, when an
