“We need to do something, Tate,” I said, turning to face him once I was sure Harry was out of earshot. “There are more omegas, just like him, being used as slaves, for work and…for worse.”

“Where was this place again?” Tate asked me, leaning back against his workbench.

“The truck stop,” I replied. “Not sure how many they’ve got there, but they had a lot of trucks.”

I could see Tate thinking as I relayed everything Harry had told me and told him about our meeting and his rescue. I was ready to spring into action, grab the guys and go tear some throats out, but Tate was our leader, and it was up to him to make the decision.

“So you want to get rid of Kade?” He asked slowly.

“That’s a nice way of putting it,” I growled. “I’d rather tear his goddamn body to bits…”

“How many other alphas under his command?” Tate asked, and I felt my heart start to sink. There was no way we could all just go rushing down there without a plan, and Tate knew this.

“I dunno, Tate,” I muttered, pounding my fists on the hard steel of the planer. “But I get ya. Can’t just rally the troops and race into something we don’t know shit about.”

“I want to help you, Seth. You know I do. But we need more information. We’ll scout it out first, okay? Then we can make a decision.”

He was right. Of course he was. That’s why Tate was the pack leader, but that didn’t make it any easier of a pill to swallow. As Harry’s mate, it was now my job to protect him and do anything he needed me to do, and after all the abuse he’d suffered at the hands of that son of a bitch, Kade, I wanted to tear him limb from limb.

But that wasn’t it – my heart went out to all the rest of those poor omegas, stashed in the backs of those tractor-trailers, ready to be put to work, either out in the woods felling trees, or on a mattress, ready to give Kade another pup.

“That’s just fine, Tate,” I finally replied, accepting what I already knew was the truth. We couldn’t act without information, and right now, we didn’t have any.

“Seth,” Tate said, taking a step forward. “Don’t think I don’t understand. I do. I know exactly what it feels like to want to do right by your omega. Have I ever told you the full story of how Kyle and I met?”

I shook my head. There had been stories told around the lodge, of course, but Tate and I had never really had the talk before.

“It’s quite the story, you could probably write an entire book about it,” Tate chuckled. “And I’ll have to fill you in some time. But I completely get where you are coming from, and how hard it can be to have something like this looming over your life. But we will address it, when we can. Trust me. Do you trust me?”

“Of course, I trust you, Tate,” I said, letting him know with my eyes that I was being sincere. “I just don’t like sittin’ around like this, ya know?”

“You don’t have to just sit around,” Tate said with a smile, coming up beside me. “That omega of yours is in heat…”

A smile curled on the edge of my mouth, and even though I was fuming inside, I felt myself chuckle.

“What are you getting at, Tate?” I laughed.

“You need to take that boy back to your room,” he roared, grinning ear to ear. “And do what mates do best!”

“Shit, I been wanting to do that since I laid eyes on him!”

“Well, you and he are pretty much the only ones in the addition right now,” he replied. “And with Bryce and Clarence on vacation, and the foxes out hunting, you two can make all the noise you want to.”

Just thinking about what Tate was talking about was enough to get the blood flowing to my power center, and I felt my dick twitch slightly beneath my jeans. Humans would never be able to understand what an omega’s heat could do to an alpha, let alone a fated mate’s heat. But when I smelled Harry, it was all I could do to maintain composure.

“I just don’t wanna hurt the guy, ya know?” I grinned, picturing all the things we would do later.

“Oh, I think he’ll handle you well enough,” Tate replied with a hearty smack on the shoulder as he turned back to his work. “Not like you got much under those jeans to do damage with anyway!”

“Ya, you ain’t heard Kyle complaining about your millimeter-peter during dessert, I guess,” I countered with a grin. “Says getting’ fucked by you is like trying to hammer a nail with a carrot.”

“If that carrot was ten inches long and coated in steel!” Tate joked back as he fired up the table saw.

Chuckling, I stepped back outside to the truck and started to bring in the rest of the lumber. Tate was right – there would be time for revenge, but right now I had to focus on what was right in front of me – Harry.

There had been two blessing in my life now: the first was meeting this pack and coming to live here. Life with Jeremiah, my last pack leader, was miserable and was just another reason I despised Kade so much.

And the second blessing had been meeting Harry, a blessing that hadn’t even completely come to fruition yet.

I lifted another plank onto my shoulder and brought it into the barn, doing my best to focus on the now and putting thoughts of Kade and the other omegas out of my mind.

Soon, I thought. Soon.