Chapter 6 Nyx #2
At the foot of the bed, the bright restless scent shifted. The younger alpha was in the room, close enough to be the immediate threat, careful enough to keep his body language deferential to the man who owned the air.
He watched me like I was a puzzle he wanted to solve and I hated that my instincts acknowledged him.
The speaker in the wall clicked, soft as a breath.
“Well now. Aren’t you somethin’.”
Smoked cedar and black pepper threaded through the vent a heartbeat later, charred clove riding behind it. Polite on the surface. Violent underneath.
It didn’t crash into the room the way an alpha could when he wanted to intimidate. It arrived controlled and placed.
“You keep talkin’ to my pack like that, Miss Nyx,” the southern voice continued, smooth and unhurried, “and I’m liable to start believin’ you enjoy testin’ what you can get away with.”
The sweetness in his tone didn’t soften the message. It sharpened it.
The younger alpha’s shoulders eased. The bright energy in him didn’t disappear. It got leashed.
“You heard him,” the younger alpha said, and the cheer was gone from his voice now, replaced by something flatter and more careful. “He appreciates spirit. He just doesn’t tolerate disrespect.”
I lifted my eyes to his and held them there. If I looked away first, then I’d be the one blinking.
“Say that again,” I said, keeping my voice steady, “and you can forget hearing my voice at all.”
For a beat he looked surprised. Then his mouth twitched, amused.
“There you are,” he murmured, almost pleased. “That part.”
The speaker clicked again, quieter this time, almost indulgent.
“Mmm. Yes ma’am. That’s it. Keep that chin up.”
My stomach turned at the way the politeness landed. My omega, traitor that it was, tightened and listened anyway, because it remembered an arm at my throat delivered with the same kind of calm.
The younger alpha leaned back a fraction, giving me space that wasn’t really space. His gaze drifted to the thin red lines at my wrists, not with sympathy, but with interest.
“That pill,” he said, nodding toward the tray beside the bed, “isn’t a favor.”
“It’s another leash,” I said. Naming it out loud steadied me, because they had already taken enough of my power.
His smile widened, bright and empty at the edges. “Leashes are for pets. This is maintenance.” He tilted his head. “You’re gonna spike, and then you’re gonna panic about spiking, and then you’re gonna try to turn this room into a crime scene. Malachi hates mess.”
My scent kept trying to rise, peaches and cream threading through chemical bitterness, and I hated how humiliating it felt. Sweet in a place built to starve you, and useful to them whether or not I wanted it.
“You want me cooperative,” I said, because I needed him to admit the rules out loud. Rules always existed, even in cages.
He bent closer, not touching, but close enough that mint and lime and sugarcane crowded my lungs anyway, sharp and too alive. It made my pulse jump in stupid places, and I forced my face to stay still.
“We want you useful,” he said, almost kindly. “Cooperative is just the easiest shape for useful to wear.”
He nudged the cup forward with two fingers, casual as if he were offering guest water in a waiting room instead of drugging an omega in restraints.
“Drink. Or don’t. Either way, the next time that seam opens, it won’t be me.”
I stared at the cup. The water looked clean. The pill looked harmless. That was the point.
My scent kept rising in thin humiliating waves. The room felt smaller, the light more invasive, and the restraints didn’t tighten, but my skin did.
The younger alpha waited, patient in the way men could be when they knew time belonged to them. He let the silence stretch, and I let it stretch back, because silence was the only thing here I could throw.
I didn’t reach for the pill. Not yet.
I wrapped my fingers around the cup instead, slow enough to show him I was choosing, and I drank. The water was icy, too cold, and it scraped down my throat.
His gaze tracked the movement of my swallow. “Good girl.”
Heat flashed up my neck, sharp and humiliating, and my omega recoiled in pure spite.
“My name,” I said, voice steady, “is Nyx.”
His grin sharpened. “And I’m–”
The speaker clicked, cutting him off.
“Now, son,” the southern voice said mildly, warm with reprimand. “Don’t go introducin’ yourself like you’re askin’ permission. You know better.”
The younger alpha’s eyes flicked up toward the corner camera, just once, then back to me. The smile stayed, but it altered.
He exhaled through his nose, restless energy pressing against restraint. “Fine,” he said, stepping back.
At the seam he paused, smile tilting into something that felt like a promise.
“Kairo,” he said. He let the name hang in the air between us and the sound of it clicked into place with the voice that had warned me through the wall mic. “That’s mine. Use it right, or don’t use it at all.”
Then he added, lighter, crueler in its ease, “Get some rest, Nyx. Tomorrow you’ll learn what we do with omegas who keep their minds when we try to take them.”
The seam sealed again, soundless and seamless. I was alone, and the room felt different without him in it.
Not safer. Just quieter. My pulse thudded hard in my ears, loud enough that I wondered if anyone outside could hear it, could measure it, could translate it into data.
I forced my breathing back into something even. My omega wanted to curl inward and go still, but that was an old lie.
Running was the first instinct. It always was. Find the weakness. Count the seconds between checks. Test the edges until something gave.”
My apartment flashed in my mind. If I ever saw that place again, it would not be because it was mine. It would be because Meridian allowed it.
They owned my ass right now.
The room proved that with every clean seam and hidden joint, and whatever Malachi was, he hadn’t brought me here by accident. Packs didn’t survive by leaving doors open.
Submission crept in next, uninvited. The idea of lowering my head, becoming small enough to be overlooked, temporary safety at the cost of myself, a bitter bargain I’d seen too many women make because the alternative felt worse.
Neither option fit, and that fact steadied me.
I rolled my wrists again, feeling the cuffs bite just enough to remind me where I was. The sting wasn’t pain, not really. It was punctuation, and it told me this room spoke in rules.
Malachi didn’t want obedience. He wanted understanding. Proof that I knew the difference between family and money, between assets and blood, between a pack and a machine.
If I ran, I became a problem. If I submitted, I became disposable. Indispensable was the only position that kept me breathing, and I hated how quickly my mind adapted to that math.
I stared up at the flat light and let the decision settle into my bones. I wouldn’t fight the pack, and I wouldn’t kneel to it either, because both options ended with me on the floor.
Indispensable meant I gave them value they couldn’t replace. It meant I offered usefulness that made killing me inconvenient. It meant I made Malachi’s pack decide I was worth more inside their system than buried outside it.
I yanked my wrists again, not for freedom, but for data, and listened for the correction. Footsteps came outside the seam fast enough to prove they’d been waiting for the sound, controlled with no panic at all.
Mint and lime flashed through the crack beneath the door, sweet sugarcane riding the edge, young alpha restraint bleeding through. Someone stopped there and stayed, breathing quiet, listening the way I was listening.
Good.
Let them learn too.
Tomorrow, when Malachi came back, I would hand him just enough truth to keep his attention on my usefulness instead of my throat. Then I’d learn the rest on my own, one rule at a time, until the waiting room stopped feeling like a cage.