send their women to the Boundarylands in the first place. Considering the lengths they went to in order to protect beta women from what they considered the alpha scourge, why would they abandon dormant omegas inside? At least when they sent Olivia, they'd been trying to collect data…but that obviously wasn't the case with this one.
No, she was being punished for something. And for some reason, Knox really wanted to know what that was.
Olivia let out a very unladylike curse. Continuing to lean into the cutters with all her might, sweat glistened along her brow despite the cold. Knox and Gray had been watching this drama play out in the bed of the truck for at least twenty minutes now from the safe remove of the porch. It was turning out to be a hell of a lot harder than Knox had thought it would be. His plan to drive up and leave her on Grays' doorstep like a delivery of cordwood hadn't turned out the way he'd expected.
Olivia's struggle had been amusing at first, as only a stubborn, mouthy omega could be amusing. It never got old, watching his unfortunate brothers take shit from their mates. But at this point, it was obvious that no one other than an alpha would be able to cut those chains off.
"Please don't hurt yourself," the woman said with genuine concern. "If we can't slice through the cuffs, I'm sure I can find some other way out of them."
"No, no, I can do it," Olivia assured her, her face turning purple with effort. "Just. Gotta. Try. A. Little. Harder."
"Enough!" Gray boomed. "If you keep that up, Olivia, you're going to burst a damn blood vessel in your brain."
"So what do you suggest, smart guy?" Olivia swung around so her legs dangled from the tailgate. "You won't risk coming near her, and we can't just leave her in chains. Look at her hands—they aren't getting any blood."
Fuck. Sure enough, her fingers were tinged with blue. If she wasn't freed soon, she was going to lose some tissue at the very least.
"Give me the damn cutters." Knox crossed the distance between the house and the truck in a few strides, trying to ignore the astonishment on everyone's faces as if he'd just announced he was having lunch with the Queen of England. "I'll do it."
"Knox…" Gray muttered warningly. As if he didn't know exactly what could happen. As if he hadn't played out the horrific scenario already of what would occur if he made the slightest contact with her skin.
The sudden spark. The rush of awareness. All of it followed by an urgent, pounding need to take her. Claim her. Mark her as his own until the day he died.
When his brothers talked about it—which only happened when they'd had a shit ton to drink—they seemed in awe. To Knox, it sounded like a hell that never ended, on a par with being locked in a cave with nothing but diet soda and old issues of Readers Digest for the rest of his life.
Not that he didn't like sex. Knox loved sex—and he got plenty with the lovely professionals who, until the blockade, made weekly visits to entertain the alphas in the settlement. The second best thing about the beta prostitutes was that they were devoted professionals with a seemingly endless bag of tricks.
The best thing about them was that they left with no hard feelings when they were done.
But enough of that…Knox had a job to do.
"Don't worry, fearless leader," he said, jumping up into the truck bed and taking the cutters from Olivia. "I'm not about to fuck this up."
"Make sure you don't," she told him with more of an edge to her voice than any omega had a right to.
"Yes, your highness." He waited for Olivia to retreat to the porch at Gray's side before he turned to Josie.
Damn it…to the woman.
She had been kneeling to give Olivia the best angle to work, and it had to be killing her knees. Still, she held her head high, not giving any indication that she was afraid. Even in her desperate straits, there was something imperious about her, reminding Knox of an aristocratic French lady being led to the guillotine.
Though those torn red flannel pajamas sort of spoiled the effect.
At the last moment, when Knox knelt next to her to examine the chain linking the cuffs behind her back, she broke.
"I don't know about this," she mumbled, her scent spiked with worry. But at