Chapter 8 #2
“Shiloh…” the alpha struggled with what to say, but it was already too late to backtrack anyway.
“You just told me you don’t mind that I’m weak,” Shiloh said dumbly. “Was that a lie, Rang?”
“No,” he shook his head. “That’s not what I meant. I’m sorry. But can we please talk about this later?”
“We won’t though.” They’d played this game one too many times for him to fall for it again. “You’ll refuse later and come up with some other excuse to avoid the conversation.”
“What does it matter who I want to spend the rest of my life with?” Sarang’s frustration was palpable, but it was nothing in the wake of Shiloh’s growing rage.
His brain was firing off, calculating everything he’d thought he’d known, all of the angles he’d tried and failed at.
Diogenes’ stupid fucking taunts.
How Sarang’s first instinct had been to run the second he scratched the surface of Shiloh’s fabrications. Run, and fuck the first warm body he could find.
“Do you think I’m so easily replaceable, alpha?” Shiloh didn’t catch his tone in time, but found he didn’t really care once it was too late.
Even now, cornered and about to engage in a shootout, thinking that it was just him between Shiloh and real danger, Sarang was still telling him he wanted to be with another.
After all of the ways he’d minimized and molded himself, he was inadvertently saying Shiloh still wasn’t good enough to be his mate.
“What?” Sarang glanced at him, confusion apparent. “When I claim my omega, that isn’t going to change things between us. I’ll still be your Righthand. I’ll always be here for you, just like this. I swore an oath, and I’ll uphold it. Are you anxious thinking I’ll abandon you? I won’t.”
“But you’ll bond with another.”
“Yes, eventually I will find someone I want to spend my life with, Shiloh. That is my right. I joined the mafia and swore I would always protect you, but I never said I would be celibate doing it. I know you’ve been through a lot of big changes this past year, but seriously, what’s gotten into you lately? ”
“You have,” he said, but the alpha didn’t hear him, their pursuers bursting onto their level at the exact same time.
Sarang waited for them to make it halfway to them before opening fire.
He was planning on finding someone else.
After years of fishing, Shiloh had finally gotten a straightforward answer from the alpha.
And it wasn’t the one that he wanted.
He slammed against the stone wall, popped his shoulder back into place with ease, barely registering what he was doing, acting on instinct more than anything. Then he slowly rose to his feet, eyes still locked on the crouching alpha, the one who was about to run out of bullets.
“I’m tired of waiting, Rang,” his voice was deadpan, only partially heard over the explosion of weapons.
Two more of their attackers were down, and the three still firing were all using X-90 model blasters.
Shiloh couldn’t see them from where he was still hidden, but could hear from the sounds of their shots, counted the next couple of rounds and figured they were also almost out.
During a brief lull, Sarang checked and saw he only had two bullets left, then glanced over to say as much to Shiloh. When he realized he was standing, he cursed, shooting to his feet and grabbing onto his arm.
“What are you doing?! Move over!” In his haste to protect Shiloh, Sarang miscalculated, exposing too much of his right side. Another bullet whizzed through the air, zipping through the fleshy part of his thigh.
Shiloh caught him as he fell, quickly shifting the heavy alpha so that his back was against the half wall that surrounded the outside of each level of the parking garage.
Around the corner, he heard one of their attackers reloading, the other two calling out that they were empty.
“You really should have been more careful,” Shiloh tutted, standing and retreating a step before Sarang could force him back down.
“I was distracted and they got lucky.”
“I wasn’t talking about with them.” He reached into his jacket and grabbed onto the handle of his blaster. “You should have been more careful just now,” Shiloh pulled the weapon free, “with me.”
The three attackers were moving again, narrowing in on their location.
They were being cautious about it, unsure how much ammunition Sarang still had, giving Shiloh enough time to pop the safety off his gun and meet the confused alpha’s gaze one final time before he blew a hole in his charade once and for all.
Since the mask was no longer useful, might as well do away with it.
“I gave you so many chances,” Shiloh said. “I just want you to know that. You’ll never understand how hard I truly tried to make this easy for you.”
“You said you didn’t have a gun.” Sarang held out his hand. “Give it to me and get in the corner.”
“This, having to teach you the hard way? This is your own damn fault.”
“Shiloh, this isn’t the time to fool—”
He grabbed onto Sarang’s hand and shoved him back, activating the small device he’d kept hidden in the process. The contraption expanded and opened, turning from a small coin to a cuff that locked around the alpha’s wrist and one of the metal bars that lined the half wall.
When Sarang pulled at it, Shiloh took the opportunity to capture his other arm, repeating the process so that he had the alpha sitting on the concrete, shoulders pressed against stone, arms over his head.
Trapped.
“Watch closely, alpha.” Shiloh grinned, and not one of those demure, soft, bullshit smiles he’d practiced in the mirror and skillfully perfected either. “Learn what kind of omega you belong to.”