“You can’t go,” I said simply. Tyler looked back at me like I’d just told him I could fly.

“What?” he replied, aghast.

“I said, you can’t go,” I repeated.

Tyler looked around the dining hall table where we were all seated, looking to Matias, Dwayne or Charles to back him up, but none of them spoke. They all knew I was right.

“What are you talking about?” he asked. He was getting angry.

“They know your scent,” I replied, reaching across the table to take his hand. “They’ll smell you coming a mile away.”

“So – I’ll pheromone block!” he replied. “Matias, you have some blocker right?”

“They know your face,” Dwayne said stoically. “We don’t know how many of them there are, guards, lookouts—”

“Betas,” Charles added. “Unless you’ve got a spray bottle that turns you into a blonde-haired sorority girl, it’s not worth the risk.”

“If you think I’m going to sit here while he goes off on his own—”

“He won’t be on his own, Tyler,” Matias interrupted. His voice carried the authority of the pack leader, and Tyler, who was not yet an official member of our pack, was forced to listen. “We will be with him. That’s three alphas looking out for him. And if you hadn’t noticed by now – Nate’s no slouch.”

Tyler grumbled and stared down at the table. He was caught in an internal struggle, and I knew it all stemmed from his belief that he had failed me. I squeezed his hand until he looked up at me.

“This isn’t your fault,” I told him.

“Like Hell it isn’t!”

“It’s not!” I said firmly. “Tyler, if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t even know my son was alive, or anywhere near here! Because of what you did, we might have a chance of finding him again!”

“Without my help,” he growled.

“You already helped!” I told him, my voice filled with desperation. His pain was my pain, and I knew mine was his, and that’s what was making this so hard. “And we don’t know what will happen when we go down there. We might not find the scent. We might not find anything.”

We were planning on heading back to Portsmouth tonight, to the address Tyler had given us. With any luck, we’d pick up the scent of the mysterious man in the snakeskin suit. The rest of the alphas had been given the scrap Tyler had given me, and they were all amped up and ready for anything.

Tyler was shaking his head. “I don’t like this. He’s an omega.”

“He’s my son,” I told him. “I’d do anything for him.”

Tyler looked defeated, and I felt terrible. But this was the reality of our situation. If we were going to find my son, Tyler couldn’t be involved. Someone could smell him or recognize him and the whole thing would be off. This was going to be hard enough as it was, we couldn’t take any chances.

“Fine,” Tyler said finally, and I felt everyone relax around me. “But you guys make sure nothing happens to him!”

“We will,” Dwayne said.

“Don’t you worry,” Charles bellowed. “We’ll have your sweet piece of ass back to you in no time!”

I couldn’t help but laugh. Charles’s joke was so inappropriate that it managed to be perfectly timed. Everyone followed suit, bursting out into laughter as the tension disappeared from the room. I sat back and took a deep breath.

“Okay,” I said. “So what’s the plan?”

“We’ll take the truck down to the city,” Matias said. “We’ll need clothes when we get there, so we can’t shift and run down. Once we get there, we spread out around the area and search for the scent.”

“And if one of us finds it?”

“Then we group up and find the son of a bitch,” Matias replied. There was an anger in his voice I wasn’t used to hearing, and I shot him a quizzical look. “Sorry. I just have a – a thing against cruel alphas like this.”

Nodding, I got to my feet. I was ready to go. As far as I was concerned, we were just wasting time talking about it any longer. We had to act. For all we knew, this disgusting underground shifter trafficking ring could be packing up to head out for another city as we sat here planning.

We didn’t know if they were from the area, or if they traveled from city to city, picking up omegas, dropping some off, moving in the sickening shadows of the underground with no one to stop them.

“Let’s go,” I told everyone.

I could see the looks on their faces. They weren’t used to seeing this side of me, and if I was being honest with myself, I hadn’t even been fully aware this side existed.

Life had done a good job beating me down. After living under Kade’s cruel rule as my last pack leader, and having my son taken from me, the world had become a bleak shade of grays. I had abandoned hope of ever having a normal, loving, meaningful life – but then I’d met Tyler.

He’d taken down my wall and beaten his way into my life and I was thankful for it – beyond thankful. It was a miracle, just like my little boy had been. Just like the surprise I’d felt when I held him in my arms, before he was taken away from me, the fact that I’d been able to accept Tyler into my life was just as surprising. But I had.

And now, hearing that my son was alive and close, this side of me had reared its head and come to the surface. I felt like I was ready to take on an army of invading soldiers. The world was nothing compared to the well of determination within me.

If my baby boy was close, I was going to find him. And that was all there was to it.

“Come on,” I repeated. “Let’s go!”