through her ankle bonds, as easily as if he was cutting paper. The whole ordeal took less than thirty seconds.
Before the last metal cuff rolled away from her foot, Knox jumped down from the truck, tossing the bolt cutters to Gray as casually as if he was flipping a coin. Gray caught them just as easily as Knox headed for the driver's side door. "All right then, she's all yours."
Wait—what?
He was just planning on leaving her here? Sure, Olivia seemed perfectly lovely, but what about Gray? The growling, angry alpha had made it abundantly clear that he didn't want anything to do with her.
"The hell she is," Gray roared as if to confirm her fears.
"Well, she has to stay somewhere, Gray." Knox's voice had taken on an edge of annoyance and aggression at odds with his devil-may-care attitude. "And it sure as shit ain't going to be with me."
"Guys," Josie broke in. If there was one thing more annoying than being ordered around, it was being discussed as if she wasn't right there. "I can settle this easy. I don't really want to stay with any of you, no offense. Now that you've helped me get those cuffs off, I'll get out of your hair. All I need is someone to drive me out to the border, and then—"
"You can't go back over the border," Knox interrupted. "The blockade runs at least twenty miles across. The beta army will pick you up and toss you back here before you've made it a hundred yards."
"Okay, then," Josie said. She could be flexible. "If you don't mind the drive, I can go across the southern border."
"Same situation there. All roads leading into and out of the Boundarylands are locked down."
"Well, then what about the eastern border? I know there's no roads out that way, but if I could borrow a few supplies, it would only take me a few days to get back to civilization."
"You might be able to," Knox conceded. "If you had the training and endurance. But you'd be a fool to start hiking that way, especially in the middle of the night."
Josie's irritation was mixed with growing apprehension. "Why's that?"
He arched a brow. Apparently, the answer was obvious to everyone but her. "Do you have a compass?"
Oh.
"No," she admitted.
"Neither do I," he said. "And I know for damn sure Gray here would never stoop to having one."
"Why the hell would I ever need a compass?" Gray demanded, as if not having a perfect intuitive sense of direction was an unforgivable deficit.
Josie searched desperately for some other solution, one that didn't require staying overnight with an alpha.
"Let's be honest," Knox said, looking her straight in the eye, which made her knees buckle. "You’ve lived in the beta world your entire life, and you'll get turned even around in the light of day. And that's if the wolves and bears don't find you first."
"Knox," Olivia chided. "You're scaring her."
"Maybe she ought to be scared," he shot back. "Those woods are dangerous for someone who doesn't know what they're doing."
"That's strange, Knox," Gray said, folding his arms across his chest. "For someone who wants to get rid of this woman, you sure don't sound anxious for her to leave."
Knox flinched as though he'd taken a punch. "That's bullshit, and you know it."
Even Josie was slightly offended on his behalf. Maybe he was actually just a decent guy who didn't want to see a stranger get hurt.
"All this arguing is pointless," Olivia said. "You're all forgetting one important thing."
Gray wrenched his glare away from Knox to his mate. "And what's that?"
"If Josie and I were both brought here by the same people, then she might have one of those trackers in her arm too."
Josie's heart skipped a beat. "A tracker?" By this point, she shouldn't be surprised by anything that bastard in the bad suit had done, but the idea was shocking.
"It would be a tiny chip embedded in your arm," Olivia explained. "At least, mine was. And it's too small for you to notice. They probably would have injected it into you the last time you were at your doctor's office."
The pieces fell sickeningly into place. "You're saying that as long as that tracker's inside me, they'll know where I am."
"It's worse than that, actually. They'll be able to track all your other signs…including if your omega nature has awakened."
"So there's no point in trying to leave," Olivia said slowly, the last of her hope draining away. She was trapped inside the