Bound: Mason's Alphas Read online

  Bound

  Mason’s Alphas

  By D.J. Heart

  2016 Copyright © by D.J. Heart

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  Prologue

  The seedy bar was empty except for Chris and his team, the air stinking of sweat, booze and stale cigarette smoke. It had been a long night, and Chris was flying high on exhaustion and adrenaline. He felt alive, and he wanted to savor the feeling. Looking out over the rest of his squad, every one of them drinking like their lives depended on it, his eyes came to rest on his best friend, Mick.

  The warmth he felt in his chest when looking at his best friend was nothing new, and drunk as he was he couldn’t remember why the feeling was so bad. He was sure Mick felt the same.

  Standing up, lifting his glass in the air, the urge to address the group overtook him. He swayed, the bar suddenly spinning, and he realized with a carefree grin that he was even drunker than he’d thought.

  “Everyone shut the fuck up! I want to make a toast,” he called out, only slurring his words a little. The team quieted down, looking up at him with curious expressions.

  “To Mick!” he called out, lifting his glass higher. “For saving my ass, and for not telling Brandon that I stole his cookies.”

  “You fucker!” Brandon called, the words drowned out by raucous laughter.

  “To Mick!” everyone cheered, lifting their glasses and drinking deeply. Chris chugged down the rest of his beer, slamming the empty glass down on the table and sitting down. He leaned back into his chair, feeling proud of his toast.

  When he looked at Mick, the alpha was frowning. Seeing that Chris was staring at him, Mick’s lips turned up into a familiar smile.

  “You owe me, man,” Mick said, the words barely audible over the noise of the group. Chris licked his lips and shrugged, not minding in the least.

  They kept on drinking, and many hours later Chris stumbled out of the bar. He came to a stop in front of his bike, leaning against the handlebars and admiring the powerful machine. He was so drunk that he could barely stand, and he knew that he shouldn’t drive home.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Mick asked, coming up behind him. He looked furious, his voice edging into a deep growl. Chris blinked, the sight of his friend all puffed up and angry making him feel something in his crotch that he shouldn’t be feeling.

  “Wondering how I’m going to get home,” he said, the words coming out slow and confused. Mick blinked, looking surprised.

  “Oh… well, I’ve called a cab,” he said, the anger gone from his voice. “We can share.”

  “Thanks, man,” Chris said, turning around all the way so that they were face to face. He tried to take a step forward, not really sure where he was going, but his feet didn’t cooperate and suddenly he was falling.

  Mick caught him, and Chris’s brain froze. He was plastered against Mick’s chest, strong arms holding him up, his face pressed into the soft flannel of Mick’s shirt. It smelled like beer, sweat, and alpha, and Chris took a deep breath through his nose.

  His cock was hard. It pressed against the fly of his jeans like he hadn’t had sex in years, his balls feeling full and heavy. He reached his arms up and wrapped them around Mick’s body, pulling himself up so that he could rub his jean-clad cock against Mick’s strong thigh.

  “Chris, what are you—” Mick pushed him away, stepping back and leaving Chris to struggle to stay upright.

  It took a second for Chris to realize what had just happened, and when it did his face burned with humiliation. He’d let his guard down and now Mick knew without a doubt how he felt about him.

  He’d just been so sure that Mick felt the same.

  Looking up, Chris’s heart broke at the expression on his best friend’s face. He looked resigned, like he was feeling sorry for him.

  Chris couldn’t take it. He turned around and stumbled back to his bike, climbing on and looking anywhere but at Mick.

  “Chris, you’re too drunk to drive,” Mick said, sounding angry. Chris ignored him, shame and humiliation making him want to curl up and die. Kicking the bike into gear, he took off.

  “Chris! Get the fuck back here!” Mick called after him, but Chris didn’t listen.

  He just needed to get away.

  ***

  The next morning Chris woke up in the front hall of his apartment, still wearing his leather jacket and boots, blinking up at the ceiling and regretting his life choices. Next to him on there floor there was a glass of water, and a bunch of painkillers laid out on a paper towel in the shape of a smiley face.

  Great. He’d hoped seeing the alpha standing over him and snapping a picture had been a dream, but obviously not.

  Mick must have gotten Brandon to turn his truck around and follow him home to make sure he got home safely.

  Any other day, he would have found it funny. But now…?

  He couldn’t believe that he’d tried to dry-hump Mick. Just thinking about the expression on Mick’s face made him want to hide under his covers and never come out.

  How was he supposed to look Mick in the eye after this?

  It wasn’t like Chris was gay for other alphas. He liked omegas—he liked how they looked, smelled and tasted—but that didn’t mean his feelings for Mick weren’t real.

  He needed to get a grip. Pushing to his feet, stripping off his jacket and toeing off his boots, he moved out of the hall and into the apartment. He stretched his back, wondering why he hadn’t made it the last few feet into bed before passing out.

  His phone beeped in his pocket, the little chirp reminding him of unread messages, and when he took it out he cringed. There were four missed calls, and three new messages.

  All but one was from Mick. The remaining missed call was from an unknown number.

  Wanting to put off dealing with the man who’d rejected him, Chris called the unknown number back first.

  “You’ve reached the Melville Police Department, how may I help you?” a no-nonsense voice answered the phone. Chris frowned.

  “Hello, this is Chris Dalley. I had a missed call from this number,” Chris said, wondering why Melville PD would be contacting him. The city was about an hour north of his hometown, and Chris didn’t know anyone who lived there.

  “Okay, let me just check that…” Chris heard the sound of typing on a keyboard. “Mr. Dalley, please hold while I transfer you to Detective Robins.”

  The line disconnected and the phone started ringing again. A few seconds later the person on the other end of the line picked up.

  “Detective Robins speaking.” Chris could tell the man was an alpha just from the sound of his voice.

  “Hello, this is Chris Dalley. I had a missed call from you this morning.”

  There was a brief silence. “Mr. Dalley, thank you for returning my call. Did you get my voicemail?”

  Chris started making himself a cup of coffee, holding the phone to his shoulder with his ear.

  “No, I haven’t checked my messages yet. What’s this about?” He put the coffee in the machine and poured in the water, turning it on and moving the phone back into his hand.

  “Are you related to an omega named James Dalley?”

  Something about the way the question was phrased made Chris tense up. James was his little brother, and Chris hadn’t seen or talked to him since before heading out for his last mission. He’d been gone for five months, and the only reason he hadn’t called when he got back the night before was that he didn’t want to wake him up.

  James was a freshman at a liberal arts college in Oregon, and though he and Chris hadn’t been close growing up—the eighteen-year age gap meant that they’d never actually l
ived together—Chris was very protective of his younger brother.

  It had certainly changed the way he thought about omegas when he was popping his knot at eighteen, having one for a little brother.

  “James is my brother, yes. Is there a problem?”

  “I’m very sorry to have to tell you this, Mr. Dalley, but your brother has passed away. He…”

  The detective kept on talking, but Chris didn’t hear a word he was saying. There had to be a mistake. Feeling light-headed, he steadied himself on the counter and tried to breathe.

  This couldn’t be happening.

  “Mr. Dalley? Are you there?”

  Chris lifted the phone back to his ear, but when he tried to speak there was a lump in his throat blocking the way.

  “How?” he asked, barely managing to get the word out. This had to be a mistake.

  “He was struck by a car. The coroner said he died instantly and that he wouldn’t have felt any pain from the collision.”

  A car accident. Chris spent his professional life in some of the most dangerous parts of the world, doing some of the riskiest work imaginable, and James was the one who died.

  It just seemed wrong.

  “Where is he now?” Chris had been to a lot of funerals, but he’d never planned one. He didn’t even know where to begin. James had stepped up when they’d buried their mother, with Chris just barely making it home in time for the service.

  “He was cremated last Tuesday. I can give you the number to pick up his ashes, or you can come get them in person.”

  That wasn’t right. It was up to the family to decide between burial and cremation, and there wasn’t a Dalley in living memory that hadn’t been buried in their church’s cemetery—never mind the fact that they weren’t religious.

  “Cremated? Why?” Chris was angry. It roared through him, so much more familiar and easy to manage than the pain.

  “I can’t answer that, I’m sorry. You’ll have to ask the funeral home.”

  Chris hung up the phone, too angry to speak. Then a wave of grief hit him so hard he almost crumbled to the floor. He caught himself on the wall, leaning against it and breathing hard.

  He didn’t know what he was supposed to do now. James was his only family, and now he was gone.

  Chris sat down and cried.

  Chapter 1

  Mason was terrified. He pulled on his coat, gloves, and scarf, standing just inside the door of the small house he shared with his mother, and tried to gather up the nerve to walk out the door.

  “Mason, are you headed out?” his mother asked, standing at the top of the stairs and looking down at him. He craned his neck and mustered a smile, calling out that he was going to the store.

  It was a lie.

  “Okay, sweetie. Can you pick up some yogurt while you’re there, too? Vanilla?”

  Mason almost started to cry, but he managed to keep the smile on his face. His mom wasn’t wearing her glasses, so she couldn’t see how strained it was.

  “Sure thing,” he called out.

  “Thank you, sweetie,” she said, walking back to her room.

  At least her last test had come back clean, Mason consoled himself. Taking up the loan had been worth it just for that, no matter what happened to him now.

  Not that his mother would agree. She thought that their insurance had covered her treatment. Mason knew that when she found out that he had gone to a seedy loan shark for a loan and worked in a stripper bar to pay it off, she would be pissed and disappointed and—worst of all—feel guilty.

  Hopefully she’d never find out.

  Leaving the house and taking the bus downtown, Mason made his way to the converted warehouse Jaxton Bull used as his base of operations.

  “I have a meeting with Jaxton,” he told the beta guarding the door. The man looked him over, asking for his name. Mason gave it, and after the guard called inside with his walkie-talkie, Mason was let through.

  “You know where it is?” the guard asked. Mason nodded and the guard closed the door after him. Most of the warehouse was used for storage, and Jaxton’s office wasn’t hard to find even if you hadn’t been there before.

  He walked into the building, feeling nervous. Hopefully Jaxton wouldn’t be too mad that he didn’t have the full amount he owed.

  An alpha dressed in a cheap, ill-fitting suit was standing by the door to Jaxton’s office, and when Mason approached he opened the door without Mason having to say a thing.

  Mason walked through the door, warm air blasting him in the face. He hurriedly yanked off his gloves and stuffed them in his pockets, zipped open his coat, and unwrapped his scarf.

  The office was really hot.

  “Do you have my money?” Jaxton asked without looking up from his desk. He was fat for an alpha, with broad shoulders and arms that strained the sleeves of his shirt, and his voice was deep and rough in a way that made Mason’s balls want to crawl back into his body.

  “I have half of it,” Mason said, suddenly not as confident that things were going to be okay as he’d been the night before. “There was a fight at the bar and they took the damage out of my paycheck. They said I should have left the stage sooner and that it was my fault that things—”

  Jaxton looked up, his impatient glare silencing Mason just as surely as if he’d yelled shut up.

  “So that’s a no,” he said. The words sounded very final.

  “I… no,” Mason confirmed, his heart feeling like it was going to beat its way out of his chest. Jaxton pushed his chair back and rose from the desk, startling Mason so badly he almost fell over.

  “Sit down,” he said, nodding toward the chair in front of his desk as he moved forward. Mason scrambled to obey, sitting down as Jaxton walked past him and toward the door.

  Mason knew he was in trouble when he heard the alpha sliding a key into the keyhole, locking them both inside the room.

  He was trapped.

  Swallowing nervously, Mason kept his eyes fixed straight ahead as Jaxton walked back to the desk and came to stand right in front of him. He loomed, and Mason felt tiny and helpless.

  “I’ll pay you back, with interest,” he said pleadingly, his voice small. This wasn’t going at all like he’d imagined it would.

  Jaxton looked down at him with a stern expression, his arms crossed over his chest.

  “You’re five thousand dollars short.” The words were spoken softly, but the displeasure in his tone was clear.

  Straining his neck, looking up at the alpha towering over him, Mason bit his lip and wondered what he should say.

  “I’m sorry. It’s just—”

  Jaxton cut him off. “I don’t care about your excuses.” His tone was harsh. “We had a deal, and you haven’t lived up to your side of the bargain. You know what this means.”

  There wasn’t enough air in the room. Mason took a deep breath and tried not to panic. Jaxton had been up-front and told him that he wouldn’t tolerate any deviations from the repayment schedule, but Mason had been so sure he could make it work!

  “I just need a few more—”

  Jaxton grabbed his jaw, moving lightning-fast despite his bulk, squeezing him painfully and pushing his mouth open. Before Mason could stop it a fat pill was shoved into his mouth.

  “Swallow,” Jaxton ordered, his eyes cold and hard. Mason reached up and grabbed the alpha’s arms, clawing to get away, the pill melting bitterly in the bottom of his mouth.

  Jaxton leaned down so that they were face to face. Mason could feel his breath on his cheek, reeking of cigars and whiskey.

  “You don’t want to piss me off, Mason. Swallow the pill.”

  Mason slumped, knowing that there was nothing he could do. He swallowed the pill.

  “Good boy,” Jaxton said, stepping away. He moved behind the desk and sat down, getting to work as though Mason wasn’t even in the room.

  Watching him, studying his harsh features, glossy hair, and cruel mouth, Mason started feeling drowsy. The room was spinning, and as he
closed his eyes and clutched the sides of his chair to hold himself steady, it got harder and harder to stay upright.

  He didn’t remember passing out.

  ***

  Chapter 2

  Mason came to on a hard surface, a chill racking his body. He wasn’t naked, but the room was freezing. Hugging himself, he wished he still had his coat, scarf, and gloves. He curled into a ball and hid his face in his arms, hoping against hope that this was just an awful dream and that any minute he’d wake up in his childhood bedroom.