Damian should have guessed they were tracking him somehow. Shoes, gun, ID. Maybe even something injected into his body during one of his many trips to the military hospital. Who knew? It wasn’t like they were going to tell him. But he’d made it almost all the way to Nevada Ashes before the rest of his team ran him off the road.

Luckily, he’d thought to put on his seat belt, though the air bag caught him square in the face and left him dizzy just long enough for them to cut the belt and drag him out of the car through the broken driver’s window.

He hit the ground fighting. At least one of them was going home with a broken arm—he heard the crack when he levered his weight against it. Someone caught him in the kidneys with something hard, probably an ASP, and it drove him briefly to one knee before he launched himself up and into the dark shape in front of him.

The human hardly made a noise when Damian hit him, just kept him occupied long enough that someone else could land on his back and get an arm around his neck. Slowly, precisely, the human tightened the angle of his elbow, cutting off the blood supply to Damian’s brain. He gagged and reached behind his head, hunting for an eye or a nose he could jam a finger into but they’d all had the same training. All he could find was the curve of the man’s head while the world turned darker around him.

“Get him up!” someone yelled. “We can’t do this here.” Oscar’s voice. Some partner. But the pressure let off on his arteries.

They dragged him to his feet and bound his hands behind him with zipties, then shoved him into the trunk of the car they’d followed him in. Dimly, Damian heard Oscar ordering one of them to stay and get rid of the car. My car.

If it hadn’t been for the omega, he might have just given up at this point. He knew he was facing his execution, that they’d been watching him more closely in the past months. Honestly, he wasn’t even surprised that they’d come after him when he’d left for Nevada Ashes this time—he probably wasn’t the first shifter they’d taken out to a quiet bit of desert and left for the buzzards.

But if that was his pup—it wasn’t right to leave the omega to suffer the consequences for his selfishness and need.

The emergency tab for the trunk release was right in front of him, glowing eerie green in the dark. He could pop it with his teeth, but he’d still be running around with his hands tied behind his back. Gritting his teeth, he began to carefully contort himself within the confined space, forcing his hands down past his hips, over his ass. He got stuck there for a minute, because there was no way in the confines of the trunk that he was bending himself in two to run his arms all the way up his outstretched legs. Then, he bit back a groan and curled himself into the tightest ball he could.

Not only did he lose his shoes, he was pretty certain one of his fingers had been dislocated in the rough process of literally prying his feet through the tiny space left between his wrists and his ass.

A few moments to rest would have been good but the car had turned off whatever civilized road it had been on and was now bouncing over either miles of potholes or had just taken off straight cross-country. Damian made a face, gritted his teeth so he wouldn’t yell if he banged that finger, and yanked his hands up and over his knees so they rested in front of him.

Yep, dislocated. He grabbed the end of it and pulled it back into place, then lay back and sweated and tried to figure out where they might take him. If it wasn’t for the jacket he was wearing, he’d have shifted now that his limbs were all where they were supposed to be, but he wasn’t going to risk getting tangled up in it.

The car slowed some more and turned again, then rocked heavily over a series of ruts. Damian took a few deep breaths to build up his oxygen levels and popped the trunk, rolling out onto the rough ground as soon as the opening was big enough, As soon as he hit the ground he bolted for the first bit of cover in sight, which was a wash running roughly back in the direction they’d come from. Damian stumbled getting into it and put his hands down on a cactus—unbelievably painful—but he forced himself to keep going. They were already on his trail, the night gone as deadly silent as wolves, except for the harshness of his breathing and the occasional snap of branch or fall of rock.

Noise to his right like an approaching hunter sent him careening left before his brain could catch up with his instincts. The first one tackled him just as he got a foot up over the edge, the second only moments later. He went down in a frothing, biting, growling mass of arms and legs, but four against one was never good odds, especially when they all had the same training. It wasn’t long before he was completely pinned, a man on his chest, one on the small of his back, and one with his leg twisted up so that if he fought at all, he’d just dislocate his knee. His nose was bleeding and he’d cut the shit out of the inside of one cheek, so that a slimy mess of blood and saliva oozed out of the corner of his mouth to make a small patch of mud under his chin.

“Stop fighting,” one of them hissed in his ear then slammed his head against the ground.

“Stop it!” Oscar snapped. Damian rolled his eyes up to see Oscar on one knee beside him, gun hanging casually from his hand. “Why the hell did you have to run, huh? You’re not stupid, you knew what would happen. And I liked you.”

Damian laughed, choking a little on the blood running out of his nose. “Knew it was coming anyway. How many of us have made it past the ten year mark? Saw you watching me, figured it was now or never.” He let out a breath and it seemed to take all the strength in his body with it. “Do one thing for me?” He kept his eyes on Oscar, ignoring the rest of them. “There’s an omega back in Nevada Ashes. I think… No, I’m almost positive that I got him pregnant back in November. If there’s any way you can work it so he gets my money and stuff, I promise I won’t fight. I just want to be sure the pup’s taken care of.”

Oscar’s eyes widened a little. “An omega,” he repeated, his tone incredulous.

Damian nodded slightly, the ground scraping against his cheek. “Name’s Salem. Dark blond, pretty blue eyes, about up to my chin for height. That’s all I’m asking, when you clean my stuff out, that he gets the benefit of it.”

Oscar shuffled backwards a foot or so. “Let him up.” The others had obviously given him looks asking if he was crazy, because he swore and barked again, “Let him up!” Then to Damian he said, “On your knees, hands behind your head. Not a move, understand? I will kill you.”

Damian nodded and, when the weight came off his body, he slowly obeyed, pushing himself carefully up onto his knees and moving his bound wrists behind his neck.

“All this,” Oscar said in a tone that someone who didn’t know him might have called meditative. “All this fuckery for a piece of ass?”

It was tempting to laugh, but he needed to be sure Oscar would do him this one last favor. “Yes,” Damian said simply. “It’s a shifter thing.”

Oscar stared at him as if he’d just said the sky was pink and then proved it mathematically. “It’s a shifter thing.” But his voice was thoughtful. He stared hard at Damian for a good two minutes, then appeared to come to a decision. “Keep him here,” he snapped at the others. “If he so much as twitches, take him down flat again.”

“You don’t want us to just end him?” The voice came from right behind Damian and if he hadn’t already made his peace with death, his ruff would have risen at how close the human was.

Oscar raised his gun and pointed it at the human and Damian tensed. This was unexpected, and unexpected was never good. “If it needs to be done, I’ll do it. I owe him that much, to make sure it’s done right. Don’t make me hunt you down too.” He stared down the man behind Damian, then pulled his phone out of his pocket and stalked away into the scrub.

Damian was nearly asleep by the time Oscar came back. “Untie him,” he said briefly. Then, to Damian, “Come on, loverboy. We’re going for a drive.”