I walked straight back into the showers, still in my clothes, and I let the now-cold water wash over my face.
They found me so fast. It had all happened in the space of twenty-four hours. I’d let my raging attraction to the men in this house distract me from my mission, and now I was trapped.
The look on Oliver’s face when he first saw me blossomed in my mind. His mouth had been slack and eyes wide like I was the last person on Earth that he expected to see.
A memory came bursting into my mind, unbidden and unwanted. I’d felt Oliver’s emotions growing for years.
I’d been lying in the dark of my room, hyper-aware of the fact that Kane could come in any minute, wanting his daily fix of dominating me before he passed out. It was his favorite game. Kane would give me an order to do something, like roll over, and I would fight him as pleasure flooded his system from the dominance. When I gave in and rolled over, he would spoon me and tell me about his day, like we were any ordinary couple.
Instead, Oliver stepped out of the shadows. He was a large man with wide shoulders and disconcertingly light blue eyes.
I crawled to the side of the bed. “You shouldn’t be here, Oliver. Kane is coming at any minute.”
Oliver knelt before me and reached out toward my cheeks, but he came short of touching my skin. “I’ve got a plan to get you out of here, Omega.”
“You’re going to help me escape?” I tried to sound confused, but really, it didn’t come as a shock.
Every time Kane assigned Oliver as my guard, Oliver’s longing thrummed down between us like a livewire, and even though the enforcer had a violent reputation, I’d let his infatuation grow. My gaze would linger on Oliver’s strangely light eyes for a few seconds too long as I passed him in the hallways. I’d asked him about his day and his feelings and dreams, and he’d confide in me. His burgeoning longing was the weakness in the chains that bound me, and I’d let Oliver’s fascination turn into an obsession in the hopes he’d let me escape.
“Yes. We’ll escape together and start a new pack,” he said, and the words sliced through my chest. Another fucking prison. I’d judged the weakness in my chains wrong.
I shook my head. “He’ll catch us, and he’ll kill you.”
“I have everything we need, fake identities, passports, plane tickets, money, clothes… a gun loaded with silver ammo. I just need you to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. I’m getting you out of the country, Omega. I have family that will protect us in Belgium, and then we can make our way up to Russia.”
My heart swelled with hope and despair at his words. Oliver was one of my jailors, and he was offering to help me escape. He planned to hand me my freedom on a silver platter. Escaping one man while we were on the run would be so much easier than escaping ten werewolves while we were in their packhouse. Oliver got me fake papers so I could make it through the border. He had a gun. All I would need to do is take it all and run, and then Kane would be following two trails, Oliver’s and mine. Kane would kill Oliver if I did that. But, could I afford to hesitate just because I had sympathy for the devil?
“I’m scared,” I whispered, and I knew it rang true. I was so fundamentally terrified of the choice laid out before me.
“I will protect you,” Oliver said, and I could see the passion in his eyes. “Tell me you’ll be ready.”
Oliver’s dominance pressed down on me, and with it came Oliver’s longing and lust. His order forced my head into nodding up and down, and passion lit in his eyes. All of the sympathy I had for the man vanished, and the plan cemented in my mind.
“Yes, Oliver. I’ll be ready.”
“Teagan?” The low voice woke me from my memories, and I stepped away from the frozen water as shivers racked through my body.
Declan rushed into the bathroom and grabbed a towel off the pile, wrapping me up and hugging me to his chest.
“What’s going on? We all just got called home with the news some werewolf got to you.” He rubbed my back under the towel. “Was it Kane?”
“No. Kane wants to capture me—that werewolf out there wants to kill me.” A chill ran down my spine. “I was feeling feverish a moment ago, and now I’m freezing. I should get out of these wet clothes. Is the werewolf gone?”
“He ran off before we arrived.”
I nodded and headed toward the door when I turned back to Declan. Fuck, I felt like such a coward, but I didn’t want to be alone.
Somehow, I didn’t have to ask, and Declan wrapped an arm around my shoulders and headed into Jasper’s bedroom with me. The big guy helped me peel off my wet jeans as I pulled off my soaked shirt and bra.
I reached for my bag when I realized that I had a choice between clothes I wore during a night in the forest and discarded during sex, clothes soaked in gasoline that were still strewn all over the driveway, my soaked outfit, or a sexy little negligee. I’d have gone for the lingerie except for the fact that it was something that Oliver bought for me to wear for him, and after today, just the thought of that made me feel sick to my stomach.
“Do you maybe have something I could borrow while I wash my clothes, Declan?” I asked.
When he
