Chapter Thirteen
CAINE
My rut was inconvenient, but waking up with an omega in my arms who didn’t smell like rotting flesh wasn’t as unwelcome as I’d anticipated. He was sleeping deeply, his lips parted and a river of drool soaking into the pillow under his head. I snorted lightly.
He wasn’t exactly the epitome of grace when awake, so it wasn’t a surprise to note there was no change while asleep.
Judging by the stream of light filtering in through the window, it was well past dawn.
My cycle must have broken during the night, and I’d slept right through.
Dylan had taken care of the mess. The sheets were in need of boiling or burning, but my skin wasn’t overly tacky and I was no longer inside him.
Last I remembered was my eye closing, and the scent of his release in my nose as my knot plugged up his hole.
Luckily he wasn’t in heat or we would’ve found ourselves in another predicament.
I felt revived, and thoroughly satisfied.
Typically my ruts would end, the insatiable hunger and agitation gone, though it never felt like a relief.
If I didn’t spend them alone, it was with a beta, so even though I knotted, my body sensed it was in vain.
If there was a way to suppress their existence, I would’ve taken it.
I despised the loss of control, the power it drained from me to maintain a degree of reserve, but at least it was only once a year, and now I had a solution.
They would break more quickly, and not leave me quite so depleted.
In truth, I hadn’t prepared for it so soon.
I’d been too preoccupied with determining how I’d make it through the entire circus without revealing my affliction.
I’d taken my usual shots and sprays beforehand—doubled the dosage.
They usually concealed the symptoms enough for me to get through minimal exposure with only mild discomfort.
From the day my father died, I’d avoided the possibility of worse reactions by distancing myself from the opposite designation in any capacity unless it was absolutely necessary.
This event couldn’t be avoided, and there had been so many omegas.
The scent had saturated into every corner of the ballroom, the entire venue, leaving me nowhere to find reprieve.
I’d spent the days leading up to it planning for every outcome in case I’d needed to retreat.
Though I hadn’t accounted for Dylan. I’d known he pacified my headaches when we were alone, but he’d provided a shield of sorts, his pheromones obscuring the worst of it, working with my medication to counteract the symptoms. I’d spent the night with a heaviness in my stomach, and the edges of my focus blurring—almost blindingly so due to the severity—but my composure hadn’t wavered.
I hadn’t unwittingly presented my disability to a room full of people who’d enjoy nothing more than discovering my weakness and exploiting it.
It had doubtlessly kicked my instincts into overdrive.
The realisation he’d granted me aid might’ve provoked an eagerness to claim him—a deep-rooted need to mark my territory before anyone else did.
With my attention diverted from the omegas, it fixated on all the unmated Alpha’s instead.
Competition. He’d kept inching away from me, arousing the impulse in my blood to prove my competence.
Then that bastard had touched him, left his scent on his shoulder, and I’d lost my grip on rationality.
I’d wanted to kill him. And right there, as I stared over at Dylan, his dark eyes brimming with horror, I’d never needed anything more than to have him strangling my knot, bred full of my young and covered in me.
Had we not left when we did, I would have done it in front of the entire guest list.
I stretched out onto my back, extending my stiff muscles.
In spite of it all, the night had passed somewhat uneventfully, from what I could recall.
The Veenstra leader hadn’t shown any indication his pack was involved with Minseo’s kidnapping.
He’d followed protocol, and paraded around with his usual level of arrogance.
No pack had appeared guilty or particularly smug.
They were all on their best behaviour, even with the overindulgence of alcohol, aware they weren’t in their home territories.
I’d prearranged for surveillance to monitor their returns to their own regions, to catch any guises slipping as soon as they walked out the door.
My mother’s presence was unexpected, though it wasn’t a shock.
It would have reflected badly on him and the pack if he hadn’t shown.
He’d relocated to his chateau in France once my father, his mate, had died.
He deserved the peace after the shit he’d been put through—half a lifetime of blame for birthing a beta and a “defective” Alpha, and failing to conceive more.
Our interactions since learning of my condition had been scarce—to ensure my progress wouldn’t be stunted by his caring nature.
I’d tried to protect him as best I could from afar, offering myself as the target for my father’s wrath, but it wasn’t enough.
The physical abuse wasn’t what had left scars.
I wouldn’t blame him if I never saw him again.
Dylan squirmed beside me, a small huff of annoyance leaving his nose, but he settled quickly, gentle snores flaring his nostrils once again.
At least this little creature would be free to resent me for eternity if he chose to, without the added falsehoods of whatever bullshit the bite would’ve conjured up.
My mother didn’t have that luxury. His mate was dead, but he’d remain loyal for the rest of his life, carrying grief and longing for an Alpha who had degraded him.
That was the cruelty of it. The forced sentiment that came with the connection, taking away your volition.
He’d been mistreated and still respected the cunt, still clung on and yearned for his touch because there’d been no alternative.
My father had once said, despite my mother’s incompetence, he desired him, was infatuated with him, because that was how mating bites worked, fabricating emotions between the pair to ensure there was enough compatibility and sense of safety to secure the bloodline.
It was sickening.
I peeled the quilt off Dylan’s shoulder, inspecting his skin.
He was bitten and bruised, my claim staked, but they were superficial.
There were no punctures in his mating gland.
I’d ached to bite him, to sink my teeth into his neck and tie him to me permanently, but mercifully, I’d refrained.
The result might have been different had we not made it here, where I could calm myself enough to remember, even vaguely, it wasn’t what I wanted.
I didn’t need to be tied to an omega, to lose free will and endure a life my father had tried so hard to coerce me into.
Dylan was mine in the eyes of the outside world, so as long as we enacted the bare minimum to establish it, what need was there for formalities?
This was an arrangement. We weren’t here to play happy families.
I slipped out of bed, dressing mechanically before heading down to the basement.
I had to satiate my other appetite.
“I—” Blood gurgled from Matthew’s swollen tongue, frothing at the corners of his lips. “I don’t know an’thing.”
It was a rarity for me to come down here.
Aaron fulfilled the role of torturer, for the most part, though my enforcers also contributed.
It felt enriching to get my hands dirty once in a while, to indulge in my visceral proclivities.
It also tended to the primal urges lingering from my rut.
I still felt strangely territorial. Hostile. Possessive.
Unluckily for the rat.
“Were you involved in keeping tabs on my omega?” I asked, tracing my fingers over the array of weapons and tools laid out on the bench. They were all silver; it felt more pleasing in my hand. “Hm?”
He shook his head vigorously, whimpering at every scuff of my shoes against the concrete floor. “No, I s-swear,” he spluttered. “I didn’t know you h-had one.”
Over a month he’d been in here, chained to the wall, and he was finally breaking apart.
He’d started off strong, resisting interrogation and bearing the pain, as he’d been taught.
Two weeks in and he’d crumbled, his persistence and heckling tapering into pleas for an end to the agony, but he’d still given me hardly anything.
No names, no details of a further plot, only admitting he’d been approached two days before Minseo was taken.
A beta in a mask—typical—had offered him as much pure cocaine as he craved and a prime position in his pack.
His initiation was to show up at the warehouse and fetch the child.
He’d accepted, blindly handing over his allegiance for drugs.
I was disappointed in his lack of integrity, but not shocked.
And as I’d predicted, someone else pulled the strings.
If he wasn’t so scared shitless, I would’ve suspected he was lying, but after cutting off his balls, his toes, the tip of his tongue, he maintained the same story.
He was cannon fodder, lured in by promises, sent to carry out a task by an unknown assailant and told not to ask questions.
Either he was resilient in the face of torture, or he was telling the truth.
Considering his loyalty was so easily bought with cocaine, I doubted the former.
I’d try again. Just to be sure.
“You realise I have the motivation to keep you here, begging for death until your body gives out . . .” I picked up the scalpel at the end of the table, holding it up to the dim light to inspect its sharpness. “Or you could cooperate.”
“I’ve t-told you every’hing,” he slurred—that usually happened with the absence of half your teeth. “I only knew about the g-girl in the . . . warehouse. I d-didn’t even know she was yours.”